A life less ordinary ||~~Elax/Elmax~~||

Denial

"Morning, did you have fun with Max yesterday?" Karen asked.

El felt her face heat up and prayed that no-one noticed, luckily everyone else was busy inhaling their breakfast, "uh-huh" she said, keeping her head down.

"Good." There was a long pause before she carried on, "um, El? Dr Grant called just before you came down, he wants to see you later" she said, keeping a close eye on El's reaction. Everyone else at the table also paused, waiting.

El took a deep breath, in, out, "when?"

"At 12 o'clock, so you can miss school today."

El picked up her plate, "may I be excused, please?" she asked quietly. Karen nodded with a kind smile and watched as El made her way back upstairs looking as if she had the weight of the world on her shoulders.

*~~~~~~~~~~~~*

"The hospital called, El's appointment is at noon" Karen informed Hopper over the phone, "tell me, how much did you tell Dr Grant?"

Hopper sighed, "number one, I'll drive you, pick you up at 11" he said gruffly, "as for Dr Grant, he's bound by doctor-patient confidentiality so I told him enough for him to know that she has certain abilities and may be linked to the earthquakes...I mean, how else was the study going to be able to pick anything up if the guy assessing her knew nothing?"

"No, I know, chief" Karen conceded, "I always feel uneasy when we widen the circle of people who know is all."

"Yeah, I hear you" he agreed, "see you at 11."

*~~~~~~~~~~~~*

"Good...afternoon, Ms Wheeler" Dr Grant said, checking his watch to see he was correct, "I have the preliminary findings from your sleep study here" he explained, tapping his hand on a manila file folder on his desk, "so we can spend the next couple of hours going over the findings and, if necessary, deciding on the next course of action. How does that sound?" he asked.

"Fine." Karen took her hand, picking up on her nervousness from that one word.

"Ok, so Chief Hopper explained some of the more...unusual aspects of your case" he stated, "taking this into account, and solely looking at the video recording of your sleep, and subsequent nightmares, I do think that there is definitely a relationship between your bad dreams and the earthquakes." He leaned over and pressed play on the VCR. "As you can see by the time stamp, here" he said, using his pen to point at the time on the screen, "El starts having a nightmare at 00:24, and according to official records that is the exact time of the earthquake that night. If we now look at the readings from her brain, you can see a spike in activity pretty much in all regions of the brain, but especially in the motor cortex and also in an area of the brain that we actually know very little about. Her heart rate also increased, I'm guessing an instinctive fight or flight response to whatever the nightmare was about, which in pure physical terms aides the distribution of the large amount epinephrine released into her body as part of that response. It would explain, for one, why she gets so tired." He looked at them to check that they understood what he was saying.

"So, her nightmares and the quakes are definitely linked?" asked Hopper, not understanding most of what Dr Grant had said.

"I'm as sure as I can be, let's put it that way" he replied.

"Is she causing them?" Hopper pressed further, hoping the answer was no.

Taking a few seconds to think about his answer, Dr Grant said "I think she is, yes. The nightmare started first, followed by the quake. It's not exactly the greatest scientific evidence, but that's all we have right now."