Blink {Featured}

Chapter Fourteen

SAMANTHA GRIMES (33y) MAY 2021, 08.53

Samantha Grimes screamed. John's parents must have heard it downstairs, because they rushed through his room's doorway within seconds. Samantha looked down at the bed with her hand over her mouth and her eyes stretched wide. 'His eyes are open!'

'What?' John's dad gripped John's mam's hands as they ventured closer. Hope bloomed on their faces like the sunrise on a cold winter day when they realised what Samantha said was true. She liked that. Hope was beautiful, especially if the hope turned into satisfied joy. That was why she loved her job so much.

John's mam bit her lip and stroked the side of his face. 'Get the Doctor, Dan.' A tear streaked its way down her age-worn face and she watched her son. 'Get the Doctor here now.'

His father pressed the little red button above John's bed, it beeped twice, and then a bleary-eyed man appeared on the screen. The man squinted at them then rubbed a hand over his face. Doctor Mattison had odd sleeping hours, and Samantha almost felt guilty that he'd been woken. But the hope on John's parents' faces dulled that guilt.

'Mr Finnie, what seems to be the problem?'

'His eyes opened, Doc,' John's dad swivelled the screen toward himself. 'I'm sure he is coming through this time.'

The Doctor shook his head and closed his eyes briefly as if to get rid of a lingering lethargy or maybe a bad dream. 'Show me.' He pinched the bridge of his nose.

'Sure thing.' Mr Finnie swung the portable screen over the bed and placed it above John's face. 'Is that okay, Doc?'

'Yes.' The doctor nodded and popped his glasses on with the ease and comfort that comes with years of habit. 'Now, if you wouldn't mind taking a step back please, while I conduct a series of tests.'

An automated arm moved from John's one eye to the next, firing a series of strobing lights into John's pupils, and then a brief red glimmer of sharp light. Once it was done, the automated arm grabbed the other screen and moved from one screen to another on the giant machine that'd kept John alive all this time.

Mrs Finnie's palms were sweaty, cloying, clutched in Samantha's left hand. Mr Finnie grabbed his wife's other hand; they had been through this trial quite a few times, and the hope they clung to was weak and dwindling. Both parents looked at each other with shining eyes wet at the corners, and that look said it all. Yeah, they had been through this before, but he had never opened his eyes before--not once in sixteen years. Something had to be different.

The doctor's screen stopped at one of the machine's screens for a considerable time, and the doctor spoke to the machine. 'Bring me a brain activity timeline from twenty minutes ago please.'

The screen swung back in Samantha's direction, and the Doctor spoke again. 'I'm getting John's brain activity reports for the last twenty minutes. None of the other diagnostic computers show any signs that he is awakening. This may just be another false alarm.' The Doctor sighed, he knew they had been through this before. 'Sometimes muscles can spasm; I don't want to give you any false hope.'

With that the screen spun again, back the activity log. Samantha could just catch him talking to the machine now, and she strained her ears to hear each word.

'Magnify times ten. Okay, next minute, times ten again please.'

'Computer, analyse last twenty minutes of brain activity. Full spectrum analysis all wave patterns please, with a tenfold analysis on delta patterns.'

Mrs Finnie squeezed Samantha's hand and smiled at her. They would be crushed if this was another false alarm she realised, and squeezed John's mam's hand in return with a hopeful smile.