Eric left with his FlexiKnife in one hand and a container of chopped tomatoes in the other. "I will return in one week with twenty jars of salsa," he said on his way out.
The lab was quiet again, but felt warmer now. Elena sat beside Finn at his workstation, both of them studying Eric's latest brain scans displayed on the monitor. The contrast between these images and his initial scans was striking. Areas that had once shown damage now showed remarkable healing.
"It works," Elena said softly, still amazed by the evidence glowing on the screen. Their experimental neurofeedback protocol had repaired neural pathways that conventional medicine considered permanently damaged. The images were proof that the new protocol worked. But she already knew that after watching the tomato massacre.
"Yeah," Finn replied, staring at the screen with an expression she couldn't quite read. "It does."
They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, the quiet punctuated only by the soft hum of the surrounding equipment. Then Finn spoke, his voice quiet but steady: "You know, I never told you why I got into neuroscience."
Elena turned to look at him, something in his tone making her stay silent, waiting.
"I was eighteen when it happened," he continued, his eyes still fixed on Eric's scans. "Had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was considering everything from engineering to just taking a gap year." He paused, taking a breath. "Then my brother Liam got in a car accident."
His voice was almost detached, but Elena could sense the effort it took to maintain that control. She remained still, afraid that any movement might break this moment of revelation. “And suddenly, I knew what I wanted to do with my life.”
He stopped, gathering himself to revisit memories he'd clearly trained himself not to touch. "He had a traumatic brain injury. Temporal lobe damage almost identical to Eric's, actually." He gestured toward the screen, his finger tracing the same region where Eric's healing was most evident. "The headaches were constant. He'd press his palms against his temples like he could physically push them away."
She'd always known there was something personal driving his dedication to their research, but had never pressed. Some wounds were too private to probe without invitation.
"Memory issues started small. Forgetting conversations we’d just had, asking the same question twice," he continued. "Then bigger things. Couldn’t recognize me some days." His voice caught on this, the first crack in his composure. "But the insomnia was the worst. He couldn't sleep, which meant he couldn't heal."
He shifted in his chair, still not looking at Elena. "I'd try to stay up with him, keep him company when the rest of theworld was sleeping. Sometimes I'd make it to 3, maybe 4am. But I'd eventually crash." His expression hardened. "And when I'd wake up, there he was. Still awake. Still staring at the TV."
The fluorescent lights of the lab cast shadows under his eyes, emphasizing the weariness that seemed to have settled into him as he spoke. Elena could picture him as a new adult, exhausted but determined, trying to share his brother's burden by staying awake beside him.
“He was in a trial here. A couple different protocols, actually. They didn’t work.”
Elena went still. All this time, Finn had been working in the building where his brother’s treatment failed.
"What was he like?" Elena asked gently.
A sad smile crossed Finn's face, softening his features. "Annoying. Clever. Always getting into trouble, always one step ahead of me, even though I was the older brother. He was only fourteen when it happened. And even after the accident, he’d find ways to mess with me."
Finn’s smile grew a bit more. “One time, I was studying with him in his room at the clinic. I was behind on a project, trying to focus. But the TV was as loud as it could possibly be. I kept trying to turn the volume down, but the damn remote wouldn’t work.” He paused, and his smile widened again. “Later found out that he took the batteries out of the remote.”
Elena’s chest tightened, thinking of Miguel.
“But with the doctors?” Finn continued, his voice soft. “He treated them with respect. Every single one, even when the treatments weren’t working. He would always thank them, no matter what.” His eyes held a mixture of admiration and old pain. “All the way to the end.”
Elena felt a tear running down her cheek.
“I didn’t get it. I was angry,” He admitted, his voicedropping lower. “Angry at everyone who couldn’t fix him. But Liam never was. He just… kept hoping it would get better.”
She resisted the urge to reach for him, sensing he needed to finish this story in his own way.
"He would have been twenty-two this year," Finn continued, looking back at Eric's healed brain on the screen. "If this treatment had existed back then..." He didn't finish the sentence. His expression was almost peaceful, as if sharing this burden had somehow lightened it.
"Watching Eric get his life back, seeing him become himself again..." He trailed off, but Elena understood. This wasn't just research for Finn. It was redemption, purpose, a way to give other families what his had been denied.
Elena reached over and took his hand, squeezing gently. "He would have been so proud of you."
Finn looked at her, then down at their joined hands. For a moment, she feared she'd crossed a line, broken the careful distance they'd maintained. But then he squeezed back.
Chapter Twenty-Five
FINN
It was a pretty normal night in the lab until about ten minutes ago. Around that time, something shifted. The air felt different somehow, like how the pressure drops before a storm. Finn looked around. Nothing out of the ordinary. It was just him and Elena in the lab, and she was seated at her desk.
