Heart and Soul (WBTY 2014 Entry Round 2)

Heart and Soul

by: RaggedyCat

***

"Patient is brain-dead."

"Time?"

"Twelve o' seven, doctor."

A team of three had been trying to confirm Philip Nuvali's brain death for the past twenty minutes. They checked for legitimate reflexes and bodily functions that could spare any hope that Philip could still be revived.

His heart hadn't stopped, but his brain had ceased all activity.

Doctor Martin met the boy's sobbing mother at the Intensive Care Unit doorway. Mrs. Nuvali wanted to be convinced that her seventeen-year-old son was still wholly alive. He was too young to stop living! He had a whole life ahead of him. She could care less about Philip's research. She wanted her son back, because Philip simply had too many dreams.

Doctor Martin knew he had to say it. "Mrs. Nuvali..."

"But his heart's still beating, right?" whispered the woman. She had sent for her husband and their daughter not ten minutes ago, when the ICU staff informed her that Philip had gone into seizures.

"Yes," said Dr. Martin unceremoniously.

"Then there's still hope, doctor, Philip could still be resuscitated..."

Dr. Martin didn't mean to be cold and too straightforward, but Mrs. Nuvali had to simply accept the fact that her son was as good as gone.

"Mrs. Nuvali, 'brain death' is just a term." Dr. Martin paused for a moment; it would be like ramming the mother in the heart with an icy steel blade. "Brain death IS death. I'm sorry."

Mrs. Nuvali's eyes were suddenly flaring. She raised her voice in keen desperation. "You have ALL the technology in the world, and yet you couldn't save a boy's life! You have all the equipment for Project Eden, and yet none to save him..."

Dr. Martin could do little to further console the grieving mother when one of the nurses walked to his side. "Excuse me, doctor. You have a call. It's urgent."

For a moment, he was torn whether to take the call or to remain by Mrs. Nuvali's side until her family arrived. Mrs. Nuvali, however, had calmed down but her voice had every stroke of bitterness. "Go," she told him. "Just go and take your damn call."

With a nod, Dr. Martin strode back into the ICU to his office, glancing in passing at the still body of Philip Nuvali hooked into life support. Philip Nuvali. What a loss of an extraordinary mind.

***

"It's the doctor, Momma," declared nine-year-old Elisia as Dr. Martin stepped out to meet the Nuvali family head-on once more.

Dr. Martin's face was stern; he realized the gravity of the situation the moment he accepted the call from Project Eden's lead staff. One of them was his superior, Dr. de Angelo, who was a medical doctor as well as a PhD holder in the field of Paratechnology.

"Please," Dr. Martin said gently, noting the confused and tear-stained faces around him, "step into my office."

Philip Nuvali was Project Eden's boy genius-a proprietor who, at age thirteen, had began working with men and women more than twice his age. Earth was dying; the atmosphere had become too unbearable, with life forms depleted and disappearing. Soon, Earth will become un-livable, but a huge team of scientists worked on ways to reverse the damage. However, resources were scarce. The world governments found it surprisingly more reasonable to take Earth's population to four dwarf planets of the Solar System-Ceres, Eris, Charon, and Pluto-in order to continue living.