by Jamie Davis
Peeking out from under the mesh bonnet, a shiny silver metal implant extended from the edge of Cass’s cheek next to her right eye all the way back to her ear, arching up and over the upper lobe and down behind it.
Shelby tried to figure out what the implant might do in addition to repairing her lost brain function. The doctor had said they had some of the latest models from the States.
“Hildi, exactly what do all the implants she received do? How extensive was the replacement work?”
“I just got a quick look at her chart, but it appears they had to do quite a bit.” Hildi moved around to the other side of the bed and typed something onto the screen of the monitor hanging on the wall.
She kept talking as she worked on getting Cass situated. “I’m still getting up to speed on all the details, but it looks like they did a full replacement of her right eye and optic nerve. That includes an ocular implant matched to her existing eye. They also inserted a temporal cerebral magnifier to help retain her memory and function from the portion of her brain that was damaged.”
“How much of her memory was affected?” Shelby became frightened about the possibility Cassie might not remember her.
“We won’t know for sure until she wakes up. However, based on the quick report I saw, they were able to salvage quite a bit from the synaptic relays they had to replace. I think it’s hopeful that she will only be missing some of her short-term memory and possibly a few other items here and there from her long-term memory. The implant should compensate for a lot of that over time, though.”
Shelby nodded and walked over to stand beside the bed. She reached out and held Cass’s hand. Her fingers felt cold. With her other hand, Shelby reached up and adjusted the blanket, pulling it up higher on Cass’s chest.
Hildi noticed what she did. “Don’t worry, we’ll get her warmed up again. They keep the surgical suite cold all the time on purpose. It helps the patients during brain surgery. It’s always a shock to the family when they come up here and see someone just afterward. The patients always feel so cold when they first get here.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks for letting me know. Um, is there anything I can do to help? I don’t want to be in your way, but I’d like to help take care of her, too?”
Hildi smiled. “Of course you can. Why don’t you sit down there next to her. I have to go out and add some notes to her chart. I’ll be just outside the door. If you want to sit and hold her hand and keep an eye on her while I tend to the admin stuff that would be great. It probably won’t be long before she wakes up, maybe only an hour or two. When an implant like this is put in, the whole healing process is accelerated by the nano bots we inject.”
Shelby smiled. It felt good to be able to help in some way. She sat down in the chair beside the bed and gave Cass’s hand a gentle squeeze. Hildi left to tend to her other duties while Shelby sat and waited for Cass to wake up.
“I’m here for you, Cassie, honey. I’m here.”
Chapter 9
Cass pulled with her arms as she swam through the deep blue water towards the dim sunlight above. She struggled to reach the surface before she ran out of air.
The sunlight beamed down. She could see it glimmering through the water above her. All she had to do was kick and pull until she broke the surface. It couldn’t be too much farther, could it?
Despite fighting with all her strength, Cass couldn’t get there. The harder she fought to emerge, the longer it seemed to take.
Frustration and anger at not being able to break through made her redouble her efforts.
She would not be denied.
Cass pushed harder against the water around her, kicking with all her might.
It never occurred to her why she hadn’t drowned already. She’d already been underwater for so long.
Cass continued to fight against the pull of the current sucking her down. After what felt like hours of exhausting time struggling against the current towards day, she finally broke through and pushed into the sunlight.
In the hospital room, Cass’s eyelids fluttered open for the first time in more than a day. She didn’t move at first. She just stared at the white ceiling above her trying to understand where she was.
Cass raised her right hand and saw wires and a clear plastic tube attached to her arm. She realized she was in a hospital room or medical suite of some kind. Cass tried to sit up, but when she tried to move, her left shoulder and arm felt like lead weights and held her body down. Her whole left side felt heavy and numb.
“Wh—where am I?” Cass said. Her voice sounded hoarse and raspy as if she hadn’t spoken for a long time.
A familiar voice nearby answered her.
“Oh, my God. Cass, you’re awake.” Shelby’s face came into view as she leaned over the hospital bed. “I’m so glad you woke up. We were all so worried about you.”
Cass stared at Shelby for a long time before answering. There was something strange about the way her girlfriend looked. The lines around her face were sharper, and in some ways more colorful. There were fine details she could see that she’d never seen before. It was almost as if there was a sort of aura all around Shelby.
“Am I in the hospital? How did I get here?”
“Do you remember the accident on the jet skis? We were racing and you ran into some rocks. They rushed you here to the hospital. The doctors saved your life.” Shelby paused. “It was bad, Cassie. Really bad.”
“Injured, how?” Cass asked. She still felt a little numb everywhere, mostly on her left side. Her head ached a little, too.
“You hit your head when you landed on the rocks,” Shelby said, continuing her description as tears filled her eyes. “I thought you were dead.”
Cass didn’t understand why Shelby seemed to be hesitating to give a full answer. And why was she crying?
Frustrated with the delay, Cass blurted out, “Shelby just tell me. I don’t understand why you’re holding back. What aren’t you telling me?”
“Cass, it’s not just that you were injured. Like I said, you almost died. The doctors here had to save your life and they had to do, uh, well, some things to make sure you lived.”
Something about the way Shelby answered frightened Cass, though she couldn’t say why exactly. “What do you mean, Shelby? What did they do to me?”
Shelby reached down and held Cass’s right hand in both of hers. Cass glanced down, seeing Shelby’s metallic hand and real hand wrapped around her own. Once again, the image she saw looked strange and alien to her.
As Cass looked back up at her girlfriend’s face, tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Shelby, why are you crying? I feel pretty much fine. I don’t understand.”
“Cass, they had to put in an implant to save your brain and your eye and some other stuff.”
At first, Cass didn’t understand what Shelby said. “An implant?” She couldn’t wrap her mind around it. She would never have allowed such a thing to happen. Surely Shelby knew that by now?
“Yeah, Cass, multiple implants. They’re on the right side of your head and face. From your eye back.”
Cass groaned and focused her strength to lift up her right hand. She found she had more control of her right side now and pulled her hand away from Shelby’s grasp. She reached up and touched the side of her face with her fingertips. She winced at the tenderness of the skin around her eye and cheek. Then her fingers touched something hard. It wasn’t cold. It was warm; like Shelby’s metal hand.
Panic set in for Cass right away. Her breathing increased as she traced her fingers along the metal surface, running her fingers in a line from next to her right eye all the way back and over her ear. She continued tracing the edge of the metal thing on her face until her fingers returned back to where they started just behind her eye.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, what did they do to me?”
“Cass, it’s not that bad. They saved your life and it really isn’t that much.”
“You said they replaced my ey
e. But I can see you. Nothing’s changed.” Cass blinked several times to prove her point.
Shelby smiled down at her, wiping away tears so they didn’t fall on Cass. “It looks fine. They did a good job matching your eye color.”
This was wrong, all wrong. They had to come out.
Cass dug at the skin around the metal implant in the side of her skull, digging her fingernails in to try and pry it out. She winced at the pain but redoubled her efforts to scrape at the edge of the metal band. “Get this thing out of me, Shelby. I can’t have an implant. I won’t be me anymore. I won’t be human.”
The day nurse came rushing in from outside the room. She snapped an order at Shelby. “Pull her arm away and hold it down. We can’t let her injure herself. We have to stop her until she gets used to the implants.”
“Nurse,” Cass called out. “You don’t understand. You have to get these things out of me. I can’t have implants. I can’t have these things in my head.”
“Cass, honey. My name is Merry. I’m here to help you. You need to take some deep breaths. I know it’s a lot to process, so don’t think about anything at all, just look at my face and take deep breaths with me. I’ll count along with you as breath in and out.”
Cass looked at the nurse and watched her open her mouth to breathe and count along with her. Despite the overwhelming panic sweeping through her, Cass realized after a few seconds she was following the nurse’s instructions.
Soon, her breathing slowed down as she tried to match the nurse’s pace and rhythm. Merry continued her steady encouragement while Cass calmed down.
Once her breathing settled down, Merry smiled and reached up to stroke her hair. “That’s much better. It’s not unusual for someone in your situation to have a reaction like that. Everything is so new right now and you’re still adjusting to the neural interface.”
As Merry stroked her hair and Shelby held on to her hand, Cass’s thoughts shifted through several things. She wondered about the hair on the right side where they put in the implant.
“My hair on the right side. Did they shave it off?”
Merry nodded. “Just a little bit of it. They needed to in order to make sure they could put everything right, but it’ll grow back and be good as new before you know it. They’ve given you some follicle stimulating medicine to speed up the regrowth.”
“It looks pretty rad, actually,” Shelby added.
Cass struggled to tamp down her panic again. She had to think this through. She could find a way out of this if she took her time. “Can I get a mirror? I need to see.”
“Sure,” Merry said. “I thought you might want that and put one here by the bed. Here.”
Merry held up a square mirror with a white plastic handle, angling it so Cass could see the right side of her face and head.
Cass turned her face to see better. The swelling around that side of her face made everything look puffy and bruised.
“Can I have my hand back, Shel?”
“Sure,” Shelby replied, releasing her hold on Cass’s right hand.
Cass lifted her hand again and traced her finger tips along the silver and gray metal plate running from her eye to her ear. She felt the smooth, polished surface glide by under her fingers as she touched the implant.
Questions swirled through her brain. Most importantly: How was she going to live with something like this in her brain? The Mantle would take her over and she’d cease to be herself anymore. It was just like she’d learned in all the horror stories they told her as she grew up.
As she asked herself the questions, the panic returned.
Shelby reached over and took Cass’s hand again to keep her from digging at the implant. “Cass, settle down. Come on, breathe with me like you did with Merry. Look into my eyes and breathe along with me. You can do this. It’s all going to be all right.”
Cass once again focused on the voice and tried to pull her thoughts away from the machine inside her head. This time Shelby talked her down and she found herself calming much more quickly.
Merry moved to get something from a shelf by the door. She picked up a metal syringe and attached it to the tubing going into Cass’s left arm. She pushed the plunger down. Cass watched as the pale blue liquid ran through the intravenous tubing into her arm.
“What’s that? What are you doing to me?” Cass asked.
“It’s just another dose of nano bots,” Merry replied. “You need them right now to keep your body from rejecting any of the new additions. Eventually, everything will settle down as the neural-cerebral interface completes all the connections. Then your own system will stop your body from rejecting things. Don’t worry. We’ll have that all balanced out before you leave.”
Cass’s mind swam as more thoughts raced through what the nurse told her. Now she had tiny robots roaming in her body, all connected to the Mantle, all trying to change her even more. She’d never be herself again. How was she going to begin to tell her parents about this? They would never forgive her.
Before she could get herself worked up again, Cass grew tired and everything slowed down.
“I feel weird, sleepy.”
“That’s normal,” Merry said. “The bots sedate you so they can do their work in peace. You go back to sleep, hon. You’ll feel much better when you wake up next time. The medicine I added to the nano bot injection will help keep you calm when you awaken again.”
Cass tried to say something. She heard her own voice in the distance. “Don’t like the implants. Don’t want to be a sub.”
As Cass drifted off to sleep, Shelby blinked to fight back tears.
Shelby had never heard Cass use the word sub before when referring to anyone with an enhancement, let alone herself. It spoke volumes about how deeply her prejudices were seeded regarding the things she learned growing up. Now she feared herself.
Shelby let go of Cass’s hand and got up. She needed to take a walk and process her thoughts. She’d been here in the ICU for almost twenty-four hours.
Merry stood at the nurses’ station chatting with another one of the ICU staff members. She looked up as Shelby came out of Cass’s room. “Going to take a break?”
“Yeah, I just need to clear my mind a little bit.”
“It’s all right. Cass is going to be fine. She just had a bad reaction to everything. It’s a lot to take in all at once.”
“Yeah, I guess so. How much of what she said in there is her and how much is the meds talking, though?”
Merry smiled. “It’s mostly the meds, along with her injury and fear talking. Don’t take anything she says over the next few days personally. She’s got to adjust and find her own way through this. The best thing you can do is to be there with her as she works it out.”
Shelby nodded. It was good advice in general, though she wondered if Cass would ever get over having implants of her own.
“Oh, one more thing,” Merry said. She pointed to the tablet she held. “Were you able to find her parents’ contact information? We really need to reach out and notify them. The university got back to us with their names listed but not the contact info. I tried to do a search on the Mantle but it came up empty.”
“Um, I don’t have it yet, but I can try again to get it. In the midst of all the action and then Cass waking up, I totally forgot.” Shelby hoped Merry couldn’t tell she had lied. She didn’t want Cass’s parents finding out about this, at least not now. It would be up to Cass to decide whether to tell them, although how she was going to hide it from them was a mystery to Shelby.
“I’m getting ready to go off shift,” Merry said. She gestured to the woman she was speaking with. “This is Jess. She’ll be taking over for me for the next twelve hours. She can help you with anything you need when you get back from your walk.”
Jess smiled at Shelby and nodded. Shelby returned the smile, though she didn’t feel it inside right now. She had a lot she had to process and figure out. Shelby feared what Cass would do to herself when she woke up next time. They
couldn’t keep sedating her. There had to be a way to help Cass get through this without mutilating herself in the process.
Shelby turned and headed for the elevators. Maybe if she went downstairs and got a bite to eat in the cafeteria, she might feel better.
As she waited for the elevator, she dialed up a connection via her implant and fired off a few quick messages to their friends back at the resort. They’d all left Shelby messages wondering how things were going.
She didn’t tell them anything about Cass’s bad reaction. She only said Cass woke up but was now back to sleep. It was better if they didn’t know about what Cass said about herself and indirectly about others like the rest of them.
Shelby stepped into the elevator when it opened and took it downstairs to the first floor. It was time for her to come up with a plan to get Cass back to school without her parents finding out about what happened. They were going to have to have a plan in place if she was going to help Cass get through this.
Chapter 10
Cass groaned and stretched as she woke up. Immediately she regretted trying to work her stiff muscles. She realized they weren’t just taut… she felt battered and bruised all over.
She’d had the most horrible dream. She’d lived through a horrible experience right out of her childhood nightmares.
Cass thought about how vivid and real the dream had been. It was silly, really. She remembered it all. She woke up in a hospital bed after having cybernetic implants forced into her brain.
As she tried to recall the nightmare, her mind wandered back to how sore her body felt. She had a horrifying realization.
It was all real.
Cass opened her eyes and gasped. Where was everybody? A large glass window and an open sliding door revealed people in hospital scrubs busily moving about. Oh, God.
As more memories returned, her hand slid up toward the side of her face. No, no, no...please, no.