Chapter 3
"This isn't enthusiasm," I said. "This is a patterned response to sensory stimulus."
"You are not a neurologist."
"I'm the person standing beside him long enough to notice he's still in there."
Keller's voice dropped to the register men use when they want a conversation to be over. "If you initiate any unauthorized stimulation protocol with this patient, I will document it as a deviation from the treatment plan. Are we clear?"
I said I understood.
I did not stop.
Two nights later, with Reeves asleep in the folding chair and the generator coughing somewhere behind the tent wall, I ran a final test — a recording of his unit's cadence call, the specific one his squad used during PT, played quietly near his left ear. His heart rate spiked nine beats in four seconds. His left hand curled.
Reeves woke at the change in the monitor tone.
He watched the readout. He watched his soldier's hand.
He did not say anything for a long time. Then he asked me to document everything, in detail, with timestamps, and to bring it to him directly rather than through Keller.
May you like
I did.
What happened over the following weeks did not go the way the version of this story you want to hear usually goes.
