Meanwhile, Jay and Victoria watched through the glass as the medical staff continued to puzzle over Tony's condition.
"Is he going to be okay?" Jay asked a passing nurse, her voice thick with worry.
The nurse hesitated before answering. "We're doing everything we can.
"What does that even mean?" Jay's voice cracked. "You don't know why he almost died?"
Victoria placed a calming hand on her sister's arm. "Let them work, Jay. They'll figure it out."
Dr. Lorrence stood at the foot of Tony's bed, arms crossed, staring at the monitors as if sheer willpower might make the data make sense. He turned to his resident, a sharp-eyed woman named Dr. Patel, who was busy flipping through Tony's test results.
"Let's go over this one more time," Lorrence said, his tone clipped. "Baseline vitals when he came in?"
"Heart rate and blood pressure were erratic but not catastrophic," Patel replied, not looking up. "Then he went into full cardiac arrest without warning. Three shocks had no effect. On the fourth attempt—at a higher voltage—his heart restarted. But the telemetry showed no evidence of fibrillation afterward. It was... like it never happened."
"And now?" Lorrence pressed.
Patel gestured toward the monitors. "Vitals are perfect. Too perfect. BP is 120 over 80, pulse steady at 65. Oxygen saturation? 99%. Even his lactic acid levels have normalized. But the EEG…" She hesitated, her brow furrowing.
"What about it?"
She turned the screen toward him. "It's off the charts. His neural activity is at levels I've only seen in patients during grand mal seizures. But he's not seizing. He's not showing any signs of distress. In fact, his autonomic systems seem more stable than anyone else in this hospital."
Lorrence rubbed his chin, clearly uneasy. "The MRI results?"
Patel handed him a tablet. "No abnormalities. No aneurysms, no structural damage. His brain looks pristine."
"Pristine brains don't have spontaneous cardiac arrests or produce EEGs like this," Lorrence muttered, flipping through the scans. "What about toxicology?"
"Negative across the board. No drugs, no toxins, no alcohol."
Lorrence exhaled sharply, placing the tablet on a nearby counter. "This isn't just unusual; it's unprecedented. The kind of recovery we're seeing doesn't just happen. There's no sign of neural damage, no scarring from hypoxia, nothing to explain why his heart stopped or why he's..."
He trailed off, looking at Tony's unconscious face.
"Why he's what?" Patel prompted.
"Why he's thriving," Lorrence finished grimly. "If anything, his scans suggest improvement. His synaptic density has increased by 15% since the initial EEG. You don't just grow new synapses in two hours."
Patel frowned. "Could the cardiac arrest have triggered some kind of hyperplastic response?"
"That would explain part of it," Lorrence admitted. "But not this rapid improvement. It's almost as if..." He hesitated, shaking his head. "It's almost as if something else is intervening."
Patel's voice lowered. "You mean... external?"
"Or internal," Lorrence said, his tone measured. "I don't know yet. But I want hourly EEGs and another MRI in six hours. I also want blood panels for any trace elements or anomalous proteins. If something caused this, I want to know what."
Outside the room, two nurses leaned against the counter at the nurses' station, glancing at Tony through the glass. One of them, a veteran named Carla, folded her arms and shook her head.
"I've been in this job for twenty years," she said. "I've seen miracles. But this? This is something else."
Her younger colleague, Alex, looked up from a clipboard. "You mean the cardiac recovery?"
"Not just that. The man flatlined for almost four minutes. Even if you come back from that, there's almost always some kind of neurological damage. Brain fog, motor issues, memory problems. But him?" She nodded toward Tony. "His brain activity is spiking like he's working out calculus equations in his sleep."
Alex raised an eyebrow. "Maybe he's just lucky."
Carla shot him a look. "You really believe that?"
Alex shrugged. "What else could it be?"
Carla tapped her pen against the counter, her gaze still fixed on Tony. "I don't know. But I've got a feeling we're going to find out."
Lorrence turned back to Patel as he finished reviewing the data. "Let's not kid ourselves. This isn't luck. Something happened to this man—something we don't understand. Until we figure it out, he's not going anywhere."
Patel nodded, jotting down notes on her clipboard. "What do we tell his family?"
Lorrence sighed. "The truth. That he's stable, recovering, and showing no signs of immediate danger. Beyond that..." He shook his head. "We stick to the facts we can prove."
Inside the room, the being continued its silent work, oblivious to the doctors' confusion but fully aware of its own growing stability. As it strengthened Tony's neural structure, it calculated probabilities, knowing that the human curiosity it was witnessing might eventually uncover its presence.
For now, though, it remained hidden, its only priority ensuring Tony survived long enough for their connection to become complete.