sHe: THE RISE OF THE NEW BREEDS [Book 1]

Chapter 10

LAURA WAS tilted in a seated position in a recliner bed in an examination room in a hospital in Los Angeles. The coma stricken woman has electrode wires taped to both her temples and the tips of all her fingers. Two women doctors were working on her treatment; Dr Diana Waite turning a dial that discharged small doses of electrical charges into Laura's wires—a digital needle on the EG monitor moved. Her assistant, Dr Claudia Ryan was using a stethoscope to monitor Laura's heartbeat—and replying that it was normal.

Turning the dial higher, Dr Waite notified her, "juicing up." At the foot of the bed, Roberta stood and looking in anxiety at her sister in the hands of the two investigational doctors...

She lacked the faith in these doctors since her childhood dispute with one of Laura's previous physician—Dr. Emma Rickman who gave many false hopes that her sister will recover back then through medications—and Roberta had kept her sister in the life-support system for so long ever since, and she feared the day will come when they would pull the plug on her.

Finally, Dr Waite went over to her patient's ear and gently spoke some hypnotic instructions—while at the same time, both the women in the lab-coats were monitoring brainwave movement on another monitor screen...

"Laura, can you hear me, dear. Please response by lifting the index finger of your right hand...Laura, can you hear me?" Roberta fretted after seeing no response on her fingers...

It was something out of a habit that she too did in the past—noticing Laura's finger when she spoke to her in her hundreds of hospital visits...

Dr Diana Waite turned the dial higher, "going up a notch."

"Okay, heartbeat still normal," echoed Dr Ryan beside her while Waite tried communicating again...

"Laura honey, can you hear me?"

Laura's index finger moves slightly—Roberta grinned back in amazement. "That is very good, Laura," Dr Waite turned towards Roberta, and smiled before she added...

"Laura, do you remember your sister, Robbie?"

After a few seconds of pause, her index finger moved again; it made Roberta's eye well in tears of joy after the eighteen waiting years...

Laura's finger finally moved and has acknowledged her.

"I am going one more notch up."

Dr Ryan nodded, overseeing the digital needle that undulated almost at the max, and Dr. Waite spoke to her again...

"Laura, Robbie is here with you...are you happy that Robbie is here?"

Laura's finger moves again, Dr Waite touched the dial and Dr Ryan shook her head—fearing that Laura Jensen was a heart patient. "No, Diana," but Waite cranked up a little more juice, and that causing Laura's index finger to begin tapping softly...

"Laura, do you want to see Robbie?"

*

In her kip world, darkness turned to daylight —Laura slipped into one of her repeated dream loop where she was in the backseat of the Buick with her father Herbert Jensen driving. She looks out the window to saw the nine-year-old Roberta behind a Mexican truck—her mother was also present, hugging the seraphic blond girl in a red dress, who has a baby robin in her little hands. The twelve-year-old Laura looked back into the rearview mirror—and her eyes met her father's before she asked him...

"Dad, where are they going?"

"Home Laura—they are going home." Laura beheld the old truck overtaking their Buick—and the cherubic girl in red dress smiled and was waving at her.

*

Dr Diana Waite studied that Laura's tapping index finger was getting extremely frantic.

"Laura, if you want to see Robbie—start opening your eyes, dear—come and see, Robbie is here—please open your eyes, Laura".

From her dream world—her eyelids fluttered slowly with her head moving a little unstable from the enormous sentient effort from within herself—her vision was blurry while she focused unsteadily into vertigo to see the twenty-seven-year-old Roberta standing at the foot of her bed. Her finger was still rapping...

But instead—Laura focus was on the vestige of nine-year-old Roberta—and her raspy voice croaked when she spoke again after many dormant years...

"Robbie, must...go...find the girl in red!"

Laura's eyes slowly closed, and she sank back gently into her state of coma—her index finger then stopped tapping...

Roberta was agonized and responded back in bewilderment...

"Dr Waite, what happened? What girl in red? Laura opened her eyes—and saw and spoke to me, didn't she?"

She was wretched and wanted the doctor's affirmative aye—so that she can believe that the wagered therapy here in California will be the final holy grail or even the magic bullet that will make her sister whole again as she once was eighteen years ago.

"It is common for patients to speak at times, but judging by the brain waves, I suspect Laura was still in a dream state just now—a similarity like how people speak in their sleep."

Roberta was choking hard and deep—she wanted an irrefutable confirmation...

"You mean that she did not see me when she opened her eyes a moment ago?" Dr Waites shook her head, seeing Roberta in despaired state of scavenging for hope...

"But Capt. Jensen, she is responding well to the given therapy. Just give her a little more time and someday soon, I can assure you that she will come out of it—please be patient with her and all will be well."