+J.M.J.+
Flesh of My Flesh
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
Funny thing about this fic is that I never intended to write it in the first place. I was working peacefully on my "A.I." fics and submitting jokes and things to "Readers' Digest" and other magazines, but I kept having floaters of ideas for this which just would NOT go away. So I did what I always do with a pesky idea: I jotted it down for future reference. But then I kept getting more ideas, and then I heard an excellent talk on stem cell research by an ethicist and I wondered if I should pursue writing this…and that's why you're able to read this next chapter. Oh, if I got any medical information wrong, please bear with me: I'm a fic writer, not a doctor.
Disclaimer:
See chapter I. I don't own the words to "Bridge over Troubled Water", which belong to Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, although I modified them slightly.
Chapter III
Neuro-fusion
Minerva—Dr. Koestelbaum—continued to surprise me in ways even I couldn't anticipate.
"I won't be here next week since I'm having some surgery over the weekend and I won't be up to snuff for a few days," she said at the end of one Thursday appointment. "Can you last till the following week?"
"Oh, I'll find ways to pack my already overcrowded schedule so I won't have time for a third suicide attempt," I said.
"Same time, same days of the week?" she asked.
I shrugged. "It'll be easier for us both to remember."
She jotted a notation on her planner in pencil, then wrote the dates and times in pen on a card which she handed to me.
"Thank you." I added, "Just to be a nuisance, what kind of surgery is it?"
"It's some leg surgery I've been putting off," she said. That didn't sound exactly sincere, or maybe I'd just picked up some of her lie-o-meter skills.
Leg surgery, I thought, during the cab ride home. What on earth did she need that for? Her legs were fine as far as I could see (Which wasn't far, what with the loose, flowing garments she always wore). If one of us needed surgery, it was I. And how did she get in so quick? InValids usually didn't get placed high on the priority list at most hospitals, unless of course this was something that had been in the works for a while.
In the interim, I had an appointment for a physical with Lockheed, my primary physician. In the course of the examination, I asked him for his opinion on whether I was fit for spinal surgery, the "neuro-fusion" which Minerva—Dr. Koestelbaum—had mentioned during our last session, which she had said might be a possible course of action for me to take. Lockheed ran the usual sensory/reflex tests on me: touching the tips of my toes with a blunt needle, running a key along the soles of my feet and the insides of my thighs. I had some feeling in my right leg, but nothing in my left.
"I think Minerva's onto something. It may be just what you need to get you out of the dumps and back on your feet—maybe in more ways than one," he said.
"But what if it doesn't work?" I asked.
"It's best if you go into this with the thought that it might not work. It's one of those things you can't know unless you've tried it."
"Can you refer me to someone?"
"I can: Rainier Drexel, a young fellow from Vrilitaria, over in Eastern Europe. He studied over here, specialized in neuro-fusion. You'll be in the world's best hands for this procedure. There's no one better."
Lockheed somehow "greased the skids" so that I got an appointment for an MRI and a briefing with Dr. Drexel.
Drexel was a small man not much older than I, dark-haired and dark-skinned like a Gypsy, with the smallest, most delicate hands I have ever seen on a man, good hands for a surgeon: those slim little fingers would fit well into small crevices.
"I have gone over the zscans from your MRI, andt I think you are an ideal candidate for this zsurgery," Drexel said.
"But isn't there a lot of damage?"
He wagged his head and shoulders. "There is some scar tissue, but nodt so much that it cannot be cleared away. The cut itself is clean: fusing your axons, your spinal cells, with the donor cells should be an easy task."
"Are you certain?"
"I am quite certain."
I licked my lips. "Will I be able to walk again?" I asked.
"With sufficient care during the healing process, and with proper physical therapy, you should be able to walk again, perhaps with some slight assistance, perhaps unassisted. But the key to your recovery is your attitude toward it. Have you a good reason for this surgery?"
I had a dozen reasons: to be able to look people in the eye, on a level; to swim, to fulfill the dream I had nearly smothered…
"I want to walk," I said.
"Good reason," he said. "I understand your condition led you to a suicide attempt?" He asked this utterly without judgment, just wanting to clarify the data.
"Yes, I'm afraid."
"Are you in counseling for this?"
"Yes, I'm working with an excellent psychologist, Minerva Koestelbaum."
His dark eyes sparkled. "Ah yes! She and I know each other well."
I gathered he was the specialist she had mentioned once, but I wisely didn't let on that I knew about their connections.
A few days later, I had my next session with Minerva; she let me call her that, but in my mind she was still Dr. Koestelbaum.
She was hobbling around her office, holding onto things for support, as she approached me.
"Pardon my limp: I'm healing very well: I just have to have the stitches out and then I'll be back to my old self," she said, leading me into the office proper.
"Are you sore?" I asked, as she sat down.
"A little, but it's good pain."
I glanced at her legs, wondering what she could have had done. She still wore her Pakistani gear, which made it nearly impossible for me to tell what she'd had done. She didn't seem like the type who'd go in for liposuction—or that she would need it for that matter.
I told her how I was going in for neuro-fusion surgery, as soon as they could find a stem cell donor that matched (mostly English with a touch of Irish and German).
"But even if they find a donor that matches, it might take a few days: they have to differentiate the cells and get a sufficient number ready to implant. It could take a week or two before they call you back."
"Don't remind me: every time I think of how long it could take, I swear my legs start to itch."
"That's something I've been meaning to ask you, but I wanted to wait till you were ready to answer it: how extensive is your loss of nerve function? Do you have any sensation below your injury?"
"I can sometimes feel heat and cold and touch in my right leg, but the left one may as well not be there at all."
"You realize there's a chance this might not work, the injury may be too extensive," she warned.
"I'm aware of that. I've actually been telling myself it just might be a miserable failure, so I won't be too disappointed when it is."
"But you know, that kind of attitude just might cause you to fail. A certain amount of mind over matter is healthy."
"But isn't that magical thinking?"
She smiled, with a trace of knowing mischief. "I see you did your homework."
I shrugged. "Just to pass the time."
She leaned toward me slowly. "Even if it doesn't work out completely, you'll at least have made the effort, and that's better than sitting on your rear not doing anything to try and fix it. Jerome, no matter how it turns out, I just want you to remember one thing."
"What's that?"
"There is no gene for the human spirit."
I was about to open my mouth to say 'What is that supposed to mean?', but I realized this might be a new meditation she wanted me to consider.
I went home wondering what in hell or heaven that meant.
Two weeks later I got The Call from Drexel.
"We have a group of axons with your name on them, Jerome," he told me, with a trace of playfulness.
"Thank God! How soon can we get the bloody operation done?"
"What about…tomorrow at noon?"
"I'll be there with bells on," I said.
"You realize what this shall entail: you will be in recovery, largely immobile for at least a month afterward, and then after that, you will need a few months of physical therapy."
"If I'm on my own two feet by the end of it all, I'll have the operation done without anesthesia, if that's what it takes."
"No, you would not want it done that way," Drexel said, chiding me.
I made arrangements with my charwoman and with Eckart to take care of my apartment (Eckart had been forbidden to spend more than six hours at a time in my rooms. I arranged that with the superintendent.).
Later that afternoon, Drexel came by my apartment to brief me on what I needed to do before the surgery: no alcohol for 24 hours (I was abstaining anyway, no matter), don't eat anything after six hours before the surgery. I took it all in stride (if only I could walk…).
Next morning, before I left, I called Minerva to give her the good news.
"Hello, Dr. Koestelbaum speaking."
"Minerva, it's Jerome Morrow. Listen, I've some good news to share for a change: I'm on my way in for neuro-fusion surgery."
"That's great to hear! Did Drexel find the right donor?"
"They got a batch of cells with the right match, same blood-type, same ethnic mix."
"That's excellent. You must be excited."
"Excited doesn't begin to describe it…My cab should be coming soon."
"I'll let you go then. Take care and don't be too hard on yourself."
"I won't, I won't."
I had one moment of fear as the nurses prepped me for the surgery. They had me lying flat on my face, with my head propped up as they wheeled me in. they'd already given me a jag of nitrous oxide, but that seemed to be wearing off.
"Can't I have the jab in the leg? I won't feel it then," I pleaded.
"We would, but the veins aren't good there," the one nurse, a husky young man told me. I was glad when they covered up that the lower half of me: I'd been off my pins so long the muscles had shriveled so badly that my thighs had shrunk smaller than my knees.
Drexel had an MP3 player going in the operating room when they got me in. An old Simon and Garfunkel song played, some female artist, whose husky alto voice I didn't recognize, singing "Bridge over Troubled Waters".
"Sail on, silver boy,
Sail on by.
Your time has come to shine,
All your dreams are on their way.
See how they shine.
If you need a friend,
I'm sailing right behind.
Like a bridge over troubled waters,
I will ease your mind…"
I don't know if it was the nitrous oxide the nurses gave me to calm my nerves, but I found myself really listening to those words. Silver boy…it was as if someone had adjusted those lyrics with me in mind, or maybe someone like me. My fears started to subside. I thought of Minerva, I thought of Vincent/Jerome, their faces passing through my mind's eye without much effort on my part. Minerva sailing right behind me, guiding me toward the open waters, Vincent showing me that I could reach up, as he had done, only circumstances didn't force me to wear a mask. I was listening so intently that I hardly noticed when the anesthetist tied off my arm and delivered the jab.
My head felt light. Sounds started to echo slightly. I don't remember anything more after that…
It felt like days. Drexel later told me it lasted only two hours, opening me up, separating my vertebrae, clearing away the scar tissue, injecting the donor axons into the cut, applying the fibrin, the biological "glue" that would hold them in place while the cells grew and fused with my axons.
I slowly came back to this world, but my eyes felt glued shut. Someone was washing my face with a warm, damp washcloth. I managed to peel my eyes open.
A nurse who could have been Nurse Rutherford's identical twin stood over me. I glanced beyond her.
Minerva stood in the open doorway. I managed a wavering smile to her.
They had me wedged in between some large pillows that seemed bolted to the mattress somehow, apparently to keep me in place, on my side, until my wound closed.
"Hey, gorgeous, what time is it?" I said, none too enthusiastically.
"Three-thirty, sonny," the nurse said, coolly. "Yer shrink is here to see you." With that, Nurse Rutherford II went out.
Minerva came and sat down by the bedside.
"How do you feel?" she asked.
"Like that car hit me again," I said. I craned my neck around trying to peer over my shoulder. "What's back there?"
"Here, let me help you," she took a mirror from the bedside table and turned it toward the middle of my back.
A square of bandaging slightly larger across than my hand covered the middle of my spine.
"It's just a small incision, they call it a keyhole," she said.
"It feels as if they cut me open with a shovel," I said.
"I can tell you're healing already."
"How?"
"You're acting more like a wounded tiger than you usually do," she said, smiling.
"Is that good or bad?" I asked.
The next morning, a huge basket of flowers showed up with a note from my parents. That evening, Eckart came to see me. He peered out into the hallway, then produced from inside his trench coat a pair of champagne flutes and a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, which he set on the bedside table.
"A toast to your continued recovery," he said.
I waved it aside. "Thanks, Eckart, but I can't. Doctor's orders."
"Why the hell?"
"My bloodstream's full of painkillers and antihistamines, so my system won't reject the donor tissue."
"Oh, doing a little ladder borrowing yourself, eh?" he said, peeling the foil off the bottle anyway.
"I'd hardly call it that," I said.
He took out his Swiss army knife, unfolded the corkscrew and worked it into the cork. He somehow pulled the cork without too much racket, which would have got the nurses wondering, and filled one of the glasses.
"You sure you don't want any?" he asked, holding the neck of the bottle over the other glass.
"I'm certain," I said.
He raised the one glass. "So what do they call this procedure?"
"Neuro-fusion."
"To neuro-fusion," he said, and drank.
"So, how soon you gonna be back on your feet?" he asked.
"I have to stay like this for a month, then Drexel removes the wire stabilizing my vertebrae. From there, it's physical therapy, depending on how I heal. For now, it's just a matter of waiting for the donor cells to take and grow."
"Maybe a little incentive 'll help speed the process," he said. He reached into another pocket of his coat and drew out a photograph of a girl and a copy of her National ID card. "Her name's Eulalia. She's a second class Valid and she's dying to meet you."
I pushed it away. "Thank you, but no: I have other incentives."
He pursed his lips and smiled, a very tight, compact smile. "I imagine you do. Is it that head-shrinker of yours?"
"No, I just want to walk again." My ears wondered what I had said.
"Indeed," he murmured. He glanced at my lower back. "You gonna let me see what they did to you?"
"There's little to see," I said, reaching back and pulling open the back of my gown.
He leaned over, narrowing his eyes at the bandages. "Looks nasty."
"It was only a very small incision," I said.
He looked at me dead on, his black eyes looking into my green ones. "Would you want me to find out who donated their cells to you?"
"No. If they want to come forward, that's for them to decide."
"Oh, come on! You want to know. You want the data. You want the name and genotype of the person whose cells are now growing into your spine," he said, his gravel voice suddenly gone suave and silken.
I was tempted to reply "yes". I wanted to know who had the charity or the bleeding-heart sentimentality to give some of their stem cells. Maybe one day I could walk up to them and look them in the eye as I thanked them for saving my life. In my dreams…
"I take your long silence as a resounding 'yes!'," he said with a smug smile.
"I didn't say that," I shot back, too harshly and too quickly.
He grinned at me and reached down to pat my head. I yanked my head away from him, glaring up at him.
"Ah, you do want it you green-eyed little darling. You want it."
He pocketed the bottle of champagne and went out.
Minerva came up the next afternoon to check on me. I told her about Eckart's proposition.
"I can get that information much quicker than he can, and I can get it legitimately," she said, a twinkle glinting in one eye. "Maybe we can give this Mr. Eckart a taste of his own medicine."
"What, counterhack him?"
"I have a friend who could help me do that," she said.
"That couldn't please me more—except if I healed faster than they keep telling me I will."
The fourth day after my surgery, two shadows darkened the door to my room.
"Eugene?" my mother's voice asked, I had been dozing, but I snapped awake and propped myself on my elbow.
Mum came to the side of the bed, hovering, her hands clasping and unclasping as if they didn't know what to do.
"How are you feeling?" she asked.
"Better," I said. She leaned down and hugged me, keeping her body away from mine.
"How did the procedure go?" my father asked, eying the data chart on the foot of the bed.
"I don't know, I slept through it," I said.
"You know what I meant. Were there any complications? Any post-operative swelling?"
"No, the surgery went almost by the textbook, or at least that's how Dr. Drexel put it."
"Where did he go to medical school? Where did he intern?"
"He studied at Harvard medical, I think, and he interned at Tufts in Pasadena," I said. "Lockheed told me you can't get anyone better than Drexel for this kind of treatment."
"And where is he from?"
"Vrilitaria, I think, but he speaks English better than I do."
At this point, Minerva came into the room to check on me, but she excused herself and started to step out of the room.
"I'm sorry, I'll be back," she said.
"No, come right in, please. Father, Mum, this is Minerva Koestelbaum, the psychologist I'm going to," I said. "Minerva, these are my parents, Charlton, my father, and Estelle, my mum."
She was wearing rimless glasses that day, which gave her an oddly more intelligent look. Mum accepted Minerva's handshake with her usual uncertain warmth, but my father kept his hands in his coat pockets, his eyes on Minerva's glasses.
"Are you truly qualified to treat anyone with any emotional difficulties?" my father asked.
"I have a doctorate degree in psychology; I did my thesis on socio-environmental stress," she said, smiling. But I could still see the suspicion in my father's eyes.
Later, when my parents had gone out for lunch, Minerva spoke to me at length.
"I should have warned you if ever they should turn up," I said. "My father's a genomist."
"I noticed. Don't worry, I'm used to it—after a fashion."
"Aren't you going to ask me?"
"Ask you what?"
"If I think I'm a genomist.
"You tell me."
"I guess I am, a little. After all, I lost the gold to an InValid, and another InValid stood on my shoulders to reach for the stars."
"To some extent, it works both ways. I know a lot of InValids who are really suspicious of Valids."
"That goes without saying, they're the lesser class." I bit my tongue. "I'm sorry, that always happens when I've been around my father."
"At least you recognize the problem. That puts you one step closer to overcoming that."
I spent my days reading, since this was the only activity I could do while lying on my side wedged between two huge pillows. The nurses turned me over regularly to keep me from developing sores, but between that, I downloaded the longest books I could find onto my e-book reader: Tolstoy's War and Peace, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (I even read the appendices), several dictionary-thick anthologies, philosophy tomes, anything to make the hours move.
Gradually, without my notice at first, a change took place in my body. I started to feel my left leg again. Drexel and his intern, Ms. Verfaillie checked me every day, testing my reflexes.
At the beginning of the third week, when Drexel touched the toes of my left foot with a blunt needle, I felt it, a light pricking at my flesh, almost so slight I thought I imagined it.
"Do that again, harder," I begged.
"Very well." He pricked me again.
I gasped. I had felt it.
He ran a key up the sole of my foot: my toes flared back.
We looked at each other. "This is but the start, Jerome. Give it more time," he warned.
When no one was watching, I made up my mind to make a small test of my own.
I had to put my whole being into it, since the muscles had atrophied. I just about had to do "mind over matter", but I did it.
I moved my right foot by itself.
A few days later, they sent me up for another MRI, to see how I was healing. Afterward, Drexel showed me the images.
He brought up on the screen of his desk one of the earlier MRIs as a comparison.
"This was the MRI you had a few weeks before the procedure: this white area here," he pointed to it, is the discontinuity, the cut in your spinal cord." He brought up the new image, from the same angle as the first. "This is today's scan: no discontinuity." He looked at me. "This means the donor axons, the new cells, have grown into your spine and fused the damage."
"Then I'm healed?"
He wagged his head. "That much has healed. What remains to be seen is how much ability you have regained."
Drexel had me started on hydrotherapy the next day. The therapist working with me, Keaton Olson, told me the water would help support my limbs and help me get back the muscle tone I had lost in my legs.
"But I'm sure the water's a second home to you," Olson said as he helped me into the pool.
"Why, what makes you…?"
"You were in the Olympics some time back, weren't you? You got the silver, or am I thinking of another guy from England?"
"No, that's me," I admitted.
"Cool. Not every day I get to work with an Olympian."
At the risk of sounding mushy, being in the water again felt like coming home. Granted, we stayed in the shallows, where the water came just to my waist sitting down, but I was able to start moving my limbs freely again, by themselves, not grabbing my leg by the ankle and yanking it into position.
Olson looked me in the face. "You can cry if you need to, if it feels that good."
"I'm all right," I said.
He put his huge hand on my shoulder. "Let it out, bro, let it out."
I shed a tear or two, but I was too exhausted from relief and sheer determination to do much more.
They moved me to a long term care facility, not a nursing home in the classic sense of one of these old folks colonies, but a residency for young folk in that between stage of the healing process. My father had seen to it that I got a room of my own, to make sure I didn't get messed up with—oh the horror!—another InValid, but I would have welcomed the company.
My legs grew stronger day by day. Olson had found a masseur to massage my limbs and lower back to keep me limber and get me back to form. When no one was looking, I massaged my legs myself. To feel my hands on the skin of my legs, and to feel that skin feeling my hands back… my legs no longer felt like foreign objects, like vestigial organs.
After two weeks, Olson had me take the next step—literally—and got me started walking. Granted, I was relying on the support of parallel bars, but I was walking. The soles of my feet touched the floor; at each step, my toes gripped the textured rubber tread under me, my heels planted, my weight spread along my foot to the balls of my feet.
Six steps…seven…I came to the end of the parallel bars, and turned, with a little help from Olson, to walk back.
I had two therapy sessions a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, but they didn't feel like enough. But Olson said I had to pace myself.
"You haven't walked in like, what, two years?"
"Nearly four," I said.
"I bet yer itchin' to make up for it," he said. "And I bet you wanna get back to swimmin'."
"Hell, yes!"
He patted my back. "One step at a time, fella, one step at a time."
A few days later, Olson tried me on crutches, but I was clearly stronger than that.
"You're ready for a walker," he declared.
I narrowed my eyes at him. "My legs may be ready for that, but I'm not."
"What? Oh, I see," he grinned. "Yeah, I know why you'd be hesitant. You're a prrropahr Inglishmin. Cahn't 'ave wun awv th(eh)ose aweful chrrrome and graiy plehstick awebjects."
"Yeah, could you, like, find me something reeeally cool lookin'? An' while yer at it, could you just, like, okay, go, like easy on that, like, sooo fake-sounding California accent?"
"You got it," he said.
He obtained for me an elegant, streamlined affair on casters all in black metal, the sort of thing I wasn't embarrassed to be seen using in public. No one would remember my face and I'd largely been in hiding during the day through the two years I'd shared my life with Vincent.
With Olson at my side, I ventured out for a walk. I was still a little self-conscious, so I went incognito—sunglasses and a fedora jammed down on my head.
Eventually, the physical therapy sessions tapered off to three sessions a week. I was mobile once again. My left leg still had a tendency toward weakness, but I was on my feet.
"I've seen you walking around town," Minerva said during on of my sessions with her. "You look great."
"Thanks," I said, with an honest smile. "I guess you can add my case to your list of miracles."
"Oh, I really don't have one. You initiated that miracle anyway."
"I did?" I asked, incredulous.
She nodded.
I was strong enough and self-reliant enough that they discharged me from long-term recovery and sent me home.
The moment I walked into my apartment, before I unpacked my suitcase, I went to the foot of the spiral staircase that led to the second level of the apartment. I pushed away my walker and grabbed at the handrails. I set my left foot on the bottom step and pulled myself up. I realized I was still bearing a lot of my weight on my hands, so I shifted my weight, letting my feet take the burden as I climbed the stairs, walking up the stairs, not crawling up the stairs on my belly like a snake, but actually walking, like a man.
I sat down on the top step when I reached the top, breathing hard not from exertion, but from the sobs of delight trying to escape my lungs.
Around the beginning of December, I finally graduated from the walker to a cane. Olson got me a metal one encase in wood composite so that it didn't look quite so pre-fabricated. Anything else wouldn't have matched the rest of me.
One night around this time, someone knocked at the door of my apartment. I got up and hobbled to the door to see who it could be.
I opened the door to find Eckart there, grinning up at me.
"Mind if I come in for a minute?" he asked.
"In that case, you have exactly sixty seconds to tell me why you're here and to get out," I said. I was trying to scale back on how much time I spent with Eckart.
"All right, if yer gonna put it that way, maybe I should just give you the delivery without briefing you on it." He reached inside his coat and pulled out an envelope which he handed to me. "I'll tell you this much: you wanted it a while back, and I had a hell of a time trying to get the goods."
I took the envelope. He tipped his hat to me and swaggered away.
I shut the door, then opened the envelope. Inside was a single, folded sheet of paper. I drew it out.
From: mkoestelbaum @ juno.com
To: rdrexell @ neurosurgery.leaheyweir.org
Subject: My recent stem cell donation.
Dear Rainer,
I have kept you informed about recent developments regarding the treatment of a patient of mine suffering from chronic apathetic dysthymia related to the subject's paraplegia resulting from severe trauma to the subject's spinal cord. Said subject had considered surgical treatment, specifically neuro-fusion for the damage to his spine, via the implantation of ASC derived axons. I am sending some of the ASC's I donated which Mendahl recently differentiated. Please use them specifically for the subject, Jerome Eugene Morrow, a male Valid, should he ever finalize his decision to undergo neuro-fusion treatment.
I remain yours sincerely,
M. Koestelbaum, Ph.D.
The axons of my spine stopped transmitting to my legs for a second. I sank down to the floor, my legs buckling under me. My eyes fast-scanned the email.
Next day found me at Minerva's office.
"So how was your Thanksgiving—I'm sorry, I forgot you probably don't celebrate it."
"No, I'm an English national. I never applied for citizenship… But everything that's happened to me these past months is something to be thankful for. I'd like to know the person who gave me those stem cells to heal my spine."
"What would you do?"
I looked right at her. "I shake her hand."
She stood up; I pulled myself to my feet. She held out her hand to me. I clasped it, nerveless.
She looked up into my eyes. Her brow puckered. "You knew."
I bent my head. "Eckart got the information. He found your email to Drexel. If you like, I'll throttle him for it."
"No, don't do anything violent."
"I'm sorry if I spoiled it for you."
"No, it's okay."
My free hand went to my back, touching my spine where I knew the scar was. I looked into her eyes. Her cells…her cells had healed me.
"Why did you do this?" I asked.
"I knew you wanted it, needed it. I'm here to help you however I can, Jerome. So…I thought perhaps this was best way."
She put her other hand behind me, touching the hand that touched my spine, her fingers spread.
"Your cells are part of me now," I realized aloud. "How did you get away with this?"
She smiled. "Like your friend Mr. Eckart, I have my own set of connections."
"But…what about…our genetics?" I asked, not wanting to sound like a ninny.
"Don't worry, you're not gonna catch Asperger's from me. There's going to be critics, but they don't have to know, do they? And even if they find out, does it matter what they think?"
"No," I declared. "But…why did you choose to help me like this?"
Her hand closed on mine, the hand on my spine. "I chose because I care. Not just about Jerome Eugene Morrow the patient, but about Jerome Eugene Morrow the man." She dropped her gaze and released me. But I couldn't release her.
To be continued…
Literary Easter Eggs:
Names—Verfaillie is the last name of a scientist who has been very successful differentiating adult stem cells into complicated cells like neurons and axons (spinal neurons). Olson is the last name of a Swedish neurosurgeon who recently found a way to treat paraplegia in laboratory rats with spinal cord injuries (even ones with severed s.c's). Mendahl is a debauchment of "Mendel", who first researched heredity, which set the stage for modern genetic research. And one less meaningful: Koestelbaum is the original German form of the name Castlebaum, a name I borrowed from a character in the PAX-TV show "Just Cause", which I've been watching very zealously. I'm assuming Minerva probably pronounces it like "Kestle-bom" or "Kerstle-bowm", which is closer to the German pronunciation.