When she was just seven years old, Beth had a tumor growing in her brain. No one knew about it until one day when she fainted on the playground. The other kids had circled her and tried to prod her back awake, but eventually, an ambulance was called.
Her parents came into the hospital room just as the doctors finished scanning Beth’s brain. The experts were arguing quietly in another room as Beth’s mom came to hug her, and her dad brought her some chocolate.
Then the doctors came out and explained the situation. They said that if something wasn’t done right away, Beth would be dead before her eighth birthday next month. Her parents didn’t know what to do. Their options ranged from invasive and life-threatening surgery to terrible illness-inducing chemical treatments. All outcomes looked bleak, so they decided to go with the one option with the best chance of a full recovering: surgery.
Beth wasn’t even able to return home before they began preparing her for the operation. It had all been a blur to her, like she was still out on the playground and this was all just a dream. But it wasn’t.
The thing she didn’t realize about the surgery before going under was the cost associated with it, even if it was successful. She thought, if the slim chance of her survival happened to succeed, then she would just be all better and tumor-free. However, the tumor had formed around some crucial parts of her brain, as well as the neural implant she had received at birth.
In the end, she was lucky. They projected about a fourteen percent survival rate, and she made it. They removed the tumor, but unfortunately, they also removed those parts of her brain it had affected. She came out alive and in remission — but she was nearly blinded and entirely deafened.
Her neural implant was entirely destroyed, but it was discovered soon afterward that an old-fashioned cerebral computer would still be viable for her. It didn’t have nearly the same functionality as a modern N.I., but it allowed her to see better and to hear. It wasn’t perfect — the images were sometimes blurry and the sounds muffled — but she could live a normal life.
The thing she kept thinking back to, as she presently sat in her office, was the way her father took care of her. Of course, her mother was there as well, but Beth could tell how much the handicap impacted her. She knew that her mother wasn’t taking it as well as she felt she ought to. But her father, however, was a champion. Every night, and even sometimes throughout the day, he’d be reading to her as she stared in the fuzzy gray that was her visual world whenever she turned off visual processing. At first, it was difficult recognizing his voice through the cerebral computer she had been fitted with. It was outdated technology, so a lot of sounds came in fuzzy and distorted, unrecognizable from their normal counterparts. But it didn’t take long for her to associate those strange sounds with the loving tone of her father’s voice.
Even though she was able to see and hear again, it took years for these functions to be tuned with her brain. She had to have regular checkups with various neuroscientists and bioengineers to figure out how to restore perfect vision and audio. She had to be around fifteen before she heard the sound — the correct sound — of a violin string. It had brought her to tears when she realized how many different tones functioned together to create one beautiful, harmonious note. The years prior were a struggle of angst and emotions as both her and her parents adjusted to the changes.
She remembered her father reading Harry Potter to her, specifically. It was just when she was returning back to school after the surgery, when things were still fuzzy and distorted. She spent a lot of time crying back then, and her dad would never leave her side. Her mother would pop in occasionally to say something loving or to coo over the sight of them both tucked up by Beth’s bed. She would even bring hot cocoa when it was clear Beth wasn’t falling asleep anytime soon.
A door opened in the present world and took Beth out of her trance. She had almost been convinced that she was back in her old bedroom, her dad stroking her hair as he recited the events of the Triwizard Tournament.
Peter So, the coroner, walked into the office. He stopped short when he saw Beth coming to the real world again.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “The door was open.”
“It’s fine, Peter,” she replied. She reached down into a box of cookies that she kept beside her desk. “Sugar cookie?”
“I’m alright, thanks,” the coroner said. “Do you mind if I have a seat?”
Beth couldn’t reply right away as she had helped herself to an entire cookie in a single bite. As she tried to cover her mouth and chew it up, she nodded and gestured to the chair on the other side of her desk.
Peter took the chair and adjusted his wireframe glasses.
“You were right to be suspicious of the whole murder-suicide,” he started. “At the Mendez’s, you know.”
Beth swallowed, perhaps a bit too early, and tears filled her eyes in response to the discomfort. “How do you mean?”
“Simon Sr.’s brain patterns don’t match his usual readings,” the coroner replied. “We were able to get his N.I. out of his skull without any damage. Looks like the bullet hit only organic matter. According to the neurological readings it had been taking for the last few years, nothing about the way his brain was firing during the murder matched those records.”
Beth cocked her eyebrow in confusion.
“So what does that mean? He was having some sort of neurological…episode…while the murder took place?” she asked.
“I don’t know for sure,” Peter said. “It doesn’t
