“Thank you so much for your time; we’ll let you know if you’re chosen by the end of the week.”

The hunched man in the wheelchair was escorted out on squeaking wheels. As the chair’s rattle receded down the hall, Dr. Laura Brandie was left with a few moments to collect her thoughts. She tapped her pencil against her clipboard as she reviewed her notes: age was around what she’d wanted, but the two decades of smoking left the general constitution weaker than was ideal. The patient presented with clear-cut, complete diplegia brought on by spinal injury, and as Laura leafed through the medical reports of that accident, she reasoned that the cut was likely clean enough for treatment to have a chance at meaningful impact.

All in all, a promising-enough candidate; his paperwork was placed in the finalists’ pile, joining three others from earlier that morning.

“Next volunteer can enter,” Laura called, rifling through her notepad for a blank page. From the door behind her, she heard a scuffling, a shuffle, a drag… and again: scuffle, shuffle, drag. It was a sound that brought with it a wave of goosebumps, a wave of memories. That was a sound that brought to mind the way Mom used to stumble around the creaky wooden floorboards of the Pennsylvania house—or, at least, the gait she’d borne for the few years between diagnosis and the end. Laura’s tenth birthday had also been the funeral, and all Laura could remember of the thing was hating the fact that it had rained.

Laura turned to face the shuffling footsteps, and, of course, the newcomer was not Regina Brandy; ALS had set her to peace nearly three decades prior. But the newcomer walked with that same flailing footstep that bespoke the poor coordination of significant nerve damage. The hobbling woman leaned on a cooked cane that wobbled nearly as much as its owner did; Laura immediately rose to her feet to assist.

“Please, let me,” Laura started, but the woman dismissed her with a proud wave.

“This old stick’s never failed me yet,” she said, setting herself down heavily in the chair.

“Are you comfortable?” Laura asked.

The woman nodded through huffing breaths. “Good enough to start,” she wheezed, but already her breathing became less heavy, less strained.

Laura’s eyes began her preliminary assessment: the woman’s palsy seemed to affect the legs and torso, but arms were more stable—the woman’s leaning on the cane proved as much. Laura’s eyes next found the deep, smoothed scars across the woman’s face and neck, vanishing into the neckline of her blouse. Not genetic then, Laura thought. Something brought on by acute injury, likely. Only then did her eyes settle on the crow’s feet that wrinkled the eyes, the nasolabial folds, the whisps of grey that accented her frazzled hair. Laura frowned.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“My name is Dr. Brandie; thanks for volunteering to talk with us. Please speak as clearly into the microphone as you’re able,” Laura said, reciting the first line of her script. She then reached for the stack of submitted paperwork, grabbing the stapled corners to flip packet-by-packet.

“What’s your name?” Laura asked.

“Alexandra Harmon,” the woman answered, finding her breath again.

“And how old are you, Ms. Harmon?” Laura asked, flipping for the paperwork filed under Harmon.

“Sixty-three last month.”

Laura pursed her lips. “I can see you have nerve damage, sure, but the sign-up forms should have made our desired candidate’s age range quite clear—"

“It’s not for me,” Alexandra said. “It’s for my son.”

Laura peered up from the paperwork. “Well, then, if he’s of age, we’d need him to volunteer himself, as a procedure this… invasive of course requires express consent.”

“I’m his court-appointed full guardian, as he’s deemed unable to make his own medical decisions.”

Laura’s mind rattled through possible conclusions. Incompetency, nerve damage… stroke? TBI? “As you may know, our procedure is no ‘miracle cure.’ The KSE serves as a new neuromuscular system, in a way, but we still need a functional, competent brain to direct it. What’s the nature of your son’s condition?”

Alexandra Harmon leaned forward on her cane, a grave expression on her face. “The first doctors called it a pseudocoma,” she said. Laura, too, suddenly leaned in, and a satisfied smile twitched the corner of Alexandra’s scarred lips as she noted the change in demeanor. “Ah, so you’ve heard of it, Dr. Brandie?”

“You don’t mean to imply…” Laura began. Alexandra merely nodded.

“Locked-in Syndrome.”

Laura reeled. LIS had, what, a handful of cases per year? “Patient’s age?” she asked dazedly.

“Twenty-nine.” The perfect age range—brain no longer developing, but still young enough to adapt.

“Etiology of his condition? Uh, I mean, how he got it?”

“Car wreck,” Alexandra said. “Same as, well…” She gestured to herself, her cane, her scars on her neck. “’Bridge ices before road,’ as the signs always say.”

Laura set down her pencil and clipboard—she hadn’t needed it since the moment Ms. Harmon said Locked-in. She steepled her fingers and considered the woman anew.

“Is it true, what the paperwork said?” Emotion cracked at Alexandra’s voice, her face twisting with pain. Laura wondered if that pain was physical or remembered. “You’d be able to help my Brett walk again?”

Laura reached across the table and clasped Alexandra’s clammy hands, as knobby and cold as the head of her wooden cane.

“Far more than that, Ms. Harmon… we’ll help him run again.”