Thanks to everybody who's read and reviewed. To the person who said I can't leave out the "tale of woe": it's coming! I thought, given Victor's total inability to care about his creation, he'd just brush it aside, and it would take a more caring person to bring it out.

Chapter 7

Our chief of medicine liked to pick unusual cases to bring before a team, forcing us to practice collaboration. Initially, our John Doe was too commonplace: either he'd had a psychotic break and lost touch with reality and his own identity, or he was conning us. The psychiatrists could figure out which it was. I wasn't involved in any care decisions, since when they'd asked who to call in an emergency, he'd given them my name.

When the psychiatrists couldn't get through – "he seems sane except for the delusions about his origins" – they kicked it over to the social workers. One of them, Jerika, had the very good idea of taking his prints and asking the Aurora police department to run them. I remember that she told me we needed to have an urgent Zoom call when she got the results.

"The good news is the prints matched," she said. "The bad news is they matched two different men, and they're both dead."

That's when our chief medical officer called the team in. I was ordered not to tell them about the patient's crazy story. But that got harder and harder to avoid once Dr. Lao found traces of his experimental immune treatment in the patient's blood work, and when someone noticed an MRI of his brain and spine showed a strange patch much like what we saw in the mice in my lab. When they tried everything they could, the chief finally let me spill the story.

"I don't even think it's possible," I said, "but we don't have any other explanation for why the lab found DNA from six men in his saliva."

The online room was very quiet. "Makes as much sense as anything," Dr. Lao finally responded.

None of us knew what to do, so it was the billing department that made the final call. If he was technically dead, we couldn't sign him up for Medicaid to get paid something, and his condition wasn't an emergency that required uncompensated care. He wasn't the hospital's responsibility.

I felt like he was mine, though. Not that I had any idea what I was going to do about it. We were sitting in my car, in the hospital parking lot, while I tried to decide where to go.

"Why do they hate me?"

"What?"

"They were nice before. But not now." He caught my eye, then looked away. "I thought they didn't mind. Did I do something wrong?"

"No. And they don't hate you." I searched for a way to explain. "They just don't know what to do with you."

"What to do with me?"

"Do you understand what normally happens when people die?"

"I've seen dead animals. Other animals and bugs eat them."

"Well – yes, at the physical level, bodies break down. But what I mean is, you understand that people say goodbye forever? Because they know the person they loved isn't coming back?" He nodded. "And you sort of did come back, even if you don't remember it. And people don't know how to handle that. And when something makes people uncomfortable, they want it to go away." I winced at my own words. "Sorry, that sounded harsh."

"No, I think I understand." He played with a loose thread in the cuff of his sweatshirt. "At first, I didn't know why people ran away. Then I thought it was because I was ugly. But it's not that, is it? I heard the nurse saw it's unnatural. I'm unnatural. And I know it's true."

What do you say to that? I was repelled by him, too: the thought I was talking with a corpse that Victor had dug up and stitched back together. Something that never should have existed. But he did exist, through no fault of his own. I bit back my revulsion and squeezed his hand.

He jumped, and I pulled my hand back, wondering if that had been a mistake. He blinked hard, like somebody trying to wake up, and then looked over at me. "Would you do that again? Please. If you don't mind."

So I squeezed his hand again. It was warmer than I'd expected. Not hot, just the right temperature for a living person. I held on for a little bit longer than would normally seem appropriate. When I loosened my hand, he quickly turned away. "No one's done that before," he said, and his voice sounded thick. "You are a good person."

"You seem like a good person too," I said. He shook his head, though I'm not sure which part he disagreed with. "Do you drink coffee?"

"I don't know."

"I do. I'm going to get us some coffee. And you're going to tell me your story."

"I told you already."

"You told me Victor made you. I want the whole story." I turned on the engine. "Buckle up. You can start talking while I drive."

He hesitated, then sighed his acquiescence. "The first thing I remember is pain …"