The Human Xenocide

Chapter Two - Case of a Lifetime

The conversations about her mysterious case slowly stopped as her status remained unchanged.  Nothing had been done.  No one quite knew what to do.  At the two day mark scans indicated that her brain was almost completely normalized—as if no damage was done, she was apparently healing from the wound with some miraculous speed.  But one statistic kept the doctors even more baffled than her incredible ability to heal: no one has ever lived this long with only six heartbeats a minute. If the bullet didn’t kill her, her slow heartbeat should.

The life support machines had no effect on her breathing or ridiculously slow heartbeat. If anything  her body fought against them,  so they had been turned off, leaving only the muted heartbeat system running.  She was… stable? But how? She should be dead with a heart working so slowly. No one could live with blood hardly pulsing through their system. It was also noted that over the last two days her core temperature slowly dropped, it finally stabilized far lower than normal—she ran at a chilly, yet constant, 65.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

She may have survived the bullet to the head, but coming out a the induced coma appeared impossible.  Doctors began to lose interest; the check-ups went from an excited “every-ten-minutes” to a regular “every-half-hour”. People didn’t want to see the case of a lifetime that turned sour. They concluded that the case of ‘Lilly, suicide attempt,’ quickly turned from an abnormal survival to simply an abnormal coma case, which of course are almost always different from one another anyways.

The days slowly moved into the third morning.  It was time for another one of the thirty-minute checkups—at the end of this day, if everything remained the same, she’d be moved to a larger hospital that takes care of patients like her. So everything had to be checked right, to insure no changes.  The current doctor on duty, who had done the last four checkups, was due for another look.  She was a tall doctor with long brown hair and obnoxious clicking heels that paraded around the tiled room. She clicked up to the bedside and stood with her watch ready to check Lilly’s pulse … six and the core temperature … 65.7… it was hard for her to write it down on the paper, but she did—condition normal.

She glanced over at the eyes. They were open. The opened eyes connected with the doctor and followed her hopelessly around the room. The doctor walked around to the other side of the bed and knelt next to it. The brown globes wouldn’t budge from the doctor’s blue eyes, Lilly didn’t even blink. The doctor pressed the call button on the bed frame and placed her hand on Lilly’s cold forehead. She asked in a soothing voice, “How are you doing, Lilly?”

No response, of course.

Two nurses barged into the room; both of them men in their mid-twenties.   One had short brown hair and a muscular body, while the other had thick wavy blond hair and was slightly slimmer. The nurse closest to the switch, the one with blond hair, flicked on the lights and ripped open the heavy drapes covering the windows that overlooked the hallway. “What is it, Doctor Gustavson?” the muscular one asked.

“She is coming to.  Look, her eyes are open and have been trailing movement. She’s followed me around the entire room.”

The two nurses scrambled across the room, while several more doctors and nurses stopped at the window instead of passing by.

“Lilly? Are you okay? Can you hear me?” Dr. Gustavson continued in her soothing voice.

Lilly’s lips slowly moved but nothing came out.

The nurse lifted his hand from her arm. “Pulse still six; core temperature still 65.7.  As far as I can tell, this isn’t possible.”

Dr. Gustavson still tried, “Lilly?”

Sound came out of her mouth in short bursts, “Uh, I, I, a, I…. am…”

“Go on, take your time,” Dr. Gustavson said calmly. She turned to the nurse constantly taking the pulse and temperature, “Is she warming up, is she waking up?” her voice sounded rushed and impatient—she wanted the answer.

“No Doctor, she is still stable at her previous condition.”

“S, s, so, ca… ca, col,” Lilly managed to fumble to the doctor.

“So cold?” Dr. Gustavson asked. “You’re cold?” She glared over at the other nurse, who was doing nothing at the moment. “You! Get me more blankets, now!” He hurried out of the room.  Upon exiting the doorway, he was bombarded by questions from the curious hospital staff.

“Is she awake?”

“What did she say?”

“Is she warming up?”

“What’s going on in there?”

He ignored the barrage and snagged several blankets out of a nearby closet before crashing back through the crowd to serve Dr. Gustavson.

“Put them on her, all of them. We need to try to raise her temperature,” the doctor rushed the nurse.

Lilly’s arms started twitching under the load of blankets; she started to sweat and rolled over beneath them.

Sweating? Her temperature had risen from 65.7 to 66.6 and suddenly she was sweating? As a matter of fact this looked like the start of a fever. She was overheating! All the symptoms matched except the temperature.

“No, take some off—she’s overheating,” Dr. Gustavson heard herself say. She didn’t believe this. How could someone overheat at such a low temperature? Now the doctor was confused. Her patient’s skin was ice cold to the touch.

All of a sudden, as if snapping out of a deep sleep, Lilly’s arm muscles tightened and she forced herself into an upright position, thrashing at the blankets until all but one was removed.

The two nurses and doctor in the room were quiet and dozens of eyes stared in from the window, not a single one twitching or blinking. Did she… Did she just sit up?

Lilly looked over at the stressed, confused doctor kneeling next to her bed and said in a polite voice, “I’m thirsty.”