397 words (1 minute read)

The Patient

In a hospital bed in northern Wyoming, in a bunker nestled within the Wind River mountain range, the shell of a young man lay motionless. A Compo - Regina Telman - sat in a chair near the doorway, in the same place she’d sat every day for the previous ninety days. Her feet kicked up on a plastic chair she’d pulled over for just that purpose.

In the evening when her long, monotonous shift was up, she would tag out with another officer. But for now, there she sat, projecting a card game into the air from her Idecation Device (ID), desperate to distract herself from boredom. This was the most boring post Regina had ever had. That was saying something. She was once charged with keeping an eye on a automated wind power plant. She took each post with a smile, though. Anything to serve The Board.

Every few minutes, Regina’s hand would move to the directed energy weapon, known as a pacifier, clipped to her hip, and her eyes would dart to the man in the bed, ensuring her ward was still where he should be. He always was. It’d been the same every day. Just her, hanging out with an unconscious prisoner.

Machines were hooked up to various ports of entry in the young patient’s prone body. Magnetic cuffs at the wrists and ankles restrained him to the bed. They were superfluous; he wasn’t going anywhere.

A ventilator puffed his lungs while a feeding tube propelled a gelatinous substance into his stomach. They had taken his liver out, cleansed of debris, and the healthy tissue replaced to regenerate. A bypass machine pumped his weak heart. Rods held his shattered bones in their reassembled order, and the muscles and cartilage healed around them. His skin had been patched back together like a quilt in the places where it was once punctured and torn, and a laser had smoothed the seams so that only fresh pink scars that would fade with time remained.

Sensors dotted his body, stimulating his nerves. His brain, under the state of induced unconsciousness, was active, unharmed. His eyes darted around underneath of his lids. His raven-black hair, buzzed short three months prior, grew in his sleep, and was now long enough it started to curl over his tawny skin.