Read Online Coming of Age: Volume 1: Eternal Life by Thomas T. Thomas - Free Book Online Page A

and what you see into the written word. Fortunately, Wernicke’s area itself seems to be unaffected.”
    Otherwise, you’d be talking to a brick, wouldn’t you? Wells thought to herself. But then again, maybe I am a brick, and these men are not really here.
    “Of course, Miz Wells,” said one of the others, perhaps Anderson, “references to ‘Broca’s area’ or ‘Wernicke’s area’ are merely generalizations from nineteenth-century anatomists and psychiatrists. Nowadays, with better neural imaging, we tend to think the actual processing of any function is more distributed—that is, it takes place over a much broader surface of the temporal lobes.”
    “Total blackout in either area?” asked the other one, perhaps Adamson.
    “Oh, nothing total, ” Bajwa said. “The entire lobe shows remarkable activity.”
    “Good, good. We’ll need that to build on,” said the man named Anderson.
    Bajwa turned back to Wells. “These gentlemen have a new therapy we’d like to try with you. Because you’re in excellent health—I mean, other than problems resulting from the stroke—and you’re of suitable age, we all feel you would be a perfect candidate. You see, they propose to take some of the cells from your body and teach them to be new brain cells. Then those cells can help rebuild the parts that you lost in the stroke.”
    “You see, Ms. Wells,” Anderson began, “the brain is both ductile and resilient—”
    “Simple words, Doctor?” Bajwa prompted.
    “Ah, yes, by which I mean, the brain is … like plastic, it can mold itself, adapt, even repair itself and build new connections—given the right materials and a nudge in the right direction.”
    Antigone Wells tried to dredge up words from that gray place, from something she had read or heard sometime before the stroke. Her brain offered: “Stem …?”
    “Exactly!” Adamson said. “Oh, very good! Yes, stem cells.”
    “It’s a cellular regenerative therapy,” Anderson went on, “that has been in trials for some years and is now coming into general use.”
    “Oh … kay,” Wells said. “Give … words.”
    “Good. Now that we have your verbal consent …” Adamson laid a case on the tray table attached to her hospital bed and snapped it open. He took out papers covered with those twisting, branching images. His partner uncapped a fountain pen and handed it to him. “Next we must acquire what’s called ‘informed consent,’ which means that we ask you to read and sign these documents …”
    Antigone Wells smiled at the man expectantly, waiting for him to catch on.
    “Oh, dear,” he said. “But how can you …?”
    “Verbal … contract …” She groped for a word, the name of an identity she knew she had once held close to her heart. It was only four days ago—certainly less than fourteen days. She tapped her breastbone. “… lawyer.”
    When he still hesitated, Wells reached for the papers with her good left hand and for the pen with her right. Her fingers flopped a bit as she tried to take the barrel from his unresisting grasp. She set the papers on her lap and flipped them over one by one, looking for something. She didn’t know what exactly, but she would recognize … a long straight line! With uneven pressure, and not sure which way the pen’s nib was pointing, she made a mark against that line. One way, then the other, leaving a long dent in the paper and a darkened hole, if not exactly a mark.
    “Consent,” she said clearly. She nodded at the other man and then at Bajwa. “Witness—ses …”
    Then she lay back, too tired from the effort to try anymore.
    * * *
    Inside the Induced Pluripotency Laboratory at Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto, clinical technologist Tina Gonzales reviewed the list of the day’s setups. Among the twenty-one treatments to be prepared were three tissue samples from a patient identified as “Praxis_J” and one from patient “Wells_A.” All four had come in overnight on blue ice from