Chapter 2: Stranger Danger

I heard shouting.

I forced my eyes open to blurred shapes dancing back and forth at the doorway to my hospital room, more than likely I had surfaced back into consciousness during a doctor visit, seeing as I was home most of the time I came to. I was sitting in my wheelchair, my head canted at an awkward angle against the pillow someone had set on my shoulder. Though I lamented my loss at being able to feel most of my body I did wish a little bit that I’d be beyond feeling the crink the weird angle put in my neck too. All well.

Since I was… indisposed, My vision had gone to shit. Everything was murky, as if I had my eyes open underwater all the time, things randomly coming into focus for a few short breaths before blurring into obscurity. Maybe it was the brain damage more than anything since I could still see. I guessed my eyes were spared from the worst from my incident. Didn’t mean much when I can’t fuckin’ see anything besides dancing blobs more than a few feet out from my face.

The muted shouting rumbled closer, the tone and words obscured, muffled. I felt a tug from my right and a thin figure sit down next to me, grasping my hand in a vice-like grip. Mom. I’d recognise her anywhere, and she’s the one that holds my skeletal hand the most often, especially when she is in distress over me.

Then, as if flipping a switch, the room came into focus, muddled whispers became thundering expletives, and if I were still in control of my faculties I would probably find the screaming tirade hilarious seeing as my stoic Mother was the source of the fiery tongue-lashing.

“Mrs. Morgan, please, calm down-”

Whew boy, apparently this guy has never spoken to a woman before, and judging from the glorious display of murder in Mom’s eyes, he would ever get the chance again.

“Calm down?” she snarls. I don’t know what the argument is about, but hearing the sheer spite she is leveling at this poor sod had me internally grinning. Well mister einstein-reject, it was nice knowing you for all of like… 3 seconds.

“I’ll calm down when I get a hold of your slimy pencil neck and SNAP IT LIKE A FUCKING TWIG!”

I let out a snort, though my half a monkey brain translated that into spitting like a newborn all over myself. Great, guess that means I’d have to wear a bloody bib when I go to comedy clubs now.

Mom and the stranger are too engrossed in their back and forth to notice me, so I take the opportunity to soak in the details, the subtle lines of ageing on my mother’s face (still twisted in fury. Wow, she is mad), my decayed limbs, wasted by atrophy, and the visitor causing all of this ruckus.

Now that I actually look at the guy, Mom is right, he really does have a pencil neck. He is almost as thin as me, pale, almost yellow skin stretched over thin bone, an unkempt blonde beard with dark bags under brown manic eyes. He looks like an almost painful caricature of a mad scientist, one who was currently fearing for his life.

“I assure you ma’am that won’t be necessary,” Pencil neck gulps, thin fingers rubbing his throat worriedly. “I am here presenting an opportunity for your son!”

Mom surges forward, pouncing across the room like a predator on a cornered rabbit, her fingers come inches away from curling into the man’s white lab coat and throttling him senseless.

“An opportunity?!” Mom actually snarled, like nose-to-nose, spitting mad, teeth bared, snarled. “You mean to turn him into some- some lab-rat!”

“Not just as a lab-rat! It’s a chance for him to heal.”

“YOU WANT TO STRAP HIM INTO A FUCKING TORTURE MACHINE!”

That got my attention. Not Mom’s point, the other guy.

Speaking of the other guy, he wisely took a few steps back from mama bear, muttering, “Ma’am, you don’t seem to understand what exactly I am offering…”

“Money for my baby?”

Daww, not in front of the stranger Mom! It’s embarrassing!

“A Second Chance.”

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Anastasia Morgan was having a very bad day. And it started so good too.

Her husband had cooked a wonderful breakfast for her. Not for a birthday or anything, but just because he wanted to. Because he wanted to say he loves her.

Her eldest son had shown signs of improving coherency too! Signs that he was dragging himself from the labyrinth of his damaged mind. Small signals that show he was coming back to her! Even for a few moments. Moments that he would remember her, that she could remind him that he is loved and that he is home.

But no. She had to take him to the hospital for a monthly check-up in the early evening and her son still hadn't come back to her. The telltale light in his eye still out of focus, just so. She was beginning to fear he wouldn't resurface at all.

Then, as soon as her son’s therapist had finished the hospital’s director had stopped them from leaving, promptly pushing some shady, thin twerp of a man swallowed in a lab coat several sizes too large and closed them inside the hospital room.

Then said twerp had introduced himself as one Doctor Matt Miles then immediately launched into a rambling tirade about some Immersive Reality something or other and brain augments. She wasn’t really paying attention to that part.

She was more concerned when he casually threw around words like “induced mental stress” and “perfect test subject” with her son’s name in the same sentence.

She paid attention then, and she made sure the stick-bug cretin knew it- perhaps a bit louder than she had intended, but at least she hadn’t throttled the bastard. Yet.

Doctor Miles clearly had zero sense of self-preservation when he continued to press his offer when she was seconds from showing him how cold and calculating she could be when rearranging his face with her tastefully painted fingernails.

“No madam! I assure you, this is an opportunity of a lifetime! The technology we are testing could cure-”

“Testing by stabbing needles into him and draining what little sense of humanity my baby has left by plugging him into a fucking machine like a fucking battery!”

Adrenaline surged through her willowy limbs at the threat this “Doctor” represented to her son, her fight or flight instincts making her limbs shake just from the conversation. She wanted him gone. She needed her son safe.

“Madam, Your son is still in an optimal window to recover- for at least some of the damage to be fixed! If you at least just-”

“NO! GET. OUT-”

“Y-Yesh!”

Anastasia felt her heart slam into her throat, the rest of her following as she jumped in fright at the sudden slurred shout behind her. The doctor screamed like a little girl, throwing his clipboard in the air and fumbling it between bony fingers.

Anastasia swallowed the lump in her throat back down and both her and the doctor turned to her baby in the wheelchair. His head was no longer resting at a crooked angle against his neck pillow, his atrophied muscles shaking to keep his posture.

But he was sitting up, back straight, shoulders squared, and a blinding, resolute light shining in his eyes, burning a deep ethereal blue. Her baby was- Anastasia let out a choked sob- He was back.

Behind her Doctor Miles was dumbstruck. His patchy blonde beard did little to hide his jaw figuratively hitting the floor. He had heard of patients with similar brain damage exhibit episodes of clarity. Still, even with his research into Mr. Morgan’s condition and his own adamant insistence in Mr. Morgan’s participation in his test trials even Miles began to have doubts when he saw the emaciated, broken corpse of a man drooling in the corner of the ward.

Seeing this wasted half-living cadaver come to life before his eyes had shaken Miles. It’s one thing to see a ruined shadow of a man staring incoherently into space, it’s entirely another to witness a glimpse of the man behind the withered mask, trapped in a broken body.

His mind finally caught up with what the patient had shouted and Doctor Miles blinked. He shuffled closer, cautiously, as if any sudden motion would break whatever spell held Mr. Morgan’s mind anchored in this moment.

“Mr. Morgan?” He began. He nearly dropped his clipboard when the frail skeleton’s luminescent blue eyes flicked from his mother’s happy face to him. Those eyes were sharp and bright, in a way that the largely untraveled doctor couldn’t place, but made him both uneasy and ecstatic that he had made the right choice pursuing Mr. Morgan for his test trials.

It’s not just theoretical anymore, Doctor Matt Miles saw a chance.

“Mr. Morgan, My name is Doctor Matthew Miles.” He paused, giving the skeletal man a chance to digest his words. The younger Morgan blinked and narrowed his eyes. “Can you understand me?” The Doctor asked.

Mr. Morgan blinked. It seemed deliberate. Why blink though when he could just nod-? Ah. The Doctor wanted the facepalm himself. His neck muscles. Atrophy. they were trembling just keeping his head upright. Even nodding was pushing the limits of this man’s impressive tenacity. Right. Time to press on.

“Did you by chance overhear my offer, Mr. Morgan?”

Another blink. Miles watched the quadriplegic’s sharp Adam's apple bob in a dry swallow, and a hoarse whispered, “..yesssh.”

“Honey?” Anasatsia shoved the doctor back and elegantly kneeled in front of her son, blocking the doctor access to him. Her hands landed on one knee- the limb ending abruptly below the knobby joint- and his forearm, squeezing gently, grounding her even if her son couldn’t even feel her touch. He can’t actually be serious about accepting this quack’s offer, right? He doesn’t know what he’s doing. “Whatever this man is offering isn’t worth it. Worth you.”

Her heart swelled and broke a little at the same time when he turned his deep blue eyes towards her, virtually glowing with determination. Like before. Even when he was scared and unsure.

“...I-I…” Anastasia blinked back a few tears at seeing her son struggle so hard to speak. “..w-w-wanna…”

Suddenly his head sagged, his muscles giving out against her son’s will. It nearly broke Anastasia all over again. “...I… N-n-need...toooo… t-try…”

The Doctor finally understood what grief looked like when Mr. Morgan’s blue eyes dulled and his mind slipped away into the prison of his own broken body, leaving behind a husk. He finally understood what grief looked like when Anastasia knelt over her son’s wheelchair bound form and cried.

He finally understood that he would likely never fathom the depths of that grief.

He finally understood just what he was risking with his experiments. And… he didn’t really know what he thought of that anymore.

“...He…” Doctor Miles blinked, surprised at the moisture that had converged in the corner of his sunken eyes and escaped down his unshaven cheek. Anastasia Morgan rapidly collected herself and flowed to her feet and stood in front of her son, as if shielding him from the Doctor and the world. Her eyes were red and cheeks raw from rubbing and smudged make-up. Her voice though was hesitant but steady.

“...He wants to do it.” She affirmed quietly. “And… and I’ll allow him to. I don’t want to try to deny him his own choice. Not anymore.”

Doctor Miles swallowed and solemnly nodded. He extended the clipboard he had clutched to his chest like a safety blanket to her. On it were a stack of papers, contracts, and more information.

“Let’s get started.”