Brown eyes opened to see the all too familiar ceiling. For twenty-five years she'd woken up to that same plexi-glass ceiling that held her four walls up and around her. She'd dreamed about the boy again. The one she'd met when she was only eight.
He'd found his way to her room while looking for the CAT scanner and lost his way. She'd never seen anyone around the same age as her and immediately dropped her colored pencils walking toward the wall closest to the door. He looked surprised at what he saw and, after a pause, smiled awkwardly.
"Hi, I'm Evelyn but everyone calls me Evee."
"Sheldon Cooper," he walked up to the wall and hesitantly poked at it. A few feet to the side were a pair of gloves embedded into the wall that allowed contact to the girl inside. "Fascinating; Severe combined immunodeficiency."
Evee was surprised that this boy knew what she had and nodded, "Yep. I'm the 'Texan Bubble Girl.'"
"It must be nice to live in a germ free environment. I'm constantly having to worry about germs and the like." Sheldon said as he walked over to the gloves in the wall. He pulled out a glove from his pocket and put it on before sticking his hand into the wall so he could shake her hand.
Evee laughed a little and shook his gloved hand, "You must be the boy that the nurses are talking about. They keep telling me I should be more like you since I am like this but I don't see why since they all do it for me"
Sheldon's expression was blank with a slight squint of the eyes, "One can never be too careful when it comes to germs."
"You're kinda crazy aren't you?"
"No I'm not. My mother had me tested."
At this Evee laughed, "I was kidding. How old are you?"
"Twelve."
"I'm 8. Why are you here?"
"I was trying to hide from my mom and find the CAT scanner. I'm here because I tried to build one and it caught fire burning me and my sister's pet rabbit, Snowball."
"So what you were going to see the CAT scanner to try to figure out what you did wrong?"
The boy nodded, "If I can find it. Hey you read comics?"
She turned and looked at her bookshelf and nodded, "Yep. What else can I do? I can't leave my box. You read them too? Who's your favorite hero?"
Sheldon gasped, "You can't ask me that! There's no one right answer! Although, I do tend to lean toward "The Caped Crusader."
"My favorite is Wonder Woman. She's so cool."
They spend the next couple hours talking mostly about his crazy inventions. She couldn't understand a lot but she always asked question and she picked up some of it as they talked. He also told her about going to college in 2 years to which Evee was awestruck.
"No way! You're really smart. Don't you have to be 19 to go to college?"
"All that matters is that you're smart enough to take the classes. I, of course, am."
Not too long later, a nurse came in and called out to Sheldon's mother that she'd found the missing boy.
Evee was immediately downtrodden she rather liked talking to this smart boy. She saw a quick flash of emotion pass over Sheldon's face.
"Do you have a pen?" he asked her in a rush fidgeting as she nodded and pick up a colored pencil. "I'm going to give you my address. Write me and I'll write you back. Ok?"
She nodded and wrote down what he told her and waved sadly as he walked into the hall toward his hollering mother.
"Don't forget me…" she whispered as he disappeared around the corner.
Evelyn smiled as she recalled the dream/memory of the young boy. Sadly, she'd only see him a handful of times after that. He was very intelligent and thus had gone off to college at 14. He was on to bigger and better things and as usual Evee was left behind.
She was a happy child and always positive as she grew up she never lost hope that a donor would be found and she might someday leave this prison behind. She occupied her time with school, video games, and art; until her life changed at 23.
Her parents had gotten into an accident and did not survive. She couldn't go to the funeral. She couldn't even be by their side when they were in a short lived coma. She became distant and depressed, delving more and more into imaginary worlds with her gaming.
A young nurse by the name Aiden was also a gamer who often brought Evee the latest titles to play. They'd become best friends both having the same gaming system and always played together when he wasn't working.
Aiden knew how much Evee liked her RPG games so when Dragon's Dogma came out he made sure to get it before anyone else with the help of a friend working in a game shop. It gave him time to disinfect the items before giving them to her.
Needless to say Evee was like a 12 year old when she got her present. She immediately popped in the game and a few trial and error starts finally made the perfect character only to restart when she realized that the "Pawn" should be the better looking one because that was what people were going to see rather than the main character.
Her pawn she decided was to look a lot like herself. This way she felt people "saw" her despite her prison. The pawn was tall around 5'9'' natural brown skin that was very light due to her lack of sunlight. EVER. Brown eyes and long wavy brown hair. She named her Evee of course and she was a strider.
"Dr. Cooper, you have accumulated almost 2 months of vacation. You need to use it." Gablehouser said looking at the young physicist.
Sheldon merely scoffed, "I don't need nor want to use it. I have dedicated my life to figuring out the workings of the universe. Can't that qualify as vacation enough?"
"No. You need to take a break then come back to your work with fresh perspective. You may find that the answers that elude you will become clearer. So, effective immediately, you are being placed on 2 weeks paid vacation."
Sheldon kept a blank face and got up. This wasn't the first time he'd been on a forced vacation. It happened at least twice a year. He stopped arguing long ago and decided that he could continue his work at home just without the nifty gadgets.
Once at home he sat in his spot on the couch frustrated. He was bored and had nothing to do. Looking around the room his eyes came to rest on a new game that Leonard had bought a week ago. He picked it up and after realizing it was an RPG game decided to give it a try.
He got the game started and after the initial intro began the process of creating his character. He'd heard about the game beforehand so he knew to create the Pawn better than the main but he was a perfectionist so he made both look cool.
After a few hours he was going through pawns to create his party. He already had a mage and his main pawn was a fighter. After all, "Sheldor the Conqueror" was all about the sword and shield. He needed a long range fighter and searched through the millions of choices looking for the perfect archer.
One Pawn caught his attention. She was named Evee and despite having an eidetic memory all he could really akin the name to was the Pokémon. The online ID is what jogged him, the memory of the girl in the glass case.
TXanBubbleGirl
