First of Her Kind Part 9

Adam took the next day to recover. Her body was still incredibly sore. Lucian had brought her plenty of food, so she remained secluded in her room, eatting, resting and researching on her computer. She researched topics such as memory retrieval, hormonal differences between men and women, nanite technology which it seemed most of the world believed to be the stuff of science fiction. She also took a new approach to researching emotions after finding a scene in a sci-fi that described a person's fearful reaction to being infected with a malicious nanite technology. The scene had been so well written, so visceral that Adam was almost able to summon the feeling within herself. This inspired her to search for creative writing describing emotional states. She began to see that she was indeed far more emotionally equipped than she had previously believed. Mistrust, betrayal, suspicion, anger, sadness, worry, concern. She couldn’t help but notice a lot of negative emotions.

There was a tap at her door. She stood up and opened it just a crack to find Lucian standing in the hall. She quickly opened the door and ushered him in, closing it behind her and turning the lock.

Without a word, Lucian crossed over to Adam’s laptop and got onto a streaming site, turning loud music on.

“I brought you something,” he said, turning around.

He reached under his jacket and extracted a black laptop covered in band and skateboarding stickers. He handed it to Adam.

“It’s yours, from before you died,” he said. “They have a whole room, your room it seems, set up in a room in the lab. Probably to try to jog your memory when they think you’re ready.”

“How…?” Adam looked at him.

Lucian smiled a little and held up a magnetic key card. “I told you, I’ve been here a long time. I, well, pick things up.”

“Speaking of which,” Adam set the laptop down and sat on the bed, encouraging Lucian to sit with her. “I wasn’t trying to ambush you yesterday, with all my questions. I was… well… emotional. I realized that I was more like a lab rat than a human being to these people. That we are more like lab rats.”

Lucian sighed heavily and sat down with her. “You’re not wrong. Some are better than others, but, for the most part, yeah.”

“If you don’t want to, you don’t have to answer,” Adam said. “But, I’m guessing you remember something from your life before, based on your reaction yesterday.”

Lucian nodded and swallowed hard, looking down at his hands. “My name was Lt. Samuel Juarez, United State Army. I died in Iraq. I had a wife. Natalia and a daughter, Hope. I grew up in a small town in New Mexico. My father was an immigrant. Told me every day growing up how lucky I was to be living in the States. I believed it, joined the army to serve the country that gave my parents the opportunities to give me and my siblings a good upbringing. I signed up ready to die…” he looked up, tears in his blue eyes. “But, I didn’t sign up to be brought back as something else. My wife, my daughter, my parents, they’re all still out there, mourning me and I can’t tell you for sure whether or not the man they are mourning is alive or not.”

Adam’s heart ached for him at that moment. It had never dawned on her until now that remembering would be such a terrible fate. Here he was, being her friend, always cheerful, always busy, talking, learning, doing something and yet he was grieving an entire family lost to him. Words escaped her, both her sympathy and her admiration for him felt beyond expression. On instinct, she moved closer to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. To her surprise, he immediately relaxed into her embrace. For a long moment, they just sat there, holding on to one another. Adam couldn’t help but think, it felt nice to be holding him and to have him reciprocating. How long had they both been without human affection?

He drew a shaky breath and pulled away from her, taking her hand. “I’m sorry. I haven’t ever said that out loud.”

Adam shook her head, “you don’t have to be sorry. I’m glad you told me, and, I promise, I won’t tell anyone.”

“I know it seems like a bad thing, to remember your life before,” Lucian said. “But, I’m glad I do. It opened my eyes to how off things are around here. I really think you should prioritize trying to remember. There’s things about this place you should learn, but only when you’re ready.”

Adam nodded and gave his hand a squeeze. There was a long moment of silence before Lucian spoke again.

“Hey, Adam,” he said. “I see you getting close to Evander. I don’t mind, really. But, you should be careful. I’ve seen him when things get him riled up. He’s more animal than man.”

“I thought he was a robot,” Adam teased lightly.

“That’s when things are good,” Lucian said. He cleared his throat and stood up. “Just, be careful. I better get going before someone starts looking for me.”

Adam opened her door and peered down the hall to make sure it was clear before ushering him out. She couldn’t help but notice as he walked away, that his gait had become slightly staggered again. She shook it off and went back into her room where the laptop sat on her bed. She pondered the stickers that adorned it for a long moment before picking it up and sliding under her bed. She returned to the computer on her desk.

With a moment's thought, she went to the search engine, typing in “Adam Sheridan”. She came upon social media accounts. Pictures of herself, another young woman and a guy were prevalent on most of them as well as posts about skate brands, bands, and academic competitions. The search engine also brought up several articles with titles such as “Child Genius Rocks Science Fair” and “Local Teen Becomes Political Expert to Lobby for New Skate Park”.

“Child genius?” Adam muttered.

She clicked on the article to be sure. The included photo was indeed a younger version of herself, standing in front of a newly constructed skate park. She skimmed the article.

“She’s a handful, I’ll admit” Dr. Sheridan was quoted. “I had no idea she was doing anything like this until we received the first letter from the mayor’s office. Anything Adam sets her mind to is liable to become her next area of expertise.”

Adam mused for a moment before a thought occurred to her. Reaching into her desk, pulled out a notebook and pen and began writing.

“Demands?” Dr. Sheridan said in an amused tone.

“Yes,” Adam said. “I won’t cooperate with any more testing or research until they’re met.”

“Some of these are beyond my ability to accomodate,” Dr. Sheridan said.

“Then I guess your experimentation ends here,” Adam challenged.

Dr. Sheridan’s amusement quickly turned into annoyance. “You’re overlooking two facts here. I’m not the top man on the totem pole here. I have to follow rules just like everyone else.”

“Then let me talk to the top man,” Adam said.

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll get your chance,” Dr. Sheridan tossed the notebook down on the table. “You are forgetting another thing. Legally, you aren’t a person. You have no rights. You’re property and the only reason you’re moving around here is because I made it so.”

“So, I can’t have any autonomy because you put a bunch of metal in me?”

“I brought your body back to life with my technology.”

“I was a person,” Adam argued. “I didn’t ask to come back. You wanted that.”

“You can’t tell me you think you were better off a corpse,” Dr. Sheridan began raising his voice. “You died just a few months shy of twenty.”

“A corpse doesn’t care that it died,” Adam retorted. “And, if I’m just property, I think I’d rather be a corpse.”

“I brought you back so you could live your life.” Dr. Sheridan’s face became red with anger.

“You brought me back for yourself,” Adam spat.

“You….” Dr. Sheridan’s eyebrows furrowed and his expression changed. “What do you mean?”

Adam realized her mistake quickly, “I mean you brought me back for your own hubris. I’m sure the doctor that managed to defeat death would be quite the big deal.”

Dr. Sheridan’s face sank with defeat and he sighed heavily. “I never imagined you’d become this challenging.” He lifted the notebook. “I can’t let you out of the facility, or let you have contact with anyone from your life before this. There’s unknown risks, and all this work is confidential. What I can do is provide you with a list of all the procedures we’ve done. I'll have accounts set up for you on sites where you can order your own stuff. I might be able to track down a few things from your life before.”

“Not just me,” Adam said. “Lucian and Evander too.”

“They’ve been legally dead for years,” Dr. Sheridan argued.

“There’s got to be something you can do,” Adam said.

Dr. Sheridan shifted his weight uncomfortably. Adam wasn’t sure if he bought her misdirect but she was making progress so she didn’t really care. Dr. Sheridan sat in his chair and pressed a finger to the side of his head as he examined the list.

“I don’t mean to eavesdrop,” Jessie piped up softly from the door. “I have some ideas.”

Dr. Sheridan motioned for her to enter.

“When we get a new cadaver,” Jessie began softly. “I research them. It’s my way of paying respect to them. Even if they aren’t successful, I try to get to know who they are or were at least. Remind myself that what I’m working on is a person with a history and a life.”

Dr. Sheridan’s brow furrowed. “You never told me that,” he said softly.

“I always felt it was a little, well, foolish,” Jessie shrugged. “But, I could find some things that might suit who they were. Little things, you know?”

“Maybe I should be negotiating with her,” Adam observed.

Dr. Sheridan cast an annoyed glance at her. He sighed and set the notebook down again. “The staff and I will talk about these. Like I said, we can’t let you out of the facility, even if we wanted to. But, the other things, we’ll work on. I’ll definitely need Emily’s input here.”

“Let me know what you come up with,” Adam said. She spun around on her heals and walked out of the room.

Dr. Sheridan waited until he heard the door down the hall shut before turning back to Jessie. He rolled his chair backwards and held his hand out. Jessie accepted his invitation and sat in his lap, taking his hand as his arm wrapped around her.

“She’s definitely coming into her emotions,” Dr. Sheridan said. “And, every once in a while, just for a moment…”

“You get a glimpse of the Adam you knew,” Jessie said. “I’ve noticed.”

“Yeah,” Dr. Sheridan said, chuckling softly, tapping the list on the desk.

Jessie sighed and rested her head on his shoulder.

“It’s not foolish, by the way,” he said softly. “It’s sweet, and thoughtful, and totally you.”

Jessie smiled softly as he planted a kiss on top of her head.

Adam met Evander and Lucian in the rec room. She sat down at one of the tables with them.

“I don’t think we’re going to get much,” Adam said. “But, we should at least get a list of most of the procedures they performed on us.”

“Most?” Lucian asked.

“I really don’t think they’re going to give us everything,” Adam said. “He was pretty insistent that we aren’t allowed contact with the outside world or to leave the compound.”

“There’s got to be a way we could swing things so that we could at least go out under supervision,” Lucian said. “I haven’t seen anything outside that big brick wall since I woke up. I don’t even know what the world out there is like. When I woke up, cell phones opened like compact mirrors. Now, the staff have little computers in their pockets. I don’t know if that’s the norm or if they get special equipment through the military.”

“It’s normal, practically everyone over the age of ten has a smart phone,” Adam answered.

“How do you know that?” Evander asked.

“I don’t really know,” Adam answered. “I have no memories. I just know stuff.”

Evander and Lucian exchanged looks and shrugged.

“Would you be happy with just seeing the outside world?” Adam asked as a new idea dawned on her.

“It would be something,” Lucian shrugged.

“There’s VR,” Adam said. “Goggles you wear that allow you to interact with a virtual world. If we can prove we can behave in a virtual world, maybe they’ll let us out into the real world.”

“Run it through Emily,” Lucian said. “She’d be the one to persuade them that it serves a higher purpose in our testing and development.”

“Run what through Emily,” Emily’s voice startled all three.

Adam thought hard for any lie that would make sense but Lucian spoke before she could.

“Adam was telling us about a new technology called virtual reality,” he said.

“Did you play VR games in life?” Emily stepped into the room, looking intently at Adam.

“No, I don’t know,” Adam said hurriedly. “I just remember or just know that it’s a thing.”

Emily thought for a moment. She locked eyes with Lucian for a second before sitting down.

“What do we want VR for?” she asked.

A calm settled over Adam and suddenly, she knew exactly what to say and how to say it.

“Lucian and Evander have been in here for years,” Adam said. “They have no idea what the outside world is like besides what can be seen on TV. With VR, we could all see and interact with the world from the safety of the compound. Maybe something in it will jog our memories.”

“And?” Emily pressed.

“And, perhaps if we show a certain level of, shall we say, socially acceptable behavior,” Adam said. “Maybe we could earn ourselves a sort of field trip, under staff supervision of course.”

Crossed her arms and leaned forward on the table pensively, her light eyes looking off into the distance. Finally, cracked a slight smile and nodded.

“It’s not without precedence, VR has been used therapeutically for a few years now with glowing results in certain areas,” she said. “The only thing I’d caution, before we do this, Evander, is that once I bring it to their attention, they may apply the same principles to your…. expanded training sessions.”

“I can live with that,” Evander said robotically.

“Dr. Sheridan is planning a little sit down with the staff after Adam’s little petition,” Emily said. “I hope you know you rocked the shit out of this whole boat.”

“I didn’t…” Adam began to apologize.

“No,” Emily said. “It’s not a bad thing. I want to make one thing clear. I’m on your guys’ side. I’m your only advocate in this oversized rat cage.”

Adam looked to Lucian who gave an approving nod.

“Did Dr. Sheridan show you my list?”

“No,” Emily said. “And, if you don’t mind, I’d like a complete copy from you. I don’t exactly trust that I will get an unaltered version from the doc.”

“I’ll write it all down for you,” Adam said.

Emily stood up and looked back at the door for a second. “Hanging around each other like your holding some kind of board meeting is bound to make the rest of the staff uncomfortable.” She said. “If you’re going to make it a habit to hold conferences, at least pretend to be doing something else.”

Adam nodded in agreement and stood up. “I’ll get you your list.”

She returned to her room and not only completed her list for Emily, but also, preparing for arguments she expected Dr. Sheridan to make against her other demands.

The next several days the house buzzed with the shock of Adam’s demands and with her outburst over the procedures performed on her. Some of the staff seemed annoyed by her making requests of the doctor, while others seemed to be applauding her boldness. The consensus among her supporters stated that Dr. Sheridan had a bad habit of treating the experiments as sub-human.

As a peace making measure, Dr. Sheridan provided a tablet in the public areas, enabled with streaming services, grocery lists, and shopping apps where each of the experiments had their own wishlists.

Before the week was done, Adam was called back to Dr. Sheridan’s office. On her way, she tracked down Emily.

Dr. Sheridan was sitting in his chair, his hands folded together in anticipation as Adam entered. Jessie sat across from him, her hands resting uncomfortably in her lap.

“You’ve created quite a rift among my staff,” Dr. Sheridan sighed. “If our work wasn’t so confidential in a nature, I’d be tempted to let some of them go for the levels of insubordinate,” he cast a look at Emily, “sentiment they’ve expressed these past few days.”

“Many of us are doctors,” Emily said. “And remember our hippocratic oath well.”

Dr. Sheridan’s jaw clenched hard and a vein on the side of his neck seemed to swell to three times its original size instantly. He blinked hard a couple times and looked back at Adam.

“No going out into public,” he said bluntly, period. “However, the VR idea was actually… inspired. I not only approve but I like it. That kind of innovation was always your…” he paused, his expression softening some. “Is what we would hope to see out of someone like you.”

“Thank you,” Adam said, caught off guard a little.

“The tablets in the kitchen and living room are a privilege. Use them right, you will get your own tablets, but any communication with the outside world will be disabled,” Dr. Sheridan said. “Our wi-fi is very well monitored. Any outside communication to or from those devices and they will be taken away.”

“Fine,” Adam said. “We’ll accept that much for now. Simply because I don’t think the guys are ready for more anyways.”

“Jessie found some stuff,” Dr. Sheridan said. “It’s on its way now. Each of you will receive a box of stuff she thinks you’d have enjoyed in your lives before.”

“And, the procedures?” Adam asked.

“We decided,” Jessie spoke up from the other side of the desk, “we will take each of you through a walk through of the processes we went through to revive you and the technology we used to enhance you as much as our confidentiality restrictions will allow.”

“If we can’t leave, and we can’t communicate with the outside world, why can’t we know the full extent….”

“The science of the technology and biological engineering we used is far beyond you anyways,” Dr. Sheridan interrupted. “This is from the higher ups. Out of my hands. And, I’d like to warn you that if your… independence is perceived as a threat by the people who are really in charge of this place, you could find your lives becoming a lot less comfortable.”

Jessie cleared her throat softly and cast a look at Dr. Sheridan. He glanced at her and looked down. “Ladies, if Adam and I may have the room, I have a personal matter to discuss with her now.”

Adam felt her heart quickening. Was he about to come clean about who he really was?

Jessie and Emily quietly dismissed themselves leaving Adam and Dr. Sheridan alone in the poorly lit, windowless office. Dr. Sheridan took his glasses off and set them on the desk, rubbing his tired eyes for a moment.

“Sit,” he pointed to the seat across from him.

Adam obeyed silently.

Dr. Sheridan looked up, his green eyes meeting hers intently.

“I had to be given a little outside perspective from the female staff on this matter,” he said, “and, it was offered to me with quite some, well, to be polite I will use the word ‘vigor’.” He scoffed. “I haven’t been called so many names since I was bullied in primary school. I’ve come to understand that what I did, removing your reproductive organs, sterilizing you without your knowledge knowing you may wake up a fully conscious being, was at minimum unethical. We should have waited to see how the technology would respond to your rising and falling hormone levels rather than assuming they'd react negatively. I suppose, while a shock to all of us and still unexplained, your body regenerating a whole organ system seems to be a blessing, undoing my arrogant mistake.”

Adam waited for him to continue.

“In short,” Dr. Sheridan sighed. “For what it is worth, I am sorry.”

“I accept your apology,” Adam said stiffly. “Out of curiosity. Did you sterilize the guys too? The topic came up.”

“Male hormones don’t fluctuate the way female hormones do,” Dr. Sheridan said. “And, they actually rely on the organs to balance their hormone levels.”

“I think they’ll find some consolation in that,” Adam nodded. “Is that all you wanted to say?”

Dr. Sheridan stared at her for a long moment before shaking his head, “no, that’s all.”

Adam stood up. “Thank you,” she said cooly as she made her way out the door.

True to his word, Dr. Sheridan provided them with a high end VR system in both the livingroom and the rec room. Each of them received a box of items. Evander’s box contained rock albums, models of muscle cars and motorcycles, posters of tattoo art and a variety of action movies. Lucian’s box contained some old western movies, a cowboy hat, a big belt buckle and a potted cactus plant that seemed to amuse him a great deal. Adam put off opening her box until night time. Her briefing on the procedures performed on her were set for the same day.

She sat on the exam table as Jessie loaded a file up on a large computer screen. Emily stood near the bed, ready to jump in to provide emotional support.

“This is going to be grizzly,” she said. “Your passing was not… pretty.”

Images loaded on the screen. Adam found herself looking at her own lifeless body. While she was laying on her stomach, her head was twisted so far around, she nearly faced the camera. Her left leg and arm were also severely contorted as well as her right ankle.

“What killed you was internal decapitation,” Jessie said. “You’re left leg and arm both were almost completely shattered, right ankle and foot broken. Several broken ribs, one puncturing your heart.”

“All that from a skateboarding accident?” Emily cringed.

“Adam was at the top of a ramp when one of the trucks on her skateboard snapped,” Jessie said. “If she hadn’t died instantly, she’d have been in a wheel chair for the rest of her life, at best.”

“Does that happen a lot?” Emily asked. “Trucks snapping?”

“No,” Jessie and Adam said in tandem.

Jessie cast a glance at her before going to the next slide showing a variety of metal hardware.

“A lot of these procedure would have used screws and bolts to reconstruct the existing bone back together as much as possible, we however opted to replace the bone structure with prosthetic made with the same metal alloys as the nanites. There are microscopic chips inside the prosthetics that act like nerve connections telling the new ‘bone’ what to feel, how to move, how to connect to muscle tissue. You’re whole neck,” she flipped to the next slide, “and part of the jaw, I forgot to mention that, are metal, there are more than one hundred microchips in those sections of replaced bone alone.”

Adam couldn’t help but grimace a little at the image of the metal hardware exposed inside her own open flesh.

“Once we finished the physical procedures, repairing your ribs, the sterilization, pinning your ankle, we injected the nanites. If you’ll look over here,” Jessie said, flipping a switch on her microscope causing an image to appear on the screen above it. “These are the nanites we put in your brain specifically.”

She slid a slide into the microscope. Little silver orbs skittered about against the white background, little blue lights flashing from all sides.

“They’re hard wired to work and communicate with several microchips in your brain, implanted in different areas to support motor function, cognitive function and learning capacity. They’re responsible for repairing your brain and reactivating it, like a million little jumper cables.”

“How are they different from the square ones you showed me?” Adam asked.

“The square ones,” Jessie said, changing out the slides to show the square nanites. “are made specifically to be compatible with your body. They rebuild and regenerate muscle tissue, organ tissue and nerves. They’re designed to adapt and mutate to your body’s needs.” This, she switched slides again. “Is what they’ve evolved into since living in your body.” Among red blood cells, puck shaped nanites motivated around with thin, wire-like appendages. “What we can’t figure out is how your nanites are still so crude in design and yet you seem so advanced. We searched your muscle tissue, organ tissues, all your nanites appear to be mimicking blood cells in shape.”

“Crude?” Adam asked.

“Here’s a look at Lucian’s nanites,” Jessie said.

She switched to another slide. Nanites of a variety of shapes filled the screen, some hexagonal, some orbs with spines all around the surface, saucer shapes, oblong shapes and more living among organic cells and tissues.

“That’s weird, right?” Adam looked at Emily.

Emily nodded in agreement, her brows furrowed deeply.

“What else?” Adam asked.

“Well,” Jessie said, “once we had all the hardware inside. We flipped the proverbial ‘on’ switch. A frequency the nanites are designed to respond to in order to activate. And, just so you know, there is no ‘deactivation’ frequency. Here,” she handed Adam a folder, “this is a complete list of every procedure, the technical term and a layman’s description.”

“Is that it?” Adam asked.

“Oh heavens no,” Jessie sighed. “Getting you breathing again was only half the battle. You woke up a grand total of eight times. Each time, we had to troubleshoot new issues. Nanites can be tricky. They’ll try to impose their own material on the body some times, replacing organic tissue with metal. The microchips in your language center malfunctioned. Stuff like that. Once all that was taken care of we then had to trouble shoot your body. The process of the body adapting to the prosthetics can be tricky, we had to replace your neck assembly once and your arm twice. We try to keep you guys sedated as much as possible during this part because it’s painful. Finally, we had to support all your organ systems while they reactivated. Digestive system, you tube fed you nutrients to help activate your digestive system. No complications there. Your kidneys tried to fail twice, the repairs to your heart gave way. We brought you back more than once to say the least.”

“So many times,” Adam shook her head in disbelief.

“You think you were bad,” Jessie said. “We resuscitated Lucian eighteen times in total, he spent nearly six months all together on life support systems. He was our first success, once we got a heart beat and brain waves, we weren’t going to give up on him.”

Emily swore and shook her head.

Adam turned and looked at her. “What?”

“It’s just,” Emily shifted uncomfortably. “It’s not my place.”

“I want to hear it,” Adam said.

Emily looked at Jessie who shrugged and urged her to speak.

“Resuscitation is brutal,” Emily said. “I’ve seen it done a couple times and it’s not pretty and, eighteen times?” She shook her head. “Did you ever ask yourself if you were playing God?”

Jessie’s countenance became blank, he dark eyes darkening. “Maybe playing God is exactly what we are doing here,” she said so quietly it was almost a whisper, “but, if we are, we’re far less cruel than the real deal. This technology could make cancer, diabetes, heart disease, tumors, paralysis all obsolete. No more lives diminished and destroyed by a random draw of the short straw. The means to such an end aren’t always pretty.”

“So, it’s all ‘for the greater good’ then?” Emily said. “Did you have to take any history classes in college?”

Jessie didn’t respond immediately. She lowered her gaze to the floor and shook her head.

“Maybe you should remember that you make a killing in this job,” she said finally, looking up and meeting Emily’s gaze. “There’s a reason you’re in the residential side and I’m in the lab. You’ve been wandering outside your lane a lot lately and Dr. Sheridan is becoming concerned that you are going to be a liability to this project. I would keep my head down and do your job as it is described in your contract if I were you.”

Adam was shocked by the usually docile Jessie’s sudden combativeness. Emily’s eyebrows raised and lips pursed. At first, Adam thought she was going to argue but, with a soft scoff, she waved her hand back at the computer screen.

Jessie spun her chair back around and loaded up a final image of a prosthetic eye ball.

“We didn’t realize until he woke up for the first time that your left eye was not functioning, likely a result of the trauma of your accident.” She spoke stiffly, as if she was reading off a script. “We replaced your eye with a high tech prosthetic designed to communicate with a microchip wired into the nerves of your right eye and the rest of the brain. We matched the color as well as we could. There’s a photosensitive lense where the pupil would be, calibrated to respond to light as your natural pupil would. You may notice that you have increased acuity in your left eye if you close the right. In fact, because of the way the nanites seem to work, it’s likely that all your senses are enhanced beyond regular human capacity. It’s an inadvertent result of the technology. The nanites were designed to return the human body to ideal form, it has superseded our expectations.”

“I bet that’s why Lucian’s such a foodie,” Emily noted. “Everything tastes amazing to him because he can taste more than the rest of us can.”

“Evander likes TV because he sees details that a normal person wouldn’t,” Adam suggested.

“You like smelly-goods so much because you can smell more than the rest of us,” Emily added. “I noticed you ordered some essential oils and lotions. As far as you all can tell, you’re experiencing your senses like brand new children, and you’ve found things you prefer that kind of match your personalities. Food is culture, family, friends and celebration. Lucian is a people person. Smells are like little messengers about your environment. You’re observant and curiose. Evander is all cold, hard facts. He likes what he can see.”

Jessie spun around. “That’s really insightful, Emily.” She said. “Can you make a notation of that in your files? It might be helpful.”

Adam looked from one to another. It seemed as if there was a soft tension in the air. Emily cast an appreciative smile at Jessie. It seemed, despite the turse exchange, the two held no real maliciousness towards one another.

After dinner, Adam retreated to her room. She sat down on her bed and opened the box Jessie had given her. Inside she found a variety CDs of different genres, skate boarding posters, stickers, posters with quotes from Albert Einstein, Rumi, and Emilia Earhart. To her surprise, there was also a little, sparkly, dark purple teddy bear. She almost thought it ridiculous but as she lifted the bear and caressed the soft, furry material, she felt a strange tug inside her, a strange sense of affection for it. Gently, she set the bear on the nightstand next to the bottle of perfume from Dr. Sheridan, straightening the silk bow around its neck before turning back to the box.

She didn’t find much in the box of real interest to her. Nonetheless, she hung a couple of the posters, thinking the quotes did offer agreeable sentiment. As she laid down in the bed she thought long and hard about the day’s events.

There was a tap on the door and as she answered, she was surprised to see Jessie and Emily both standing there, looking over their shoulders. Emily held a bag in front of her. Emily smiled and held a finger to her lips as she made her way in to the room. Jessie followed behind and shut the door behind her.

“What’s going on?” Adam asked.

“Well, we as the only women on the main staff have a bit of a tradition,” Emily said. “And, since you joined the house, we thought we’d include you. If you’re game.”

“We came up with this years ago,” Jessie said. “Too many male dominated workplaces feed off the drama of female staff getting catty with each other. So, any time Emily and I have a disagreement, we bury the hatchet as quickly as possible with our own little party.”

Emily sat the bag down on the bed and began pulling items out. Three small tubs of icecream, a bag of popcorn, a bottle of wine, paper cups and a few DVDs.

“Now, you never got to celebrate your twenty-first birthday,” Jessie said. “So, we brought wine, but also,” she pulled some cans out of the pocket of her lab coat. “Margaritas, or the closest thing to them we could get to sneak in here.”

Adam looked from one to the other. “So, you aren’t mad at eachother?”

“This job pushes a lot of buttons for a lot of people,” Emily said. “We’re going to disagree on a lot of fronts. If I stormed off and quit because I don’t agree with everything, they’d just hire someone else to do my job and the higher ups would probably screw me in trying to get a new job. I can still do good for you guys while I’m here.”

“And, if I let everyone who has a moral objection to what we’re doing bug me, well, my degrees would all be useless and I’d probably be waiting tables,” Jessie said.

“We keep the peace as best we can,” Emily said. “And, we have fun doing it. So, the question I have is…” she lifted up two movies, “chick flick or horror?”

Adam couldn’t help but smile for some reason. They settled on the horror movie and put Adam’s laptop on the bed. They all huddled together with their drinks and snacks, barely paying any attention to the movie as they talked among each other and laughed. As she joined in, Adam couldn’t help but wonder if this is what being a real person really felt like.