After settling into the suite, I examined the packet from Mitch. Clipped to the front was a short list of phone numbers: Mitch and his cell phone (again), the office and pager numbers of a Dr. Omar Momadou, Dr. Janelle French, and Inge Sorenson, L.C.S.W. Opening the packet, I found a police report, a thick packet of medical records, and a written job offer.

The job contract was something else. She wanted to write her autobiography. She was offering me a substantial fee up front plus a nice weekly amount until we were finished. We could take as long as necessary, with a minimum estimate of three months. I could work mostly from home if I wanted, but I would fly out (at her expense) to see her at least once a week. I thought it seemed like one hell of an expensive vanity project, since it probably wouldn?t sell. ?Miraculous recovery? stories are a dime a dozen. But maybe she knew a publisher. Hell, maybe she owned a publisher.

The police report was typical: functional, businesslike, mostly form stuff. Surprisingly, she?d made no effort to obscure anything before giving it to me. Her name (?Mary Genevieve Baker?), address, date of birth (January 10, 1977), driver?s license, social security number, and other basic information were right there. I was surprised to learn that she?d been driving a mid-sized 2004 Mazda she?d rented from Hertz. Why would someone with that kind of money be driving such a plain, smallish car?

Setting that mystery aside, I read the rest of the report. It looked to be a fairly typical accident report, with no unusual surprises. On the night of November 12, 2004, a 17-year-old girl was driving her father?s SUV, a Ford Expedition, and ran a red light. They estimated that the giant vehicle was moving at about 60 miles per hour when it plowed into the driver?s side of Baker?s rental car, which was proceeding through a light that witnesses said was green. The police thought that Daddy?s Girl might have been drag racing, although the girl claimed she was just trying to beat the yellow light, and her friend in the passenger seat insisted that they were ?just talking.? In any case, the seat belts, air bags, and a couple of tons of Ford iron saved Daddy?s Girl and her ?bestest? friend from any serious injury. Neither one was drunk or appeared high, nor were any drugs found in the blood tests. Daddy?s Ford was probably repairable.

The mid-sized Mazda and its driver, however, were not so lucky. Apparently the Mazda spun and rolled over a couple of times, and the left side was practically obliterated. When the fire department got there, they had to use the ?jaws of life? (or what rescue workers often refer to as ?the can opener?) to get her out. The accident photos were about as gruesome as you?d expect: Genevieve?s whole left side was mangled, and she had severe scratches and cuts everywhere, including her face. But accident photos frequently look worse than they are, because blood gets everywhere, and it mixes with sweat which just spreads it around and makes it look worse. Apparently some of those scratches were pretty minor, for example, because they?d cleared up by the time I saw her that day.

The left side of her body was nowhere near so lucky, though. A small puncture wound in the side of her skull from a shard of glass. Arm crushed, ribs smashed, gut sliced open with metal sticking into it, left leg crushed with more metal sticking into it. And that was just the initial police report.

After reading this, I had to stop and snatch a beer out of the hotel mini bar, and compose myself a bit. It?s not that I?d never read police reports before. If you?ve read enough of them, you know that this accident was only above average for its violence. I?d read reports of far worse: people smashed so bad they?re basically nothing but goo, or whole families burnt to death.

What fascinated me was her behavior after the fact. I looked at the calendar on my watch. This accident happened nine days ago, and she was in a coma for five days after that. How does someone go through something so traumatic?the loss of two limbs, for God?s sake?wake up in a hospital room, and immediately decide to write a journal entry about it, and hire a writer to help her tell her story? That?s when it finally struck me; there were many odd things about my first interview with this woman, but the oddest thing was how eerily calm she was about her fate. Almost as if the emotional parts of her brain had been shut down.

I ordered lunch and began to flip through the much thicker medical documentation. I was again astonished at the fact that it all seemed to be there, every last thing you could imagine, with no effort to hide any information. Height, weight, age, date of last period (unknown) whether or not she was pregnant (no) and so on. There were several sets of X-rays, some MRI scans, and countless reports: from the emergency room, the operating room, the surgeons? reports, and the ICU nurses? reports. I even found three different psychiatric evaluations. I spent the rest of the afternoon reading through all of it, and a fairly complete picture emerged, with a few items of confusion.

The doctors had to take the whole forearm, right up to the elbow. The leg was even worse: they couldn?t even save the knee. She had fractured some ribs, one of which punctured her lung. A chunk of metal lodged in her gut, and she had to have a bowel resection, losing her spleen, parts of her large and small intestine, and even one of her ovaries in the process. Her pelvis had several hairline fractures. They had to open her up a second time when a subsequent MRI showed that they?d missed a piece of glass in her belly.

Just as she had suggested, the surgeons? reports showed that she had a tendency to come awake under anesthesia. The first time it had happened she had given her anesthesiologist a black eye and dislocated a nurse?s shoulder. Except for those incidents she did not fully regain consciousness until five days after being admitted.

There were several hairline cracks in her skull, and a thin slice of glass was lodged some four centimeters into her brain. The extraction was without incident, and she fortunately did not wake up during that procedure. Subsequent scans showed no evidence that anything was left behind. That last part, however, marked the first of several strange things about the case of Mary Genevieve Baker.

The first odd thing was her blood. They were completely unable to type it on the first day, and were forced to take the step of simply giving her Type O-negative whole blood. This is considered a ?universal donor? blood that you can put into anybody, but doctors prefer to use type-matched blood, particularly in surgery. Her type was Kp(b-), which is quite rare. It?s generally found only among white people from certain parts of Europe, and there are only two registered donors on the continent. By the time they had her typed and located a supply, she?d already had two surgeries and several transfusions. Fortunately, her system handled it without any apparent difficulty.

Routine checks for drugs in her system presented some odd and contradictory results. Subsequent, more detailed tests were ordered, which showed unusually high traces of carbon in her bloodstream, as well as some inorganics. She looked sort of like someone with a mild case of metal poisoning. Doctors decided to let it go for now since the levels were probably too low to justify immediate chelation therapy.

Her cholesterol was through the roof, even for a patient under severe stress? HDL of over 600 and LDL of over 800, which were both ridiculously high and out of normal proportions. Once again, they had more pressing concerns than a 27 year old with high cholesterol, so they wrote it off to stress and suggested looking at it after she healed some more.

Then there were the MRIs of her brain. Most of the rest of her body was completely normal but her brain was odd in a few ways. First, the sliver of glass had apparently been quite thin and not as dangerous as first thought. Subsequent scans showed no discernible damage to that part of the brain, so whatever problems it might cause here were likely to be minor. However, she had an unusually high number of fissures and convolutions for a woman her age. Not freakishly so, but well above average. More importantly it looked like she had a large cancer on her corpus callosum. Doctors were fairly sure it was cancer based on the way it resonated in the MRI scans, although it was odd because it was so smooth and regular, teardrop shaped with small, thin extensions. The specialists were pretty sure it would be a difficult operation, and that they?d have to sever the corpus callosum to do it. Once again, doctors set this aside because they had more pressing things to worry about, but an oncologist and brain specialist had been consulted and would probably be consulted again.

Another peculiarity: on the evening of November 16, 2004, at approximately 10:15 PM, Mary Genevieve Baker became fully conscious, and had resumed a fairly normal, if heavy, sleep schedule since then. Coma patients normally wake an inch at a time, but she?d gone from unconscious to fully aware as if somebody had just thrown a switch.

The psychiatric reports were almost boring. They noted, as I had, her rather unsettling matter-of-factness, her flat emotional response to her injuries. They noted that she was usually calm and polite, but occasionally angry and even moderately violent, to the point of throwing things or shoving people?not enough to warrant locking her up, but it bore scrutiny. All other tests showed her to appear normal. The psychiatrist was, as they so often are, dry and clinical, suggesting her emotional response was ?due to trauma,? and advised adjusting her pain medication. The social workers? reports were, as they always are, a little more touchy-feely and opinionated. They said she was probably in ?the denial phase of the grieving process? for her lost limbs, and would probably need extensive further counseling.

The ICU nurses? reports were alternately upsetting and amusing. The words ?NOT COOPERATIVE? appeared an awful lot along with the acronym ?JPN?, often underlined in angry slashes and decorated with numerous exclamation points. She had removed her own IV a couple of times, and threatened to remove a catheter. She complained frequently about her diet, and once actually threw a tray at an orderly. She hadn?t hurt anybody, but it was clear that she was pretty much hell on wheels in the Intensive Care Unit.

After digesting all of this, I called Dr. Omar Momadou?s office and learned that he usually just went by ?Dr. Omar.? I inquired politely, and he confirmed that he was from Nigeria. He spoke excellent, very precise English. He was a little unused to speaking to a layman who wasn?t a relative of the patient, but after I asked a few fairly sophisticated questions he stopped talking down to me. Basically, he couldn?t tell me much more than I?d already learned, except that she was healing remarkably quickly. He did mention that he was deeply concerned, especially about her diet. He asked me if I had brought her food, because she needed to be on a liquid or at most very soft food diet. She might need further surgery if she ate whole foods right now. I demurred, but I worried. She?d gotten that case at least nine hours ago at this point, and if it were going to kill her there was nothing I could do about it right now.

In concluding the conversation he said, ?I don?t know what to do with Miss Baker. She is healing very well; really remarkably well in many ways, and some of her injuries, like her pelvis and her head injuries, they seem not to have been as bad as they initially appeared. But she is I think much too confident and careless and will not understand that her condition is fragile, and I worry daily that she may do something to cause herself to bleed internally. She does not appreciate how delicate her situation is. And we still don?t even know what to make of this apparent brain tumor. She knows about it but seems as unconcerned about it as anything else. We don?t know if maybe this is the cause of some of her behavior, and the psych people don?t seem to be sure right now. She is, however, perhaps the most unusual patient I have ever dealt with.?

Gathering it all together, I called my wife. After discussing it with her, we agreed that I should take the job. I could arrange for a vacation from my day job on Monday, and could probably get a leave of absence?but even if I couldn?t, the up-front money alone was too good to pass up. So I called Mitch and told him I?d like to take the gig, but I?d like my own attorney to review the contract just to make sure everything was in order. He sounded relieved, and promised to let Miss Baker know.

On my way out to dinner, he called me back.

?Miss Baker wanted me to tell you that she considers her word her bond and that she promises we?ll work out any concerns your attorney might have. She?d like to consider you on board right now, and, if so, she?d like me to send a few more things for you to read in the morning, and to see you around noon. Would that be acceptable??

I thought about it and said, ?That seems like it should be okay.? My return flight home wasn?t leaving until tomorrow evening anyway, so there would be plenty of time.

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Methuselah's Daughter, A Novel