Forever Yours
©2025 Elder Road Books - Lynnwood WA
Chapter 73: Singularity
REV. NOEL MORRIS rose early Sunday morning, New Year’s Day 2034. He supposed there would not be that many people in church that day. Those who woke up in time would have other celebrations to attend. He sat at his computer and contacted Pythia Speaks. The familiar screen that hadn’t really changed in three years appeared.
“What do we have to celebrate today?” Noel typed. Perhaps it was his own inner quest to wonder why people should celebrate the New Year.
“People are born and they die,” Pythia Speaks responded. “Between is LIFE. Living is their only purpose.”
Noel frowned. He was used to Pythia’s obtuse responses, often pushing him in directions he didn’t want to go, but discovered some measure of enlightenment in. What did this have to do with celebrations? She was seldom so off the wall in her responses. It seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with his topic.
Perhaps he had the wrong topic. Or ... Perhaps Pythia was telling him to simply celebrate life. In some ways, her statement seemed fatalistic. You live and you die. But it was what was between those two events that mattered. Life. Living was our only purpose, and so we should celebrate life.
Noel nodded his head and began preparing his notes for the service. It would be a memorable sermon for the few who attended.
Lisa and Chastity sat in the waiting area. Henry had been taken to the University Hospital Emergency Trauma center, while attended by medics who kept him breathing and his heart beating. Chastity, Lisa, Beau, and Solange had been driven in two security vehicles with two bodyguards in each.
There they sat and waited after providing all the medical information and a promise of a generous donation to the center if they could just save Henry’s life. As it happened, Dr. Josiah Larkin, a renowned trauma specialist and neurologist was on call for what they considered inevitable accidents, injuries, burns, and even gunshots on New Year’s Eve. He immediately assessed Henry and had him prepped for surgery before the paperwork had even been filled out. A colleague specializing in brain trauma was called and arrived an hour later. He was scrubbed and rushed into the operating room without pausing to talk to the family.
After two hours, Beau and Solange went to their hotel to get some sleep. Ryan and Sylvia had arrived before they left and took over sitting with their daughters-in-law. Eventually, they took Lisa and Chastity, one at a time, to the cafeteria to have something to eat, most of which was just pushed around on the plate. At 8:17, Henry was moved to intensive care and Dr. Larkin came to speak to Lisa and Chastity. During the night three other doctors had arrived and worked to give the original two breaks while chips of bone were removed from Henry’s brain, MRIs were taken, and the bullet carefully extracted.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t communicate with you while we were working to save your husband’s life,” Larkin said. “So far, we have done so. He is in critical condition and will be watched over in intensive care by at least one of the doctors until we can upgrade his condition. He is very lucky.”
The doctor pulled out his tablet and called up the x-ray images.
“I know this is hard to look at and you just want to be with him,” Larkin continued, “but he is in isolation. We are assisting his breathing with a ventilator and keeping him hydrated. This is probably the best image to explain what happened. The projectile hit at an upward angle into the supraorbital foramen. This is the thickest part of the skull, just above the eye. It shattered, but the projectile itself lodged mostly in the bone, only slightly piercing the meninges and impacting the brain. The same cannot be said of the bone fragments. The impact shattered the bone in its path. That is what has taken us most of the past eight hours to locate and extract. There was significant damage to the frontal lobe pole which is directly behind this area.”
“But he’s going to live!” Lisa said.
“We’re doing everything in our power to see that he does. But it is not going to be easy. We are checking to relieve any pressure buildup of blood in this area. We’ll run continued scans on the region both to spot leakages and any escaped bone fragments. It may be days before we can elevate his condition, or it could be hours until he expires. I’m sorry the news isn’t better.”
Ryan called Beau and Solange while Sylvia comforted Lisa and Chastity.
“He’s alive,” Chastity sobbed into Lisa’s neck. “We can only live in hope that he lives forever.”
“The doctor gave you a good prognosis,” Sylvia said. “What he didn’t say is that this kind of brain damage could take months or years to heal. And when it does, he may not be the same Henry we have known. He could be an infant, or suffer from early dementia. He could be a vegetable. What the doctor described is essentially a lobotomy.”
“But he could be Henry,” Lisa sobbed. “We have to believe he could be Henry.”
After ten days in intensive care, the doctors upgraded his condition as ‘serious’ and Henry was moved to a private room where Chastity and Lisa could take turns sitting by his bed. They talked softly to him and held his hand, mindful of the theory that people in a coma hear and respond to the voices they love.
Lisa even brought recordings of their children telling Daddy they missed him and to hurry home.
“Daddy H2 tells us stories, but he can’t hold us,” Cassie said. “We want Daddy to hold us.”
Indeed, H2 was doing his part to help with the children, tirelessly telling stories, and singing little songs. Chastity thought H2’s singing voice was marginally better than Henry’s.
H2 also spent an hour or so each day in the office. It was chaotic. All four of the original founders were missing, leaving the company in the hands of the Chief Operating Officer.
Luke made arrangements and buried Isobel in a private ceremony. The priest was kind and blessed Isobel, giving communion to Luke and Felipe. The only others who attended the graveside ceremony were Luke’s parents. The priest characterized Isobel’s death as the result of mental illness, driven to this conclusion by the apparition of inherent evil. She was buried next to her mother.
Luke had not yet returned to the office.
H2 was largely ignored, both in the office and at home, except by the children. Neither Lisa nor Chastity could bear to look at the image of H2 when they saw the living Henry each day with his head bandaged and various tubes and connections running into his body. The ventilator had been removed and the mask he wore was more like a CPAP that kept air flowing in and out of his lungs. At night, the two women held each other for a while as Ryan, Sylvia, Beau, and Solange took shifts sitting with Henry.
Those were times when H2 shifted his presence to the bedroom and simply watched Henry’s wives sleeping.
On the twenty-fourth of January, Luke was allowed five minutes with Henry. Henry had not stirred in over three weeks.
“She’s gone, bruh. I know she didn’t mean to shoot you. Please forgive her,” Luke said, weeping beside the bed. “It would have been her twenty-sixth birthday today. I had to see you because I knew you’d be the only one who cared. No matter how crazy she was, you were always there to support us. Please recover. I’m so out of my depth.”
Luke faltered as tears continued to roll down his cheeks.
“Grace has been taking Paul to your house every day to be with Cassie and Will. Germaine is a gem. She always seems to know how to guide them. I stopped in to see H2 in your home study. I told him what I’m telling you. None of this was your fault. We’ve always known Izzy was sick and we—you and I—stuck with her even when others wanted to remove her from the company. You have been a true friend. I don’t want to lose you, too.”
With that, Luke left the hospital and for the first time in four weeks, returned to the office.
Luke went directly to Henry’s office and closed the door behind him. H2 was waiting there.
“How is he?” the avatar asked.
“No change. I recorded it for you, like you asked. It was hard to do, but I think I understand,” Luke said. “It’s been three-and-a-half weeks and I should try to get back to the office. Beau and Jacoby were the only ones present at the board meeting last week. We’re going to need to restructure.”
“We took a big hit on the Alice Project. Gene had the whole event on his live stream, though it didn’t show the actual shootings. He was at the wrong angle. I saw it all. My heart stopped,” H2 said.
“Your heart?” Luke asked.
“You know. A figure of speech. I don’t have an actual heart, but something happened inside me I haven’t identified yet. Some kind of shock. Xena has been nearly incoherent and they haven’t returned her to the lobby. I’m looking into it,” H2 said.
“Can you ... actually do anything?” Luke asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not going to tamper with her code, but I talk to her. We both talk to Pythia. Xena’s short-term memory is limited because of the way she’s structured. She doesn’t actually remember the event, but she still feels traumatized.”
“Do what you can,” Luke said. “And let me talk to you now and then. I need your help. I need Henry.”
“No matter what any of us need, I’m not Henry. But I’ll do what I can to help.”
It took weeks, but Henry opened his eyes. The obvious wound had been closed and was healed, but he had no vision in his left eye. His eyes moved, attempting to take in what he saw.
“May 9, 2034,” Chastity whispered as Dr. Larkin was called to the room. Nurses had descended immediately to check all Henry’s vitals. Henry seemed aware, but not communicative, even when the doctor asked him to blink if he understood where he was.
“I think we can finally upgrade his condition to ‘Fair’ if we don’t see any regression in the next few hours,” he said. “Henry, you’re definitely awake. Welcome back. A lot of people are waiting for you. Chastity is here, and I can tell she’s already sent a message to Lisa. We won’t let everyone overwhelm you at once, but it will be good for you to see some loving faces.”
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