Author's Note: If it makes you feel any better, this is the last major life-threatening situation that will be inflicted on Amy. After this, the story will take a slightly different turn.
Chapter 15: Is Amy . . . Cursed?
Dr. Carbana just watched the emotional mess inside Amy's room. He decided to leave them be for the moment and just walked away. He just didn't know what to say at the moment, he's quite shocked himself even though he participated in Amy's amputation.
Later that day, Knuckles and Tails were in a patient's room for a check up. Knuckles' arm was finally removed from the sling. He moved it around to work out the stiffness. The doctors were actually very amazed at his recovery.
"You know," one the doctors spoke, "that's a pretty sturdy arm you've got there. I mean, considering that the gun was right on your shoulder, I'm surprised that you still have an arm!"
After moving his arm in a circle a few times, Knuckles looked at the doctor with a big smirk, "believe me, my body's a lot tougher and sturdier than it looks." He shook hands with the doctor and left the room. A few seconds later, his smirk quickly disappeared and gave a sigh of frustration, "I just wish that Amy could heal just as easily and quickly."
Next, the doctor checked on Tails' artificial ear. Rouge didn't need a check up since her wing was working perfectly with no complications. Throughout the check up, Tails had a very depressed look on his face.
"Okay Tails," the doctor asked, "no pain or discomfort from the ear?" Tails didn't answer and the doctor repeated himself. Tails heard him and just gave a simple slow nod.
"All right," the doctor continued, "I guess you don't need check ups anymore. I let me or any other doctors know when you start feeling any discomfort."
Tails nodded and left the room and then spoke to himself, "believe me I'm feeling plenty of pain and discomfort right now, and it's not from my ear. I can't believe I wasted my time at that factory. I used all my mechanical knowledge to help them out and it was for nothing! I could have just stayed here and spend some time with Amy. I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle here."
He then walked straight towards Amy's room. Although it wasn't visiting hours yet, he really didn't care at all. When Tails wasted him time at the factory, he felt like he had abandoned her, so he wanted to visit her right away to make up for it.
Over the next few days, some new medications were created based on Amy's physiological and anatomical data. Several new and improved antibiotics were created that were much more potent, but still compatible. Even some new artificial hormones were made to help stabilize her numerous chemical imbalances.
Then one morning, just before visiting hours, Dr. Carbana decided to wake Amy from her long sleep. He injected the new painkiller into Amy just before the sedatives wore out, that way she doesn't wake up in agony. A few minutes later, Amy woke up with a big yawn. Her eyes took a few seconds to focus and the first thing she saw was Dr. Carbana and several assistants next to him.
"Hello Amy," the doctor greeted her, "how are you feeling? Did you have a good sleep?" A couple assistants gave a small chuckle from that question. The doctor quickly put up his hand to silence them.
Amy took a deep breathe, "I-I-I'm fffffiiiinnnne. W-w-w-wwhheeeerrrre's S-S-SSooonnnniiic? (I'm fine. Where's Sonic?)
"I think Sonic and his friends are out at the lobby right now," the doctor replied, "don't worry, I'll go call them personally."
Just before he left the room, he called his assistants. "I want you to get Amy out of the bed and into a wheelchair, I think she needs a break from that bed. Also, tidy her up a bit."
At first Amy didn't notice her missing left hand. Since the entire left side of her body is completely numb, she didn't really feel anything unusual. When she did notice a few moments she broke into a huge panic attack. The assistants had to give her oxygen for a few minutes since she was so panicked that she had trouble breathing.
When she calmed down she asked: "W-w-whaaat h-h-haaapennned t-t-tooo m-meeee?" (What happened to me?)
The assistants looked at each other and whispered, "should we tell her anything? Shouldn't we wait for Dr. Carbana before we try to say anything?"
The other assistant replied also whispering, "she already notices her missing hand. Just don't say anything about that heart and kidney ordeal."
When Sonic and his friends entered Amy's room, they saw her sitting in her wheelchair with one of the assistants next to her. They were very surprised to see that she was finally awake, but something seemed very peculiar about her. She didn't have that constant blank face or depressed look that she had since waking from her coma. Instead she had a very upset and frustrated look. Sonic didn't waste any time and he stood by her and decided to give her a serious apology. This would be his third time apologizing, but his first time with her being conscious and able to hear it from his own lips.
When Sonic apologized to her, it seemed that there was no reaction. Amy was just in a daze and she was thinking back over all of her experiences since the accident. She then stared at the stump on her left arm where her hand used to be and a few moments later something happened that greatly surprised Sonic and the others. In almost an instant, all of her pain, suffering, and frustration that she experienced over the past nineteen months built up into an emotion that even Amy herself didn't think was ever possible.
For the first time, Amy felt pure unbounded hatred towards Sonic! She just leered at Sonic with hateful eyes. She clenched her right fist so hard that her arm started shaking. Even her voice sounded sinister and almost sounded like she was growling! Basically, she almost looks possessed! Sonic, his friends, and even the assistant suddenly became very concerned.
"A-Amy?" Sonic asked in a worried tone, "are all right? What's wrong?"
Amy then spoke more clearly than she usually does, "you, y-you d-diid this t-too ME!" (You, you did this to ME!)
Then she raised her right fist and threw a punch as hard as she could right at Sonic! He easily saw it coming and instinctively moved out of the way. Unfortunately, she threw the punch so hard that she fell right out of her wheelchair! The assistant tried to grab her before she hits the floor, but Sonic sprung forward and grabbed her first. Amy then proceeded to beat him over the head with her only one fist! Surprisingly, her hits weren't very hard and didn't hurt at all. Of course this makes sense, considering how weak and frail she's been.
After a few seconds of draining out her anger, she became very limp. Amy took a deep breath and started sobbing loudly. Sonic looked her face and saw that she was still very frustrated. Strangely when she was crying, tears were only coming out of her right eye! (This sort of shows just how "dead" is the left side of her body.) She then buried her face into his shoulder and continued crying out her frustrations. Sonic then began patting her back, trying to do something to help ease her feelings at the moment. She just couldn't understand or believe how many things have been taken away from her.
After a few minutes, Amy's crying died down and took her face off from Sonic's shoulder, "I-iit's all r-riight S-S-Sonnniiic." (It's all right Sonic.) Despite lashing out at him, she accepted his apology.
When visiting hours were over and Sonic and his friends were at their apartment, everyone noticed just sitting on the couch alone while staring at a blank television. Shadow walked up to him and noticed that Sonic wasn't didn't look very depressed, instead he was very deep in thought.
"So what are you thinking about right now?" Shadow sounded slightly concerned and curious, "you're not watching T.V., so you must to be onto something."
Sonic broke from his concentration, "I'm just trying to imagine things in Amy's perspective. Just think about it, she gets in a serious car accident and loses consciousness and then falls into a coma. She wakes up and finds her body completely messed up and many things taken away from her such as talking normally and walking. Then she starts screaming in pain because her painkillers no longer work on her and she's sedated and goes back into a long sleep. She then wakes up and finds her hand missing. If you ask me, I'm pretty sure that she'll have trouble going to sleep again."
"Yeah, I see what you mean," Shadow replied, "she's afraid to go back to sleep because might wake up with something missing again."
"There's one more thing that bothering me," Sonic blurted out.
"What is it Sonic?" Tails sounded very concerned, in fact they all did.
Sonic noticed that everyone was standing around him. He decided to share his thoughts since he figured that they deserve to know. "During the entire time that Amy has been here, I've seen her show emotions that I didn't even think that she could possibly express. I know that she's been very annoying to me, but one thing I've noticed is that she's always cheerful. She always shows a positive attitude and almost always has a smile on her face."
Sonic then a deep breath and noticed everyone was paying close attention. "Now, it's like she become a totally different person. I've never seen that annoying smile once or even a small hint of her usually cheerful attitude and I don't blame her. I mean, I don't see any way or any reason that she should be like her usual self."
He then covered his mouth with one hand while trying to fight back tears. Despite his best efforts, a single tear started to form in his eye, "I . . . I never thought that I would ever say this but, I would really like to see that cheerful face of hers. I don't care if she becomes annoying again, I'll worry about that when it happens. But until then, I-I'd give anything just to see her happy go lucky attitude and to hear her speak properly so I can hear those annoying but very thoughtful words of hers." A couple of tears started rolling down his face.
Knuckles looked down on the floor for a few seconds. He looked up again at Sonic, "I don't know if you're aware of this, but believe it or not we all feel exactly the same way."
Tails spoke next, "it's just so hard for us to comprehend all the things that have been taken away from her and all the things that she's being so unfairly deprived of."
It took a while for everyone to cope with Amy's amputated left hand. Sonic of course had the most trouble, but felt a little better now that Amy's awake again.
After six long weeks, just as Dr. Carbana predicted, all of the excess fluid in her body was finally gone and she wasn't badly swollen anymore. Some special skin lotion that's normally used on pregnant women was used to remove her numerous stretch marks.
Three months after that, Dr. Yulevski finally completed Amy's cloned heart. Dr. Carbana and several other surgeons removed Amy's temporary artificial heart and implanted her new cloned heart. There were no problems or complications and the heart showed no signs of rejection. All of the doctors breathed a huge sigh of relief.
"So doc, what are you going to do now," Sonic asked, "what's going to happen now?"
Dr. Carbana replied almost with some enthusiasm, "next, Amy's hormone levels needs to be balanced. Some artificial hormones that were based on her body chemistry are now available. That should fix the problems and she can finally be removed from her I.V. and start eating some real food."
Things started to return to normal for Amy. Now that her body chemistry and systems were functioning properly, she no longer needed her I.V. or her painkillers. Dr. Carbana decided to give Amy one more week to make sure that there's no complications or allergic reactions from the hormones. After that, she can finally be discharged from the intensive care unit and possibly transferred to physical therapy. Dr. Carbana and most of the other doctors in the trauma center were overjoyed at Amy's progress.
Everyone believe that Amy will finally pull through, but just four days later something happened that devastated the doctors far worse than ever, especially Dr. Carbana and Dr. Renoltis. About ten minutes before visiting hours, Dr. Carbana was reviewing over a new MRI scan of Amy's body that one of his assistants turned in.
"Huh? Now what is this?" The doctor saw something unusual and suspicious about the scan photo, "when was this taken?" His voice sounded slightly nervous.
"Less than an hour ago," the assistant replied.
He studied the photo again to double check. "Are there any problems with her immune system or any of his her other body systems?"
The assistant was puzzled but answered anyway, "no doctor, everything is stable. Her body chemistry is finally back to normal thanks to those artificial hormones that were created."
Dr. Carbana was concentrating on the photo so hard that he almost didn't hear what the assistant just said. "Do another scan right now," the doctor said suddenly, his tone becoming uptight, "but this time concentrate on her head. Also, get Amy's scan photos from her first day here." The assistant was confused as to why he suddenly made such a request out of the blue. But he figured that the doctor knew what he's doing, so he followed the order anyways. The doctor then noticed that visiting hours were starting soon and went straight to Amy's room.
When Sonic and the others arrived at Amy's room, Dr. Carbana was inside standing beside Amy who was in her wheelchair. The doctor greeted them and everyone had very high hopes. This is the first time that anyone felt this good ever since Amy arrived at the hospital. Sonic still didn't feel comfortable since so much has physically changed on her, physically and mentally. But he felt a little better since she would okay.
Just then, the same assistant who took Amy's MRI scan earlier stood at the door. "doctor, I've got the new scan photos."
"It's about time," the doctor thought to himself, "I wonder what took so long." Then he looked at everyone, "if you need me, I'll be at my office." He left the room and walked down the hallway with the assistant.
While they were walking, the assistant decided to explain some things, "sorry it took a while, but here are the photos that you requested. Also, um, the other doctors also noticed something in Amy's head and I guess that's why you made this request. They ran a few tests and studied the photos and they came with a pretty startling conclusion. It's all on that clipboard, you can read it yourself."
"Okay, thanks," the doctor then sent the assistant away.
As Dr. Carbana stood in his office, he compared the scan photos and read over the conclusion from the tests. A few seconds later, he had a very blank look on his face, but you can still see the shock in his eyes. The clipboard slipped out of his hands and clattered on the floor and started to feel light-headed. He turned and slowly walked towards his desk and plopped in his chair.
"It's so strange," Dr. Carbana said to himself, "it's like the more we try to save her, the shorter her life span becomes. This doesn't make any sense! Amy's supposed to be discharged from intensive care in only three days, why did this have to happen now!" He started rubbing his temples while pondering some more.
A few minutes later, the doctor went back to Amy's room and noticed that everyone is still there. He called all of them out into the hallway, he didn't want Amy to hear this right now. Everyone was concerned as to why the doctor looked so shocked. He then explained to them hesitantly about what he just found out. "I'm very deeply regretful about saying this but, I'm afraid that Amy isn't going to make it this time."
Everyone just blinked a few times. "Huh? Now what's THAT supposed to mean?"
The doctor sighed in disappointment, I'm afraid that Amy's brain damage is now spreading spontaneously."
At first they didn't believe him and Sonic thought he was joking. But the doctor's face didn't change and they knew now that he's serious and certain about the situation. "I'm sorry but . . . but this isn't I don't think it would be proper to joke about something like this."
"Does this have anything to do with her previous problems?" Shadow asked, trying to get some answers.
"No, her entire body is stable," the doctor replied, "this just came out of nowhere. This must be some kind of delayed reaction from the accident."
"But the accident was more than two years ago!" Knuckles was starting to lose his temper.
"I-Isn't there anything you can do?" Sonic said, trying to stay calm.
The doctor shook his head slowly, "I'm very sorry, but I'm afraid there's nothing that can help."
"Can't you use brain surgery to save her?" Tails pleaded in an almost panicked voice.
The doctor shook his head again, "it's not that simple. Brain surgery is an extremely delicate process. There's absolutely no room for error, we can easily her brain even further or even kill her in the process. Even with our new knowledge of Amy's anatomy, we still have to study her brain much more closely since it's slightly different from a human's. The problem is that this could take some time, a few days most likely."
"Why is this happening now?" Sonic spoke in an almost threatening tone, "what's causing this?"
"I think it's better if I explain this in my office," the doctor explained, "come with me." The Dr. Carbana asked a nurse to watch over Amy. When they arrived at his office, the doctor showed them some pictures of Amy's brain at different times.
"Here's an MRI photo of Amy's brain on the first day she was admitted here. The light colored areas represent the brain matter." He pointed at a particular spot, "this dark line across her brain is where the its damaged. Now I'm sure that you all remember that long metal shard that impaled through her head, right."
They all nodded while Shadow winced a little, "that's a pretty big hole in her brain."
The doctor continued, "actually, considering that the metal shard went completely through her head AND through her brain, it's more like a little tunnel going through. What's kind of creepy is the piece of metal didn't impale through cleanly. When it stabbed through her head, it literally shoved a couple small pieces of her brain matter out of her head. One piece was found stuck to the front passengers seat and the other was stuck on the inside roof of the car. If you don't believe me, then I can go to the forensics lab and get the bag that has those pieces. Maybe you can see what a piece of Amy's brain looks like."
They all started to cringe from hearing all that.
After seeing their reactions, the doctor apologized. "Oh! Uh, sorry. I kind of got carried away there."
"How long does she have?" Rouge asked, bracing herself for the answer.
Dr. Carbana could barely make himself say it, "she's has about three weeks left to live."
"That's plenty of time!" Knuckles blurted out and feeling little better, "that's more than enough time to help her."
The doctor continued, "actually, it gets worse. You see she has three weeks left to live, but this is a progressive illness. Since the damage is slowly spreading across her brain, several things will happen first before she expires."
Everyone didn't like the sound of that. "What's going to happen to her?" Shadow asked.
The doctor thought for a moment and spoke in a tense voice, "the closest part of her brain to the damage is used for language and comprehension. First thing that will happen is she will completely lose the ability to communicate. Most likely she will go mute and talking to her would be literally like talking to a brick wall. You can talk to her all you want and she won't even respond, except maybe once in a while she'll give you a confused look."
They just couldn't believe what they were hearing.
"The next thing that will be affected is her hearing. Eventually she'll become completely deaf. If the damage continues to spread, she'll start losing motor control over various parts of her body and eventually become completely paralyzed. In time, she will end up being a mindless vegetable, completely unaware of her surroundings and she may not even remember any of you or anything."
"Stop it! J-Just stop it!" Sonic yelled out, "I've heard enough! Just tell me if there's anything that can be done."
The doctor became very downcast, "like I said, there's nothing that can save her right now. There only one thing that can be done and you're probably not going to like it."
They all had a bad feeling about this and sort knew where he was getting at.
"We can give her a drug that will put her to sleep and then completely stops her vital signs. Basically, Amy will be put out of her misery. Save her the agony of all of these things before it starts."
Tails suddenly became hysterical, "y-you mean you're going to kill her!? You're . . you're just going to off her just like that!?"
"Tails," Shadow said, trying to get through to him, "believe me I know how you feel. I didn't feel any differently when Maria was taken from me."
"Actually, I can't just do it right away on my own," the doctor explained, "I have to get legal permission from the patient or from their relatives. The problem is that Amy doesn't know about all of this, so we may have to break this to her before her brain becomes too damaged. Right now her intelligence is still intact, but it's sometimes hard to communicate with her. I guess since you're all her closest friends, you may have to make the decision for her."
Sonic, Shadow, Tails, Knuckles, and Rouge all looked at each other with very worried looks. Tails started to feel very nauseous while Knuckles started to feel quite uncomfortable himself.
Sonic then spoke up, "um, we'll think about it. We'll talk about it amongst ourselves."
The doctor understood and he let them go. Just before they left the office, the doctor explained one more thing to them. "I don't know if it's really necessary to mention this since it's not very relevant right now, but since I know about this, then I think you should know too."
This quickly got their attention, "There is one thing that could help her, but it currently isn't available right now. We could try putting her in suspended animation. This will slow down the spread of the damage, giving us enough time to perform proper brain surgery. The only problem is that this technology is still in experimental stage and isn't due to arrive for at least another four or five years."
They suddenly felt extremely depressed. Even Knuckles and Shadow were starting to break down. Sonic and his friends left the office and the doctor decided to stay there for a while. While they walked back to Amy's room, They started a conversation.
"This is just crazy!" Sonic was almost feeling hysterical, "are these doctors even doing their job? The car accident didn't kill her, but it seems like these doctors are the one's trying to finish her off instead!"
"Sonic, don't be so judgmental," Rouge interrupted, "in case you didn't notice, these doctors have been doing their job nonstop. Just think back on all those situations that threatened Amy's life repeatedly and those doctors managed to help her survive every one of them. Dr. Carbana and Renoltis and all the other doctors, nurses, and assistants have used every once of effort. If they've accomplished all of that, then I'm sure that they will find a way no matter how impossible the situation."
Sonic considered all that she said and started to feel slightly better. Just before they returned to Amy's room, Sonic decided not to go in right now. He felt like getting some fresh air and calm down first. Tails decided to go with him, maybe the fresh air will help him feel better also. Although Tails somewhat doubted that.
Back at Dr. Carbana's office, the doctor was starting feel depressed. Normally he doesn't feel this was about terminal patients since he's had so many before, but this was totally different.
"This just isn't fair," the doctor said to himself while looking at a picture of his deceased wife, "Amy's was so close to leaving this place. "Is . . is Amy . . . cursed? A-am I cursed? Is this hospital cursed? Well you know what? I don't care if this whole world is cursed! I'm not going to give up! I'm not giving in! I believe that there's hope in even the most impossible situation."
He then heard a knock at the door. He called the person in and Dr. Renoltis entered the office.
"I heard about what just happened to Amy," Dr. Renoltis stated. His voice then became very serious and very frustrated, "how much longer do you plan on letting her suffer like this? At first when I took care of Amy, I didn't feel any different from my other patients. But when I saw her screaming in pain several months ago, it just hit me. Amy's been suffering for more than two years right now, that is completely unacceptable!"
Dr. Carbana was starting to feel irritated from the tone in his voice, "what do you mean? The entire time that she's been here she's survived numerous life-threatening problems. We managed to help pull through and even though this new problem seems impossible, I'm not going to give up."
"You see! That's the problem," Renoltis was getting quite agitated, "you don't know when to quit. You can't seem to draw the line between keeping a person alive and keeping person alive just so that they suffer for prolonged periods."
"This is just another setback!" Dr. Carbana was trying to keep his temper, "I will see to it that Amy survives this."
"Urgh, your impossible sometimes!" Renoltis was about to leave but decided to make one more point, "you remember my brother, right? You remember what happened to him, how he was in tremendous agony for eight torturous months? Do you really want to condemn Amy to that same fate? We both know what should be done, but the question is are you willing to go through with it?"
With that, Dr. Renoltis left the office. He felt like slamming the door, but he didn't want to disturb any nearby patients. Dr. Carbana pondered for a few seconds, "I hate to admit it, but everything he said makes perfect sense. I guess there are two ways you can save someone, you can save them from death, or save them from life. Oh man, normally I would just go through with the procedure, but I feel so different this time."
A few minutes later, Dr. Carbana visited the pharmacy and used his security card to enter a special restricted room. As he walked in, he began feeling very nervous. He used his key to open one of the cabinets. When he reached in, his hands began to shake. He gave a big sigh of regret, "I can't believe I'm actually going to have to do this. Though I have to wait for an approval, I don't feel any better. Until then, I'm going to have to prepare this."
A tear started to form in his eye as he pulled out a large jar and stared at the bottle, which read "NEMBUTAL."
Elsewhere in the trauma center, at about the same time, one of the doctors received a memo on the computer. He read it and almost choked from excitement. He quickly called one of the assistants, "go contact Dr. Carbana! We're just about to receive a new shipment from the factory. I quite sure that he'll be overjoyed when he sees this!"
The assistant and several other doctors looked at the memo and were quite puzzled, "wait a minute. This isn't due to arrive for at least another four years. Why's this arriving so soon."
One of the doctors who also works at the factory saw the memo and made a comment, "ha ha ha, you can thank a certain fox for this."
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Wow, there seems to be a disagreement between some doctors. Also, I'm not entirely positive about this, but just to let you know Nembutal was originally used as some sort of sleeping pill.
It was later used to perform euthanasia or "mercy killing" on animals and pets. It was later used on certain terminally ill patients as a means of an easy painless death. However, I believe it's still very controversial.