Changelings of Science

It was dark, that’s the first thing that came to mind, the first thing I would remember. Not until I had accepted the darkness, the sound registered. Faint, like sounds in a shell on the beach, muted so as to not wake me from the slumber I was breaking free from.

Then I opened the eyes. I say the eyes, because they weren’t really mine yet. Bright light cut into the eyes and I tried to blink it away, to shut it out, but they wouldn't obey my meek command. Even swallowing was not under my control, breathing was something I needed help with. The focus of the world adjusted, like taking on glasses. Colorful dots danced over fluorescent light the eyes forced me to look at.

“Good to see you opening the eyes,” a voice said close to me, even though it sounded distant. The brightness moved and the back attached to me shifted, realizing I was the one in movement. When sight focused again a man was sitting at the end of the bed I was now sitting in. Only his white coat paler than his thin skin plastered over his face, his eyes assessing me, hungry almost to devour any details he would pick up on.

“Welcome back to life,” he said as he scribbled something on his tablet, peering over shiny glasses. I wanted to thank him, but the mouth wouldn’t move. Weird sounds I didn’t recognize as my voice came instead. He scribbled some more.

“It will take some time until you regain full control over your bodily functions. The human body is a complicated machinery to learn to drive.”

Scared, I forced the eyes I saw the world through to move. Black dots darted and made me nauseous. The doctor at my side put a hand on my shoulder, the sensation strange and foreign. The touch itself needed a long time before reaching my brain.

“Take it easy. You're at the hospital, just waking up from the artificial coma we put you under six weeks ago. The operation was successful, but we put you in a respirator, it will help you breath until you have better control over your new body. Do you remember what happened?”

A memory of a kiss on my forehead before darkness swallowed me appeared before disappearing. I managed to close the eyes and the world of darkness felt safer. I needed to go further back, but it was like a forgotten dream, slowly disappearing as I tried remembering. When I opened them again, they were wet. A tear?

The doctor kept telling me it was all ok, there was no reason to be afraid, no wonder I felt disoriented. He walked me through the motions and I felt an aching pain in my brain thunder as small glimpses of myself forced their way into the head. My name was Theresa Maier, twenty seven years old. Before my illness I worked in accounting. At twenty four I got a rare nerve disease forcing me into the wheelchair as my bodily functions shut down one by one. No cure. I would be trapped with a functioning mind in a dead body.

They were all in the back of my mind, a hazy collection of memories, gray days in my office watching the rain awaiting the darkness. A red fury when tying my shoes became harder and harder. He said that when I came to his office, I could barely walk and making a coherent sentence was a trial.

“I promised your life back, Theresa. But to keep my promise, I couldn’t keep your body.”

I felt it before the beeping machines registered it. The pulse, it was rising. It was also scared, this body I inhabited.

“Yes, Theresa, your brain transfer was successful. To save your life we place your mind into another body. The body of a brain dead girl your age, with the same blood type and a DNA match that made us think this could work.”

He leaned closer in and I started to feel the goosebumps growing on my arms out to my neck. I wanted to step back, but confined to the bed, I was unable to respond. In a low voice he said:

“An important thing to remember is the deal we made before the operation. Your life in exchange for your silence. To save your life, Theresa Maier had to die. From now on, your name is Arunny Landrieu. Arunny died in a drowning accident three months ago and has been held artificially alive. She too will have a second chance at life now.”

He said it was enough information at this point and gave me some sedatives to not overwhelm my system. When he left, there was not only a single tear, but a river of them. I didn't know who was crying them – was it the shell of Theresa Maier, now only existing inside someone else's head, or Arunny Landrieu who cried over the memories and the person her body had just lost? The only thing certain when I fell asleep again, was feeling I was no longer any of them.

Everytime I slept, memories returned like an ongoing tv-show. The life of Theresa Maier. Sound of phones calling in the office, clipping of a keyboard. Being bored and waiting for life to start. Then it ended in me waiting for death instead.

But when I managed to move my body to the mirror, it was another face staring back at me. Not a single trace of who I was remained, not a single freckle, not a strand of the red hair. Dark eyes stared back instead, making me afraid to look directly in them. It was like Arunny was the one glaring back, angry I had stolen her body. I knew it was me though, Theresa Maier who had accepted the operation. No, begged for it is more accurate.

The doctors helped me regain autonomy, learning how to spoon my food, walk, talk properly and testing my mind, if I truly had survived the operation without any brain injury. Both bodily and mentally. I answered I was fine, although I felt myself drowning.

I was trained in, not only strength, but also in the life of Arunny. Videos of a family on a beach, images of her kissing her fiance. She was a complete stranger, yet she was now the only thing I saw in the mirror. I moved her body, I used her voice when speaking. She was born in New London of Belgium-French and Nepali parents. Studied art in Barcelona, Yoga in Indonesia. I didn’t know her, I didn’t know anyone like her. I could never be her.

I tried drawing in my eyebrows now a straight line. Eyebrows frame the face they said and I tried to frame it as I remembered, as Theresa had once looked. In the mirror Frankenstein’s creature stared back and I gave up looking in the mirror, being judged by the eyes of Arunny.

The doktor gave me her phone, needing her fingerprint to get in. I felt myself dissociating when it worked and her world was now mine. Clicking into her social media a flood of messages wishing her back, awake and well, telling how much they loved her overwhelmed me enough to shut it off and store it under my pillow. In the night when there was no reflection of Arunny looking back at me, I wondered if there were any messages for Theresa waiting for her to return.

When I moved well enough and remembered our agreement better, they were ready to release me into the world again. They told me my family would pick me up at the rehabilitation center where Arunny had been regaining her memories after waking from her coma and healing.

“Have I? Healed?”

“Arunny, we gave you another chance at life. We are no more than doctors. We did what we could. Now it’s up to you.”

I didn’t react to him calling me Arunny, they all had since I woke up. Reminding me of our agreement, reminding me that Theresa was dead.

I was given huge sunglasses to dampen the colors that could overwhelm me. Monitoring the oxygen to my brain had been their main concern and tubes had helped me breath all this time. They removed them and drew my first breath as a free human, or a trapped one, I could not decide.

“Don’t do too much,” I was told. A warning or an advice. When the door opened three pairs of eyes stared at me. A small woman put her arms around me and cried into my shoulder, talking to me in a foreign language. My mother, I was thinking, not even talking in her tongue.

A man smiled at me as the mother had to back up to breath and look at me, touching me to make sure I was real. “Mon cœur," he said and I hoped there was one language we could share. He leaned forward and put his forehead against mine, sighing like all of his worries disappeared.

Such a tight knit family I hardly knew where I ended and they started. My sweater was wet with her tears, the warmth of the fathers skin against mine. This is love, I realized, looking at them from their eyes, waiting for months to get their daughter back. Had they? At that moment it felt like it was Arunny Landrieu who had survived the operation, not Theresa Maier.

“Arunny?”

I turned and faced the man that had waited impatiently for the parents to get the first hug. It was Christopher, coming towards me, almost shy. I smiled, remembering him from pictures. It seemed to be something within me that edged me towards him, like Arunny’s muscle memory being attracted to him, my fiance. I hugged him and let me feel the love he gave me, although it was meant for someone else. I hugged him back, clutching to his body as my loving parents were standing at the side, ready to come to my side when I wanted and needed.

My knuckles whitened, a strength suddenly flooding through me. I peered up and got a glimpse of myself in the reflection in the glass window. Distorted perhaps, but more recognizable than I had been since I woke up. I smiled, seeing my lips curl and whispered in a voice so low it could belong to anyone, even me.

“Let’s go home.”