Butterfly Delivery - Adrinette

Time Enchants

Thirteen years after Certified Baby - continued

"Hello! Are you Emilie Agreste?"

"Who's asking?"

"Raphael Wells, medical investigative reporter. I have an appointment with Emilie Agreste?"

"She's expecting you." Nathalie shut the door in his face. Raphael stood there, not exactly sure what he should do. He gathered that wasn't Emilie - but he was at the correct address wasn't he? He wasn't quite sure, the door having just been shut in his face. Usually when someone said they had been expecting him, they would invite him into the home.

Ever since he was a little boy, Raphael had been surrounded by the practice of medicine. Both of his parents were doctors, as was his older sister. Even his name meant "healer"! Well, Raphael did; Wells didn't actually have anything to do with it, but it sounded like it should. Dr. Wells helped people to feel well, imagine that! Naturally he had never expected he would be anything other than a doctor. He'd made it into - and through - his first year of medical school easily, achieving grades that inspired jealousy among most of his peers, but once he started seeing patients in his second year he was completely lost. None of it looked like the textbooks! He tried to compensate with extra study, but it didn't do much good. He already knew all the material; he just couldn't apply it for the life of him - or the life of his patients.

Eventually, he dropped out of school for fear of a malpractice suit. "Have you thought about being a teacher?" a classmate he tutored had asked. "You explain it so well, even I can do it!" Those parting words, before he left university, had done wonders to lift his spirits. He was good at explaining, and he knew it. He considered going back to school for a Master's in education, but a well-timed TV medical documentary changed the course of his life.

'You can tell those reporters have no fundamental understanding of medicine,' he said to himself. 'The program would be so much more enjoyable if they did a better job explaining it.' So, he got his degree in journalism. His unique combination in schooling got him a job as the host of a medical documentary series, leading him to spend his days calling up doctors from around the world and inquiring about their most unusual patients.

One doctor in a Parisian long term nursing facility had a story to tell. Thirteen years ago, a woman was brought in in a comatose state, having been transferred from her family home. The same woman had been declared missing two years before that, but her family claimed inability to state what had happened to her over those two years. Her test results in most areas were normal; only her body was flooded with suppressant hormones, making it impossible for her to wake up. Suspecting the excess hormones may have been injected into her, her doctors tried giving her a drug that would inhibit the overabundant hormones. Their treatment had the opposite effect as intended; the amounts of the unwanted sleep hormones surged. Her body was responsible for the excess, and any attempt to bring the levels down to normal caused it to ramp up production. There was nothing they could do except feed her intravenously to keep her body in working order in case her hormones stabilized enough for her to wake up. She was by no means brain dead; her mental activity was typical of a person asleep, her REM and NREM cycles coming with shocking regularity. Everything pointed to her still being aware, somewhere hidden away within her body. Then, one day this last month, her family gathered in her room as if they expected something to happen - and it did. This woman actually woke up when all her family was there to see! The family declined to state what had caused them to gather that day; whether they had somehow had a premonition that she would wake up, or if their gathering had been the trigger for her return to consciousness. Raphael had requested that the doctor ask the patient's permission to share her identity with him. A week later, he was delighted to have permission for an interview.