“Hello there, Brett… it seems these months at home have been good for you. How are you doing?”

Dr. Brandie sat herself down at the kitchen table of the Harmon home. Brett sat across with casual posture, communication board splayed out amid the Harmons’ half-eaten breakfasts.

Good, Brett tapped, spooning another mouthful of oatmeal into his mouth. As he ate, his eyes were locked to Dr. Brandie’s. With his face’s lack of expressiveness, it was somewhat unsettling, but Laura tried to not let it bother her.

“And how are your signs coming along?”

Better every day, he signed.

“Better every day,” Alexandra translated.

“I learned ASL when I was young,” Dr. Brandie said. “I’ve forgotten a fair bit by now… I suspect you and Brett could already out-sign me, but I can comprehend more than I can sign. Brett, you can speak to me in signs if you find that easier than tapping the board.”

Brett nodded, taking another bite of oatmeal.

“Now, Brett, your mother expressed some concerns about you lately. Are you feeling yourself?”

Yes, Brett signed.

“How’s your oatmeal, Bee?”

Delicious, Brett signed.

“Do you mind if I do a couple quick tests here, Brett?” asked Dr. Brandie, moving to the seat next to him.

Sure, Brett signed.

Dr. Brandie removed a small light from her pocket and clicked it active. “Keep your eyes locked to my nose—don’t look at the light. Gonna check your pupils here, okay?”

Dr. Brandie shone the light into his left eye and right, watching the way that the unlit pupil contracted in sync with the lit one. His eyes were wide and trembling with concentration as she worked—maybe tests like these were still a mental strain for Brett—but the pupillary contraction seemed totally normal.

“Very good. Keep looking at my eyes. I’m going to move my hand around in-between our faces. I want you to use your right hand to touch my hand, and then your nose, and then back to my hand, and then back to your nose. Try to keep doing that as I move my hand around.”

Brett did as she asked, his hand moving smoothly back and forth between Laura’s moving hand and his own nose.

“That was perfect. Just two more questions: if you know your ASL letters, can you sign-spell the current day of the week?”

S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y, he signed.

“Perfect. And lastly, can you do your name for me?”

B-R-E-T-T-H-A-R-M-O-N.

“Very good,” she said, wearing a clinician-perfect smile. “All in order.”

“Brett, dear, I know we were supposed to go get groceries today, but it’s really just the milk and eggs we need right away—would you mind walking to the corner shop and buying them? You can take my card; I’d just like a few minutes to chat with the doctor here.”

Sure, Brett signed, gathering himself up and heading for the front door. He swung the door shut behind him, and then, much to Dr. Brandie’s immediate clinical interest, she heard the sound of a key slotting into the lock, and the deadbolt was engaged.

“Fine motor skills are progressing quite quickly—not to mention the stiff, if nearly fluent signing.”

Alexandra didn’t respond. A sudden and thick silence fell across the sleepy kitchen, motes of dust drifting heavily through beams of sunlight. It was, by all accounts, an idyllic breakfast scene, and Dr. Brandie allowed herself to be moved by that sense of calm. With a crack that made both women nearly jump, the toaster flung its browned slice of bread upwards, and Alexandra rose with her cane to retrieve it.

As she stood, her eyes were glued to the distant door, watching Brett’s silhouette disappear through the windows. Only once Brett was far enough away did Alexandra dare to speak her concerns aloud.

“Something is terribly wrong with my Brett,” she said, transferring the toast to a small, blue plate.

Dr. Brandie knitted her hands together on the table, regarding her frankly.

“So you intimated on the phone, but he seemed entirely fine just now. It looked like I walked into any family kitchen, finding a mother and son enjoying a lazy weekend morning.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“I don’t think that’s my Brett,” Alexandra managed, voice suddenly very small. She sat down heavily at the table—nearly collapsed into her chair—and stared at her toast. Her hands never reached for the jam.

“I beg your pardon?”

“It looks like him, moves like him, but that’s no Brett,” she said, nearly choking out the words.

Dr. Brandie’s mouth opened as though to speak, but then she closed it again. Paranoid delusions, she thought. An impostor or replacement is common enough imagery, and—

“I know you must think I’m crazy just for saying that,” Alexandra hedged, “but a mother always knows.”

Dr. Brandie set her lips in a line. “Then please, ma’am, explain your fears.”

“Brett hates, hates oatmeal,” she said. “Always did. Yet you just saw him, right now, eating the stuff up and calling it ‘delicious.’”

Dr. Brandie felt a minor flush of relief… she’d been momentarily wondering if the mother’s concerns might have had some merit, but here was something perfectly explainable: “Preferences can and often do change in the wake of traumatic experience. Many patients, on the other side of a near-death experience, suddenly find that their personal vendetta against oatmeal feels a little silly, and suddenly they find new reasons to—”

“He sleeps on the wrong side of his bed.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Ever since he was little, Brett would always tuck himself in on the right side of his bed, snugly up against the wall… now, he lies directly in the center.”

Dr. Brandie nodded, finding her rhythm back in the role of medical expert. Here, too, was a perfectly explainable phenomenon: “Don’t forget that, for years, your son has been in a hospital bed—kept in the center of that bed, mind you, as is SOP. As strange as it may seem to hear, that hospital room is what’s comfortable and familiar to him, not this home… it’s likely a comfort-seeking gesture, a way to reclaim some normalcy in a world that’s suddenly—”

“Then there’s the look in his eyes,” Alexandra said, her own eyes flickering as she searched painful memories. “Moms and kids, we’ve got a type of mind-reading that only a parent can understand… you take one look, and you know what’s going on under the surface. Do you have kids, Doctor Brandie?”

She shook her head… amid lectures and late lab nights, things like dating, marriage, and partnership had all fallen to the wayside.

“If you did, you’d understand. The first couple weeks, I thought that maybe it was the stress of the new environment, the overwhelming newness of the world around him… did you know he cried almost every day for the first month? I thought it tears of joy at first, but the eyes were too heavy. And then, after that month, the weeping stopped… and I know his face doesn’t move, but you can read it in the expression: the look he carries is resigned, it’s… dejected, it’s pleading.”

Dr. Brandie paused to compose her diagnosis and recommendations. The emerging clinical picture was clear enough: “Please understand, this is as dramatic a change for your life as it is for Brett’s,” she said as diplomatically as possible. “And it’s doing Brett no disservice to acknowledge that fact, to admit to ourselves that all of this change affects you almost as much as it affects him. When people are confronted with such a break from the norm, the mind can react in strange ways—it can start to believe things that aren’t true and make up strange stories about the ones that we love. I can tell you’re very stressed about Brett’s wellbeing—this has got to be like having a child all over again. I can refer you to a brilliant psychologist you could chat with—a colleague of mine, Dr. Elyse Schwa—"

“You’re not hearing me; I don’t need a damn shrink, doc. This isn’t about me, it’s Brett!”

“Your own stress might blind you to the fact that this is about you, ma’am, and the way—”

Alexandra scoffed. “Me, the blind one? Your own pride’s got you blind to the possibility that maybe this KSE could be anything less than perfect.”

Dr. Brandie was indignant, cheeks flushed red, but she let the mother have her say, rather than arguing as a guest in her home.

“The Brett that I signed up for your trial, the Brett who stopped answering questions, that was a Brett whose eyes carried the look of a man who wanted to die. I was out of options…” Alexandra’s voice broke, and, after a few moments of searching, she found the words to continue. “Now that look is back, and it’s deeper than ever before… he wore it right this morning, eating the oatmeal at this table, like he despised the fact that he was doing it. Can you imagine the horror of that, doc? You somehow lose control of your body… it’s acting entirely on its own… and when someone asks you if everything’s okay, your traitorous hand gives them a thumbs-up, saying ‘yeah, it’s all a-fuckin-ok?’ Can you imagine what that loss of control would feel like?”

Dr. Brandie examined that idea with mute curiosity, but she didn’t allow it to move her. The field of medicine was an endless parade of maladies, pain, death, and sorrow; every cured patient was replaced by someone as miserable and broken as the first had been. To empathize with those patients was to subject oneself to that misery forever, and nobody could bear those burdens for long. And so, to insulate herself from that pain, Dr. Brandie maintained an empathetic wall in her mind, blocking her from feeling the terror the woman described. After her first brush with ALS had destroyed her, sending a child to failing grades in school, to so many black years of ringing emptiness, how could Dr. Brandie do anything else?

“You need to speak with Dr. Schwartz,” she said at last, banishing the thought of a man prisoner in a body he didn’t control. “I’ll leave you her card—”

“An fMRI, or I speak with the press,” Alexandra said, eyes fixed to her uneaten toast. “If you won’t hear me, maybe they will.”

Dr. Brandie swallowed. Although the specific finalists were secret, she knew it likely that she was under heavy consideration for the Nobel Prize, and negative press like Alexandra’s claims could have it all undone.

“Let’s not—“ she began, but Alexandra cut her off.

“I’m serious. I won’t have my worries shrugged off. A mother knows.”

Dr. Brandie nodded her head curtly. “A trade, then,” she acceded. “You speak to Dr. Schwartz, and we’ll give Brett a follow-up scan. Does that sound fair?”

Alexandra’s eyes never moved from the toast… she raised her chin in hollow agreement, corners of her mouth twitching downwards. “The store Brett went to was literally a half-minute walk… he could be coming back soon. I’d like you gone before he does, and I expect a call by this afternoon about scheduling a scan.”

“What time do you—”

“The soonest you’ve got—any time, doc. There ain’t a God-damn thing I wouldn’t move for this.”