by A O Storm
Leaving the facility by helicopter after a short walk to the rooftop Harry flew to a recently constructed, state of the art hospital in San Francisco.
*******
When Kano's accident happened a member of the Ski Patrol rescued him. They used a snowmobile to drag him off the mountain and helped the EMT load him onto a gurney. Then, the ambulance took him to the closest hospital and the ER doctors stabilized his bleeding scalp wound. Due to the possibility of severe head trauma, the hospital in Lake Tahoe's most prominent medical center was quick to order a transfer.
They ordered an air lift, given the severity of Kano’s injuries, and the potential brain trauma was something the Lake Tahoe Hospital team was ill-equipped to deal with, as it required rare expertise. The emergency helicopter would take him to a high tech facility in San Francisco where the old SF General Hospital once stood. The very same hospital Harry from Platnam would attend after his own, private, helicopter ride.
A skull fracture had led to swelling and complications that ensured the young snowboarding instructor stayed bedridden, unable to wake. Despite his youth, the severity of the injuries made a positive outcome unlikely.
While his physical condition improved slowly and the skull fracture healed, Kano still did not wake from the coma. Unresponsive to the outside world, with minimal brain activity, the snowboarding teacher was monitored, breathing, heart beating, but seemingly asleep. Kano’s father visited him daily for the first week before he started to give up hope and decided to only spend time with him on the weekend.
Ten days after Kano’s arrival a rare storm hit San Francisco and an electrical substation near the hospital was overloaded. Lightning struck a nearby tree, causing a surge in power through the lines. The electrical spike took out critical systems within the hospital and the electricity went out for a long moment before the generator based backup system kicked in to bring the lights and equipment back.
"Nurse, you have to move him," the doctor said to Anita, a nurse on duty, pointing to Kano's room.
“Yes, doctor,” she replied.
The doctor hurried down the hall, walking on without a backwards glance after Anita agreed. The entire wing was considered noncritical during emergencies and all the patients in long-term care would be moved to consolidate everyone into a smaller set of rooms to pool resources.
Anita unlocked the wheels on Kano’s bed after unplugging and arranging the IV on a mobile stand. Then, she quickly filled in a paper chart using the marked information on the whiteboard near his bed since the barcode scanners were down. In a private room down the hall that had only been put into use that evening, Harry Smith, CEO of Platnam, was about to get an unexpected roommate. Harry was recovering from an appendectomy, at least, according to hospital records.
While the procedure was not actually necessary, Harry wanted to take no chances. When Harry came back from his medical leave the hospital records and detail would ensure a solid paper trail. The procedure was a ruse to cover the real reason for his visit, which was to test out the novel drug, Omega R13, they had acquired from G and L at great cost.
Harry's goal with the drug treatment? Obtain youth, once again. Modify his very DNA to become that which he hadn't been for forty-two years. Athletic. Strong. Physically and mentally even more in command. Young.
The idea was the rejuvenation drug would make him younger in brain function as well as physical. His mind was what he wanted to improve and upgrade, secondarily, his body. The inventors had proven it worked, time and again, and the research was promising enough to Harry he was willing to take extreme action.
Harry had arranged the deaths of the inventors, the smear campaign against their brand, and ensured that G and L Laboratories were at best difficult to remember, if not outright impossible to learn anything about. Harry wasn’t interested in creating a market for eternal youth; he simply wanted to keep growing his own power in this world by cheating death.
When Anita moved Kano's bed into the room, she pushed it into place near the other patient’s bed and looked up at the ceiling to see if she could get the curtain between them. There wasn’t enough space to use the curtain, as Harry’s bed was the much larger version they only used for morbidly obese patients of a certain size. Anita huffed a bit in frustration, wondering who had ordered the massive bed for the thin, older man who was occupying it.
“You need a hand in here?” The new nurse assistant, Paul, asked from the door, rubbing sanitizer onto his hands from the dispenser.
“Do you know where the privacy dividers are located?” Anita asked and Paul looked stumped. She sighed, “Well, can you get this patient’s IV situated while I go get some?”
Paul smiled and gave a quick nod, “No problem.” Anita hurried out the door and left Paul to set up Kano. However, Paul hadn’t been attending either of the patients and so he checked the whiteboard, per standard procedure. Due to Anita moving the beds, Harry’s whiteboard was now above Kano’s bed, with Harry’s additional care instructions. “Oh, hey. Looks like you’re due for an infusion, dude.”
An IV pole between the beds had a brown tinted infusion bag hanging from it, next to the mobile IV already connected to Kano. Paul disconnected Kano from the IV and grabbed the line from the larger brown bag. Then Paul swiftly and, after a small adjustment, easily connected the snowboard instructor to the new IV. Paul took the old saline connection and wrapped it around the mobile IV, leaving Kano connected to the new one. The one that had been meant for Harry.
“You are all set, my man,” Paul said, smiling, and grabbed the mobile IV to return it for cleaning.
Anita came back to the room a minute later to find Paul had already wandered off. She shook her head, a little angry at the newbie. “I hope he didn’t screw anything up,” she muttered to herself, recalling how many mistakes Paul had already made. Anita set the standing divider between the beds and didn’t glance at the IV Paul had attached to Kano, not noticing the mistake. She hurried out of the room to help with other patients and an hour later, Anita returned to check on both men.
That’s when she read the whiteboard, and frowned, looking at both to be certain she was not confused. There was a note about the brown infusion bag, how Harry needed to be connected to it at exactly one in the morning. Her eyes took in the same bag, unmistakable in color, hooked up to the wrong man. “Oh shit.”
Kano was fully saturated with a complete dose of Omega R13, the drug G and L Laboratories had spent countless millions developing. The dose intended for Harry, the CEO of Platnam, and the unsuspecting billionaire now sharing his private room with Kano. Anita knew this would be blamed on her. She had left Paul to do something he wasn’t supposed to be doing without supervision. This would mean her job, possibly her license. In a panic, she made a decision, and moved the now-empty bag of Omega R-13 on to the pole of the bed it was supposed to go to, making it appear Harry had, in fact, received the dose.
Anita rechecked the whiteboard on the wall and consoled herself in the words experimental treatment in the instructions for the infusion. She assumed it must be a test study and so she told herself that it could have been a placebo or possibly not have worked at all. Anita left the room and tried to forget the incident had ever happened.
The man with dreams of immortality was ignorant as to the mishap and slept peacefully all throughout the accident of the early morning. When the systems had returned back to full power and the hospital continued working until the next day, none discovered Paul’s mistake, nor Anita’s cover-up.
Harry left the hospital the next afternoon, believing he had received the drug, and was none the wiser as to the truth.
Harry could not feel any difference from the treatment and was irritated. Side hurting, Harry had taken the pain medication forced on him by Anita with reluctance. Despite his usually clear vision, everything was just a little blurry for him that afternoon. The prescription was messing with his head, and he wasn’t sure if it was the Omega R13 or the pain pill. Feeling irked more
than happy, the old CEO allowed himself to be pushed by a large orderly through the building in the wheelchair they insisted he stay in.
By the time they reached the elevator, Harry had his phone in hand and was calling Song, his head of research.
Paranoia had driven him to only allow production of a single dose and it would take six months to recreate the formula again. The G and L team had only made a single batch after they acquired a patent pending for their internal tests, due to the expense of materials as well as the difficulty of the process. Harry snarled when he realized he still did not even know if the product had failed and worse, only time would tell if the drug had the expected impact.
Meanwhile in the hospital Kano's bandaged head throbbed when he rubbed at his temple. Consciousness had come back, slowly. It had been more than two weeks since the accident and he felt weak. Choking and coughing from a dry throat, Kano's eyes looked around the room as he started to panic. The nurse found him struggling with the breathing tube and twitching in bed, his muscles too atrophied to move more than a little. She assisted him to remove the tube and he blinked, disoriented.
Anita tried to comfort him as Kano brought a hand up to his sore throat. "You're at the hospital," she said, “You had an accident. Do you remember anything about it?" He nodded at her but held his throat with one hand. “Would you like some water?” Kano nodded weakly again. She retreated, and then pulled a paper cup from the dispenser sleeve near the sink. Anita filled it from the tap quickly, still in shock that Kano had woken up.
She moved back to the bedside and held the paper cup to his lips. He drank, spilling almost as much as he swallowed. Kano tried to remember what happened and how he ended up in a hospital. The accident was blurry for a moment before it came back to him. The jump, the spin out of control, a three-sixty backflip rather than something simpler, and a crash that broke him. Those kids, he thought for a moment, coughing.
"Kids," he said, his voice a hoarse whisper.
"What kids?" Anita asked, puzzled. She went to the computer and brought up his medical records after scanning his bracelet to check his family information. "You don’t have kids," she said, re-reading the details to be certain. “Are you asking about your family?”
"Lesson," Kano said. "Was teaching them," he continued, voice growing stronger. He blinked, the room finally coming into brighter focus, while his chest rose deeper as he breathed. "How long was I out?"
Anita was surprised to hear his voice growing more stable, less hoarse with each word. Unsure what to do, as she had never dealt with a patient waking from a weeks long coma, Anita stammered the answer. "You were in a coma for over two weeks." She started backing away, staring into Kano's dark eyes, as the pupils dilated and focused on her. He seemed healthy, if emaciated. Anita had read about people coming out of a coma before, but in her twenty years at the hospital, it had never happened.
Once a patient hit the seven-day threshold, the odds of their waking up dropped significantly. The young man, however, was looking at her, his cheeks pale but pink. The IV hung from Kano's arm and his thin frame appeared worn out. Ragged, but whole. It was a miracle.
Anita closed his records on the computer and didn’t know what to do next. She felt like this was an urgent matter and needed to get him attention from one of the doctors, certain they would know what to do. "Let me go get the doctor," Anita said, turning on her tennis shoes and walking out, her blue scrubs making swishing sounds with the speed of her stride. Kano looked after her in confusion, his head still foggy.
The room was coming into focus more clearly and Kano felt his whole body wrung out. Tired. The IV throbbed, now that he was thinking more clearly, he could not help feel sad about the kids he was teaching. Did they have to call for help when he crashed? I hope they don't give up boarding, he thought, it'd be a shame. Probably won't get my job back, he realized, feeling morose.
"What a surprise," a low, gravely voice said, interrupting Kano’s self pity. The doctor came in holding a tablet computer with a pristine gray case. Clean-shaven, the Asian man was tall and thin with slight lines on his face and hair gone half white. "I'm Doctor Liu. How are you feeling?"
"Like I'm missing something," Kano croaked, the doctor's image blurring slightly as his eyes watered. Throat parched, speaking so much made him feel raspy. "More water," he said, fumbling at the now empty cup. It was hard for him to concentrate and when he grabbed at the paper cup, Kano accidentally knocked it to the floor. Anita winced a bit in sympathy at his deteriorated condition and rushed out of the room to fetch something easier for him to hold.
"Let me," the doctor said, putting the tablet down. The doctor tossed the old cup into the trash and Anita returned with a larger plastic cup filled with ice water and a large straw jutting from the top. Kano sipped at the water eagerly, holding the plastic mug with both hands rather than using the handle. He set the new cup down and the doctor, tablet in hand, looked down for a moment before speaking.
Dr. Liu cleared his throat. "Two weeks, five days," the doctor said, "and now you're back. Do you know how lucky you are?" Kano shook his head, staring at the doctor. No wonder I feel like my muscles are jello, he thought, paying closer attention. "What's the first thing you can remember?"
Grunting at a memory, Kano had a brief flash of peeing on a tree as a kid in the backyard. Kano could not have been more than three or four years old, but that wasn't the kind of memory he wanted to share with the doctor so he improvised.
"First? Uh. School?" After sipping on the new plastic cup again, Kano’s voice was growing firm, less raspy.
"What year?" the doctor prompted.
"Kindergarten, I think," Kano said.
The doctor nodded and Kano felt sleepy, his head dipping back into the pillow a bit as he tried to hold his eyes open. Dr Liu knew that Kano’s muscles had atrophied and was surprised the young man was already able to do so much. "Rest up. Relax your neck. Now that you're back, we have plenty of time to talk."
A moment later Kano was drifting off, with the doctor and nurse exiting the room once they saw his eyes close. "We'll need to run a few extra tests," the doctor said as they left, "it's too extraordinary to ignore." Anita nodded and held her tongue, suspecting that the infusion mix-up might have been the cause, but she dared not to admit to it or the incident might ruin her life.
Three - Family Reunion
Kano woke up again hours later, drank more water and regained some semblance of strength. Anita, the nurse, was helpful as could be for the next two days as he went from unable to move to getting up and out of bed.
"Thanks," Kano said with a smile, "for everything."
"You're welcome." The nurse paused. "You have a guest."
She stepped aside and his dad was standing there in the doorway, looking grim. An inch shy of six feet, Kano's dad had a square jaw, buzz cut and stern expression. Miles walked into the room and Anita murmured she would leave the two of them alone. He stepped inside and she closed the door behind her.
"How do you feel, son?" Emotions made Kano's father sound hoarse.
"Fine, now. You didn't need to come, dad." Kano was uncomfortable, feeling like his dad was implying he couldn't make it on his own. Before the accident, everything was fine. Now, though, it was going to be impossible to return to teaching for the last month of the season, if not even longer. Kano knew he would need to dip into his savings, and that would run out soon. Not to mention whatever the hospital bill ended up being. When Kano thought of that his throat tightened in remorse. Kano knew he needed his dad's help, but the acknowledgement still stung his pride.
The older man grunted in response and rubbed his hand down both sides of his mouth like Miles was trying to get more words to come out. "I called a moving truck and arranged for them to go by your place in a few days. I hope that's okay."
Kano nodded, eyes closed, frustrated. Here he was, needing to be bailed out by his family. He really wanted to stand on his own two feet, but so far, he had prioritized trying to enjoy
life rather than chase a larger paycheck.
As a result, Kano knew if he didn't accept his family's help, he'd end up asking to borrow money, an even worse idea. Especially since he had already maxed out his credit cards. The snowboarding classes sometimes didn't pay enough. Kano had used the cards to cover the extra and there was always extra.
"Thanks, dad. I really appreciate you coming here and helping me out."
"On that note," his dad paused. "Do you want help landing a new job? I figured you'd get something new near our place in Mountain View."
*******
A few weeks went by and Kano ended up staying with his parents, having no real options. Even though he'd lived on his own for three years after college when training snowboarding students, Kano still remembered the rhythms of his family home. Soon enough, Kano almost forgot about the time he'd spent on the mountain. The doctor said it would be a slow process for him to recover muscle strength over many months. However, Kano had managed to push himself to walk and not rely on any assistance after only three days. By the end of the week first week, Kano was feeling strong enough to start applying for jobs and put the accident behind him.
Kano experienced an odd transformation after leaving the hospital. The first few weeks he gained twenty-five pounds, but it all seemed to be muscle. Kano noticed the changes in his forearms after a few days when they seemed larger yet toned, like he’d been at the gym. Even stranger to him, Kano grew a few inches in height. Baffled at what was happening, Kano pushed any concerns aside as overall he felt good. From the physical transformation, Kano felt better than he ever had in his life.
He took some of his father’s hand-me-downs the following week, as his own clothes were now too small to wear, and tried to plan out the next move. His parents had been more than generous, and Kano knew he owed them for bills his medical insurance didn’t cover. Kano was broke. While he felt like he could get right back up on the mountain again, his former boss confirmed despite the near miraculous recovery, Kano was no longer able to be employed by the ski resort. Their insurance premium, his former manager claimed, would grow too expensive if they employed an instructor who nearly killed himself during a lesson.