Madie had promptly quit her waitress job. She remained awestruck for three hours. She had brought a dead man back to life. He remained unconscious on her lab table/hospital bed while she paced near the computer station. She knew her theories would work, but she was still coming to terms with the reality that she had completed her experiment. Seven long years. Five at the facility in Washington and two in her own little lab she built after being fired. After seven years, she had done what everyone thought was impossible. Only a few had even attempted what she had. To her knowledge, she was the first to succeed.
She felt unsure about what to do next for the first time in her memory, so she went into autopilot and began checking the reanimated man’s vitals every fifteen minutes. She searched her desk to find the few pages that the coroner gave her.
- Name: Adam Robert Monteller
- Birth: 23 April, 1974
- City of Birth: Harrisburg, Illinois
- Deceased: 16 September, 2006
- Location Pronounced Deceased: Necaise, Mississippi
- Cause of death: Automobile Accident
- Age: 32
- Height: 6′ 2″
- Weight: 224 (12 hours posthumously)
- Marital Status: Never Married
- Next of Kin: None
And at the very end it read:
- Remains to be cremated per city ordinance
The entire world believed Adam Robert Monteller had died and was cremated as directed by local legislature regarding unclaimed persons. That is, if anyone was even looking to know that information.
In reality, Adam had been brought back from death in the basement of a house leased to one Marcy Reynolds, the alias Madie had created in case any persons clad in black suits came looking for her. She assumed she would have been added to the national watch-list upon leaving her well-funded and well-guarded laboratory environment. She was surprised they never came looking for her when she used her real name. She was very careful to maintain a visage of normalcy. She even acquired a job a local university teaching biology for the first year after being forced out.
Now she had accomplished her life’s work. A dead man was no longer dead. She jot down a few notes and checked on Adam. The anesthesia wore off after a few hours and he came to. He groaned, and Madie rolled her chair over to him ready to interact. She also had a dose of anesthesia ready should she need it.
“Adam?”
He groaned and his head lolled from side to side. He was still feeling the drugs.
“Adam? Can you hear me?”
Another groan, but he was able to direct his attention toward her. His eyes were slowly adjusting. She gave him time.
“Where….where am I?”
Madie smiled. “You are in a recovery room. You had a bad accident. Do you remember anything about it?”
“I…I can’t…”
“It’s okay. It may take some time. You are still feeling the effects of the anesthesia. Do you think you can drink some water?”
She rolled over and grabbed the bottle of water from the fridge unit by her desk. She cracked it open and held it to his lips. He groaned in pain and she forced him back into the bed. He was able to take two sips before the pain caused his consciousness to slip.
“Careful,” she said, “We don’t want to open the incision. You must be in a great deal of pain. I will give you some medicine to help you rest.”
She reached for the anesthetic, realized her mistake, then quickly gave him a dose of morphine instead. He drifted into a deep sleep within a few minutes.
Madie hung her head. “Idiot,” she muttered to herself. She had pushed the original dose of anesthesia in a temporary moment of panic when he first started regaining consciousness. Now she would have to wait almost twenty-four hours before she could begin Phase 2.
She lived a few blocks from a local hospital where she knew the local ER doctor from her days back in medical school. Her name was Rachel. She was brilliant and could have been a top-class surgeon if she had the desire, but she insisted she was happy helping those who needed help in a crisis. She had almost become a pediatrician.
Madie strolled into the sparsely populated waiting room and asked for Rachel. A few minutes later Rachel came out and greeted her.
“Madie. Good to see you again. Let’s go back to my office.”
Madie followed her through the hallway of evenly spaced rooms and back to a small closet of an office. Rachel shut the door behind them.
“I hope those supplies I gave you helped your friend.”
“They did. I was hoping that I might get just a few more things. I promise it will be the last of it.”
Rachel gave her a side-eyed glance. “You know I could get in a lot of trouble for what I gave you already, right?”
“I know, and I appreciate everything you’ve done.”
Rachel sighed. “What more would you need?”
“Just an IV kit with a spare bag, and some Vicodin if you have some.”
“I can give you the IV, but Hydrocodone will have to do for the pain. You friend got pretty banged up, huh? You should have brought him in to see me.”
“It’s…complicated. He isn’t necessarily in good standing with the law.”
“What did he do?”
“Well…” Madie shrugged.
“You know what? Never mind. If I don’t know, then I can’t lie of the authorities come knocking on my door. You’re more than capable to care for anyone. We could actually use your help around here. Need a job?”
“Maybe after a while. I appreciate the assistance. And the discretion.”
“No problem. You know me. I just want to help people get back on their feet.”
“And you will be doing that for sure. Thank you so much.”
The saline solution helped accelerate the removal of the anesthesia. Madie waited a few extra hours to ensure that there would be no chance of the drug in Adam’s system before she opened a refrigerated drawer and lifted two syringes from it. One held a blue solution, the other a dark purple. She pushed them both simultaneously. The blue into the injection port of the IV and the dark purple into the injection port of the dialysis machine she had Adam hooked up to ensure any toxins were removed from his blood.
The concoction was designed to reverse any damage dealt to the body while it had been deceased and promote healing at quicker rate than would be considered normal. A separate solution remained in the drawer that she hoped wouldn’t be needed. She would only be able to make that decision after she could talk to him for a length of time. Time enough to determine if his brain was functioning correctly.
She reviewed the readout from the EEG machine. So far there hadn’t been any unusual activity.
Madie waited an entire day before beginning her conversations. Even though Adam was barely able to keep a string of thoughts together, she decided she may need to push him to determine if her third solution was needed. She considered using it anyway since it was theoretically designed to repair synaptic connections. The potential harm or cause of side-effects of using the solution unnecessarily was low, but she didn’t want to add any risks to her already successful reanimation.
Adam woke from what seemed to be a peaceful sleep. Madie gave him some water and asked if he was ready for some questions. He perked up, ready for the challenge, so she turned on the recording devices and began.
“Your name is Adam Robert Monteller, correct?” She glanced up from her clipboard. His eyes looked unfocused and she thought maybe he hadn’t heard her. Then a frown formed on his face.
“No,” he said.
Ryan Yarber 
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