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Part 20
On the tenth day of Kim's coma, Harm sat alone at her bedside, in the Pediatric ICU. He had convinced Mac to go home and get some sleep in a proper bed, which they'd both been short on, since they came to be here. Mac had problems with insomnia, which flared up when her sleep patterns became erratic, so Harm insisted that she take care of herself. He really didn't pay any regard to his own state; he wouldn't be able to relax his mind enough to sleep within the next 10 or so hours, but he wouldn't have any ill-effects because of it.
When Mac returned, he asked how she had slept. It had been quite a while, so he assumed that she'd gotten some good sleep.
"Not that well," she replied, "I couldn't get my mind to shut down. Eventually I got an hour or so, but I knew that I might have trouble getting back here, so I set off early."
Harm had completely forgotten that today was Nyepi, New Year according to Bali's unique form of Hinduism. The day before, Harm had caught a brief glimpse of the festivals on the television in Yan's room. Today really contrasted to yesterday, when large, colourful sculptures of 'Ogoh-ogoh,' fearsome puppets were paraded down the street and eventually burned to scare away evil spirits that were said to drift upon the winds across the seas and to the island of Bali. Today was known as a day of silence. Even tourists were encouraged to stay at home and refrain from making noise, lest the evil spirits hear it and return to haunt the island. Harm mused, sadly, how his usually vibrant, lively child would not provide any opposition to that edict, today.
"Did anyone give you any trouble?" Harm asked.
Mac shook her head. It was indeed a problem that they really didn't need, today. Any other time, they were respectful of the practices of others, but today they were just dealing with too much to worry about more.
Harm stood up to stretch, since he hadn't moved once since Mac had left them. Mac slipped into the space he'd vacated beside the bed, leaning down to kiss Kim on the forehead and stroke her hand. When Kim's hand twitched in response, Mac nearly jumped back.
"What happened?" Harm immediately knew something had happened by Mac's tense frame, although he hadn't seen Kim's movement.
"Kim moved…She moved her hand!" Mac reported, now beginning to really believe what her eyes had seen, "Go and get a nurse!"
Harm ran straight to the door and called to the nearest nurse walking down the hallway.
She quickly dropped whatever task she had been taking care and followed Harm briskly into the room.
She was taking note of all of Kim's vitals, when another nurse leaned into the room, to find out what was going on.
"Call Colonels Grant and Redgrave," the first nurse quickly ordered the second.
When the two surgeons arrived, Kim still hadn't moved again, but Harm and Mac were still optimistic that they weren't mistaken.
Colonel Grant again began to perform the GCS neurological exam, going through all of the items on the scale, which included best verbal response, best eye response and best motor response. Of course, Kim could not make a verbal response to any stimuli, though Colonel Grant found that her pupils were now reacting to light. Their reaction was not 100 normal, yet but it was a vast improvement on what they had previously managed. Also, when Colonel Grant put pressure on the bed of Kim's fingernail, reflex kicked in and her arm attempted to pull away from the slightly painful stimulus. Running his pen along the bottom of her foot, he found the same thing with her leg. Colonel tried the same tests using other stimuli, such as verbal instruction, supra-orbital pressure to the area above one of her eyes and pressure to her sternum. She did not respond to the command to open her eyes, but her wrist flexed in response to the second of these stimuli. At the last of these stimuli Harm and Mac gasped, when Kim's startlingly blue eyes shot wide open.
"Is she in pain?" Harm would have stepped forward to stop the doctor, had his colleague not been standing right in front of him.
"I know this is difficult for you to watch, Commander, but these pressures are not painful so much as uncomfortable. They indicate that Kim is no longer in a coma, because she is managing to respond, albeit on a more primitive level. She's improving, definitely improving. We need to take it day by day, introduce some physical therapy and see what happens. We may be able to remove her breathing apparatus, soon."
"Will she wake up soon?"
"I'm afraid I can't tell you that, anymore than I could have told you how long she would remain in the coma. I'm so sorry Commander. This is up to Kim. She's had a lot of injuries to recover from. The surgery and the medications can only help so much. But she's a fighter; she's gotten this far, without many setbacks, which is almost unheard of in a case such as hers."
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