Angela's first time.
Switzerland, years ago
Angela stood at the door, her tongue was pushed up to the front of her mouth, tracing the wire and stations of her braces as they led from one side of her mouth to the other. She wore scrubs and a white lab coat overtop of them, and had a clipboard and file folder pushed tight against her chest. She tried to pass the time and ignore what was happening on the other side of the door, but even through a thick sheet of oak, she couldn't ignore the tension. Other hospital staff walked down the hall and scurried by as fast as they could, trying to ignore what was going on at her doorway.
She felt like a victim of a schoolyard fight, waiting outside of the Principal's office listening to her parents and faculty leader conspire together as judge jury and executioner of her actions and punishment, but that simply wasn't the case. She was not at fault, nor involved with what was happening within, but she was about to insert herself into the situation, and her unease was a very light price for her part in the tragedy.
The door opened, and Angela stood at attention as a surgeon exited the room and closed the door behind him. He was likewise in his work attire, and seeing her at the door caused a very foul look on his face.
"You're really going to do it, aren't you?" he asked.
Angela nodded, admitting, "yes, I feel that it is the best way."
The doctor shook his head and sighed, "Fine, but don't make them any promises. Don't say I didn't warn you, and remember, they just lost their father."
"I can relate." She replied. She let the doctor pass and walk down the hall. Angela took a deep breath and prepared herself, reaching a hand down her shirt and feeling a golden locket hanging around her neck. A heart, holding a framed picture within and engraved with the words, "We will always watch over you, Angela."
When ready, she knocked and opened the door.
She entered, and like she had heard outside, there was uncontrollable sobbing in the room. A middle aged woman was in a chair, sobbing into her hands while two teenaged children held her hands, fighting back their emotions as well.
When they saw her, the three tried to compose themselves and see what she wanted. Angela stood with her papers between her hands. Even now, she felt like was improper to interrupt them, but it had to be done.
"Is… that the death certificate?" the teenaged girl asked.
Realizing that she was being addressed, Angela snapped back to life and said, "No… sorry, no. My name is Doctor Angela Ziegler." All three looked at each other in shock. Even in her state, the mother of the two could hardly believe that a girl that looked no older than her own children was a doctor. Angela didn't blame them. Even for her she was struggling to comprehend that the two children were her age as well.
She took a breath and continued, "I've come to…" she thought fast, "express my condolences. I know how you are feeling at the moment, I lost my parents a very long time ago. I'm sure your father was a very good man."
The compliment was returned with a salvo of tears and hidden faces. Dr. Ziegler kicked herself for being so upfront.
After a moment, the young man asked, "so, what do you need from us, doctor?"
"I- um… I've been working on an experimental form of medicine. I can't necessarily go into detail on it all, but…" she couldn't think of a more subtle way of putting it, so she tried the direct approach, "I would like you to release your father's body so I may use it in testing the treatment."
The room was silent for a moment, after a while, the young woman asked, "May we… talk it over for a moment."
"I would like to grant you that courtesy," Angela answered, "but with murders involving active policemen, protocol dictates that an autopsy be performed to confirm the cause of death. I'm sorry, but the window of opportunity for me and quite small and we haven't much time."
The two children looked at each other, trying to search for words in each other's eyes, but then their mother sat up and extender her hand, demanding the ledger. Somewhat shocked, Angela offered it forward and watched as she took ahold of the pen and prepared to sign.
Speaking for the first time, she looked at the young doctor with tears in her eyes and demanded, "Promise me… Promise me that if I sign this, that you'll make sure that what happened to me, my family, to Johann… Just promise me Johann's death won't be in vain."
Angela stood in silence struggling to find an answer, "I can't promise that." she said. "But with what I've been working on, I will promise that I will do my best to make sure that your wishes come true."
With that, Ms. Miller signed her name on the dotted line and handed it back to Dr. Ziegler. Angela felt the urge to smile, but crushed the temptation. She was about to leave, but felt herself anchored to her spot, treasure in hand but obligated to leave something in return.
After a moment, she finally stated with, "Thank you." But then, with the urge to speak from her heart, she continued, "As I said, I am sure you husband was a great man and father, but I wouldn't say that Johann is dead. Officer Miller was a hero, and heroes never die."
It felt powerful, poetic, right, and incredibly stupid all at the same time. Angela closed her eyes in embarrassment for what she had just blurted out, but was surprised to find herself wrapped in the arms of the Miller family soon after.
Within the hour, Angela had assembled all of her late father's custom built equipment into a private examination room. Specialized one-of-a-kind equipment was stationed around a table while a body was underneath a bright surgical lamp. Multiple cameras were placed around the room and Dr. Angela Ziegler was ready at the helm of the operation. The door was locked to give her some privacy for her special experiment.
She stood at the dead man's side leaning her weight on the table, eyes closed and silent. When a loved one passes, most people find that harvesting their corpse or using the body for research is sacrilegious and disgraceful, Angela could empathize with them and understand why. But there was something about service personnel that was different. Firefighters, Policemen, soldiers, there was something different about them and their loved ones that made parting with the remains of their family easier. Maybe it was a conversation they had beforehand that allowed them to know that this is what they wanted when their time comes, or simply working in close proximity with death eased their minds on the inevitability of their passing.
In the case of this subject, the prospect of protecting or preventing the loss of further men and women in the line of duty is what inspired their family to release their loved one into Angela's care. And so, Angela closed her eyes as she stood at the side of the dead man. She wasn't meditating, deep in thought, or preparing herself, but praying. Thanking him for his sacrifice and blessing him for safe passage into the afterlife.
When ready, she opened her eyes and addressed the camera, "Subject name is Officer Johann Miller. Declared deceased, today, May 28th 2066 at approximately 1355. Cause of death is determined to be trauma due to multiple gunshot wounds to the abdomen and chest, causing hypovolemic shock and puncture to the lungs and sternum. Bullets and remaining shrapnel was removed during surgery in the attempt to save his life."
She traced the wounds on his body. Officer miller had his shirt and armor removed during the procedure. At this point the blood and stopped flowing and skin was slowly turning white. Angela activated her equipment, bubbling a golden fluid in an I.V. bag which was connected to a drip and inserted into the corpse.
Like the equipment, the procedure that had been passed down to her was once the idea of her late father. Starting where he had left off, Dr. Ziegler had finally realized her father's work and began to make it a reality. But the problem that she had came in the form of finding a good test subject. She had gone as far as she could with cadavers, but that was only too far. Likewise, animals were too different from humans to reliably experiment on. Although her micro sized machine medicine seemed to work correctly in theory, the hard part was experimenting on something that had expired recently. Although tragic, Officer Miller's sacrifice was something that she had been waiting for patiently and fighting for diligently for quite a long time.
With a lifetime and a half of work and careful implementation, she envisioned a world where what had once been a panicked affair of saving a life and months of rehabilitation could be reduced to seconds of healing on the spot, be it in an ambulance or the midst of a warzone.
Although the man was dead, his body and functions had not expired yet. Angela watched as the punctured area had the color return to it as the flesh revitalized. Writing down notes and narrating what was happening, Angela prepared another machine. This one held a large vial of the yellow nanobiotics that lead down a nozzle to a vaporizer. At the vaporizer was a catalyst, a tesla coil of yellow electricity and a tumbler that activated the vaporized gasses and the medical machines within and prepared them for their purpose of healing. Once it had been freed of its liquid state, it traveled down another hose and out of a nozzle and fan.
Lighting a crucible being fueled by a small propane tank and beginning a gentle ebb of juices to the vaporizer. She took the hose and led it to open wounds on the man's chest, and watched as the yellow mist entered and spread around the hole. She waited patiently, not noticing any changes to the hole until she saw the precipice around the opening begin to bubble and the ripped flesh began to heal. She grabbed a camera and zoomed it in closer, excitedly narrating what was happening as the flesh was healed and replicated, filling up the opening.
She was overjoyed, excited, only wishing that her parents were her to share the experience with her, but her excitement left her too focused on the wound and blinded to the world around her.
Angela was an exceptional example of how far education can take someone, but there are some things that can only be experienced rather than taught, and one of which is Rigor Mortis. Rigor Mortis, "The Stiffness of Death" occurs after a body dies, the last thrashes of life as they leave the body, nerve ending tightening as they fight against the release of death.
In that moment, Angela was leaned over the body, excitedly experimenting on the extent that her work could go and using another hand to support herself against the table, not noticing her wrist in the grasp of the dead man's hand as it tightened and grabbed ahold of her.
Feeling a vice unexpectedly lock against her hand, the teenage doctor jumped at the sensation, slipping onto the floor and knocking over her homemade vaporizer and mister down. The open flame set a nearby sanitary curtain on fire, and soon after smoke began to fill the room.
Panic overtook Angela, running to save her research and gear as the fire alarms signaled for the evacuation of the hospital. "NO!" she shouted, "No No No!" she tried to pull the open flame away, but dropped the stand and shattered the vial of nanobiotic fluid against the floor, vaporizing all of the volatile medicine into the air. She jumped away, only succeeding in knocking over her cameras and IV bags.
Panicking, she ran for a nearby fire extinguisher and grabbed ahold of it. She held it in her hands and ran towards the propane flame but tripped as a cord was wrapped round her foot. She watched in slow motion as the big red extinguisher flew through the air and landed bottom first on the experimental equipment, watching as the hard metal bottom met and crushed the catalyst that programmed the vaporized medicine into a hundred pieces.
There was a flash, Angela shrieked because she thought she was about to die. But whatever happened, it didn't feel like death. The bright yellow light, the spontaneous activation of all of the Nanobiotic fluid in the air and on the floor filled her vision, and in that moment she felt euphoric, invincible almost. The sleeves of her labcoat were burning, but she couldn't feel it. The skin on her hands, that he used to shield her face were glowing, she could see it on the exposed sleeves and through her blue silicone gloves. It felt foreign, but natural, amazing and frightening all at the same time.
But it ended as fast as it started, and Angela was still trapped in a burning examination room with her legs caught on wires. But before she could panic again, a shirtless man ran to her side and picked up the fire extinguisher and pulled the pin, smothering the fire and covering the room in ABC particles.
Crisis Adverted, Angela untangled herself and stood up, checking her wrist for embers of the flame or any burn marks.
"Are you alright, Miss?"
"Yes." She answered, "thank you."
She surveyed the carnage, trying to deduce what could be salvaged and what she would have to replace, disappointed at the chaos that had ruined such a wonderful breakthrough. Her gaze shifted, surveying the carnage until her eyes drifted to the door. It was in that moment that she remember that she had locked herself in, and if what she was seeing what correct, the door was still locked.
If the door was locked, and she was the only person in here, then who exactly was the shirtless man who had saved her.
She slowly turned, mind racing as she timidly looked to see who was standing behind her.
"ZOMBIE!"
The Millers were crying once more, but instead mourning the death of their father, they instead cried tears of joy over reuniting with him when all seemed lost.
The man, in a cot now, sat up and held his wife, son and daughter close as EKGs and an IV made sure than his surprise return to life stayed that way.
On the opposite side of the observation window were two doctors, the one that had declared him dead and the other that declared him alive. The more senior of the two turned to his much younger compatriot and said, "Never in all my years of practice have I been happier to have to correct a death certificate."
Angela replied, but couldn't pull her eyes from the happy scene in the room before her. "I can only imagine how they feel right now."
While still wanting to complement the young doctor on her work, the man felt that he needed to speak the obvious to the novice beside him. "What you've done today is nothing short of a miracle; but you must not let it grow into an ego. You won't always be that fortunate."
"Oh, believe me, I understand." She answered, "To be honest, I still haven't the slightest clue what happened myself. Hopefully my equipment captured enough information for me to determine how this happened and study it further."
"Well, after we give them some time, I think that more than a few people would like to have a word with Officer Miller and yourself. So I would prepare to become quite popular for the next few days."
Angela shook her head, "Just the thing to help with my stage-fright."
"You'll do fine. Get some rest and come back when your head is clear." The older doctor turned to leave, but stopped, adding, "by the way, I talked to the widow earlier before… it all happened. She said that you told her something that caught my attention. Do you happen to remember what it was?"
Angela felt herself become slightly flushed at the reminder of the line that she made up. She shook her head once more and said, "It's nothing. Something I just thought up at the spur of the moment." She turned, following her coworker and leave the Millers to themselves. "It'll never catch on."
The doctor disagreed, "You never know. After a while it may grow on you."