Entanglement: A Modern Frankenstein | Creation

Prologue (cont)

The cleaning woman entered Adam's section of the office that evening with her cart in tow. As she would relay to her sister months later, the lights were off when she arrived. They were the type of lights that turned off automatically if there was no motion, so she never expected to see anyone in there. She was putting the waste bins on the chairs in preparation for vacuuming the floor when she almost walked into Adam in his cubicle. She cried out at the unexpected encounter. She screamed louder and stumbled backward when the man didn't even flinch at her first outcry. She said a few Hail Marys out of sight a few cubicles away. Convinced it must have been a mannequin, she reapproached the figure with her mouth full of prayers to God. She didn't need to poke far or long to realize the body was warm and soft. As she rushed to push her cart out of the room to end her shift early, she also recognized a slight smell of human urine. She told her sister what she told herself at the time: "Whatever that was, it was not part of my job!" 

The intern was the first to call 911 on Friday morning. She had uncomfortable dreams about her earlier encounter and ventured down the row of cubicles after a few mandatory morning meetings. Upon seeing him, she pulled out her phone, dropped her purse, dialed the three numbers, and was connected in laudable time. She could not explain then or later how no one else had noticed before her that something was wrong. Despite her quick reaction, she felt guilty for not taking action the day before.

One of Adam's cubicle neighbors heard Adam's phone go unanswered throughout the day on Thursday and Friday. He never bothered to call out to Adam or poke his head in. He figured Adam was just heads-down as he was prone to do. His interest piqued when he heard the intern's call outside his cubicle. The call for help was enough to motivate him to roll his wheelchair out and over to see for himself. He was blind to his own morbid curiosity. The scene explained the horrible smell in his nostrils all morning. He had assumed it was the lingering stench of the garbage can, which was unemptied on his desk when he came in and still contained his uneaten potato salad from the day before. He wanted to help, but only found himself in the way when they brought in the stretcher.

The first paramedic on the scene was unclear how to proceed. The call from dispatch was hard to decipher. The dispatcher had explained that the patient was conscious but in some catatonic state. Both paramedics were expecting to find the patient prone on the ground after they cleared through the rubberneckers. He saw his fellow paramedic reach out as if to catch the man when they first saw that he was upright. The dispatcher relayed the message that the patient was still standing, but neither paramedic absorbed the true meaning until they saw Adam. The visual of the standing patient was too inconsistent with their notion of a catatonic man.

The situation only got stranger. As they prepared him for the stretcher, Adam responded as though fully conscious and moved with the slightest guidance. Though they were ready to catch him at any point, the experience was like guiding a partner through a dance.

Once Adam was prone, one paramedic could categorize Adam like past patients, but he could still discern silent questions in his colleague's eyes. Those same looks were contagious among the bystanders. The stillness and composure of Adam's body throughout the process was unsettling. Adam interrupted his blank stare occasionally with a deliberate blink. Each blink was uncomfortably infrequent as though time had slowed down.

Adam's wife got the message at the start of dinner with clients in Poland. She spent over an hour on the phone in the restaurant, in her ride-sharing car, and then in the lobby of her hotel. After hearing from three different doctors, she grew more alarmed that they knew nothing. Besides being notably overweight and slightly dehydrated, Adam displayed no helpful clues apart from his slow and eerie blinking of the eyes and his almost imperceptible breathing. All his vital signs were acceptable, albeit slowed down. The only comparable statistics were from research studies of people in deep meditation. The pliant nature of his body when guided in one direction or another was also unclassifiable among any known ailments. The doctors explained that his condition might have been caused by a stroke, but she didn't believe them because of their own doubt. They ruled out poisoning, drugs, an insect bite, and an allergic reaction, among many other possibilities including some she suggested herself.

A reporter received a tip from an employee at Adam's office. She only followed up on it because she was at the hospital on that Friday for another sensational story. A student had been hit by a car driven by his own social studies teacher. She was hoping to uncover that backstory when she turned her attention from the student's family to the activity around Adam's room. The perplexed looks on faces leaving Adam's room triggered her alarms. She sensed the story before she understood its merit and how it could propel her fame for the next year.

A nurse in Adam's ward answered the phone expecting the usual questions and requests. Instead, a nurse from an Oregon hospital was calling to reach Adam's current doctor, a recognized brain trauma specialist who had been on-site for almost two weeks now. She was about to page the doctor when she heard a person in the background saying "catatonic," "compliant," and other words she remembered hearing when Adam first arrived. Forgetting medical protocol and letting their shared curiosity prevail, the two nurses exchanged enough details to deduce that the patient in Oregon was exhibiting the same symptoms as Adam. Adam was no longer alone.

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