Ashley Bell (Ashley Bell #1)(100)
As they shook hands, Dr. Sanjay Chandra said, “When I told Bibi that she had one year to live, she gave me this look, such a look, I don’t think I could have broken eye contact if I tried, and she said, ‘Really just one year? We’ll see.’ We’ll see! I’ve been so impressed with her, I’ve allowed myself the unallowable, to think that, well, maybe she’ll gain another year or two, even be the first to beat this thing, maybe do the impossible. But now this coma and these…these phenomena. I’ve no idea what to make of this. I’ll need extensive consultation with colleagues, other oncologists, neurologists, I don’t even know who yet.”
He rounded the bed to Bibi’s left side, to the EEG workstation that stood on a trolley cart. As he used the keyboard and pointed to things of interest that he called forth on the monitor, he spoke of the five brain waves—gamma, beta, alpha, theta, delta—of their frequency ranges, their amplitude, their purpose in optimal mental functioning. At times there were twenty wave-tracking readouts on the screen at once, not five, but they represented the feeds from the many electrodes in the electro cap that Bibi wore. The system was also capable of 3-D brain mapping from four perspectives, and Dr. Chandra brought some of those images onto the screen, not maps of Bibi’s brain in the moment, but selected studies from the past few days, about which he had particular comments. There were as well a feature called coherence analysis and another called power-spectra displays.
Pax understood more of it than he might have if anyone but Dr. Chandra had explained it, though most of the information passed as far over his head as a 747 at cruising altitude.
He came away with the essence of the situation, however, and that was enough to confirm what he suspected. Something unprecedented was happening, something as consequential as it was strange. It might be a historic development in the annals of medicine, but perhaps historic also in a broader sense.
Each of the five brain waves was indicative of a specific brain function, and there was an ideal level that represented superior performance. Gamma waves were associated with learning, cognition, perception, information processing, and the binding of all senses into a coherent order. Too little gamma activity signified learning disabilities and depression. Too much was linked to anxiety and stress. Optimal beta waves ensured good memory and problem solving. Ideal alpha waves were present when you were relaxed but with good focus, not daydreaming. Model theta waves meant your creativity, emotional connection, and intuition were all humming at their peak. Optimal delta-wave patterns were present when your immune system and natural-healing capacity were fully engaged, and also indicated deep restful sleep.
“When you’re awake,” Dr. Chandra said, “the five brain waves are ever-present, but only one is dominant at any one time, depending on what state of consciousness you’re in.”
Murphy and Nancy must have heard this before. But she turned her back to the window to listen, and Murphy moved close to Pax, giving his full attention to the physician, as did the two nurses.
Edgar Alwine filmed Dr. Chandra, perhaps not so much as part of his litigation-prevention file, but because he, too, sensed that in this moment, in this room, history might be made.
Calling onto the screen a simpler display than twenty feeds, revealing the five wave patterns of Bibi’s brain in real time, Sanjay Chandra said, “But there is not at any moment a dominant wave in her brain. Right now, each of these patterns is optimal, ideal. There is no precedent for this. It has never been observed before. Until her. And it’s been this way since we first hooked her up to the EEG Thursday morning, three and a half days ago.”
“Could it be a malfunctioning machine?” Paxton asked.
“No. That’s what we thought. But this is the second EEG we’ve used. It’s reporting the same activity as the first.”
“What does it mean?” Alwine asked, prodding the doctor for the purpose of the video.
Chandra regarded the screen in silence for a moment, marveling at the five dancing wave lines. “It means that since falling into the coma, she’s not really been in a coma at all, not as we understand a coma. She’s been in multiple states of consciousness simultaneously, while the rest of us are always in one. She’s at the same time deep asleep and functioning at a high cognitive level. She’s learning and ferociously processing information and rapidly searching her memory and problem solving and being enormously creative, maintaining a vigorous emotional connection—while also deep asleep and dreaming.”
Into Paxton’s mind just then came the beloved voice, clearer than it had been on the previous two occasions, the voice that he had hoped to hear again. Although she spoke only ten words, they were of such importance and had such a powerful impact that, stunned, he gripped the footrail of the bed to steady himself; and had there been a chair nearby, he would have collapsed into it.
Bibi stepped out of Room 6 into post-midnight Laguna Beach. If something had earlier rapped-tapped-scratched the windows and door to get her attention, it was either gone now or watching her from a secluded lair in the white eclipse of fog. Carrying the electronic map in her left hand, the pistol in her right, she walked through dense clouds that all but required radar navigation, the city quieted as if by a plague that had left no animal or insect life in its wake. In the canyons, the coyotes had chosen hunger over a blind hunt and had gone to bed. In their roosts, the birds stood wrapped in silent wings. Only the streetlamps, by their regimented placement, could be known for what they were. All other lights—of homes or businesses, or churches with pastors holding irrational expectations of late-hour converts—were blurred and hazy and forlorn, robbed of defining shapes, their distance impossible to judge, some of them encircled by faint coronas or multiple coronas, but others like sinkholes of light only slight degrees away from going as black as dead stars.