Ignore this!
Simply a posting for headcanon of a character, that I don't exactly wanna put on tumblr yet because SOMEONE on there is a DOUCHEPICKLE and will throw a goddamn gasket over it.
The brain is a selfish master. It uses 20% of blood oxygen for the 2% of body weight it makes up, and leaves only 80% of the oxygen to the other 98% of body tissues. It consumes over half of the body's glucose and 30% of the body's energy overall. It demands an entire liter of blood just for itself and lets the rest of the body make do with three liters or less.
The brain cannot stand anything less than optimal flow and intake. It will do anything it can to maintain its own internal environment, or at the very least, simply keep itself alive. The brain is not unwilling to take drastic measures to ensure its own survival, including shutting down all auxiliary functions. In extreme scenarios, entire limbs can be forced to die, all for the sake of letting the brat have its ATP, its O2, or its heat. That's right: if it meant the brain could survive for five seconds longer, it would gladly kill off the entire body... exactly like what happened one Winter-cycle night on the frosty streets of L2.
A ruthless virus had demolished a young boy's lungs and the ability to keep the body oxygenated was lost. In response, the selfish taskmaster went to work to preserve itself.
First, the body shut down heat production to all but the core areas. The sting of the internal chill started at his toes and slowly crept over his frail form. Afterwards came the ache of his muscles being unable to trade cellular waste for oxygen, and having to convert it to lactic acid for storage. Thankfully, the pain only lasted until his nerves shut down and he lost feeling from the chest outward. Soon, it became apparent to the brain that its only chance for survival was to shut down and hope for the best... and the boy closed his eyes. He could hear soft crying beside him until, at last, the body gave in completely and the boy fell into a deep, conserving sleep.
Solo didn't know when the cold air of the L2 street turned into comforting warmth, or when the hard ground turned into a soft bed, or when the crying turned into a rhythmic mechanical beep. The only constant was the horrible pain all over his body.
It hurt to move and he was reluctant to do so, but he wanted to see what was going on around him. One bout of considerable effort later, and he was sitting up on a bed, shirtless, in the middle of a bright and sterile room. There was a vitals monitor, an oxygen tank, and an IV pole next to the bed, and they were all hooked up to him in one way or another.
His chest hurt the worst. It wasn't the ache of the virus. There was a stronger and more superficial one, like the pain of an inflicted wound similar to slicing open a leg. He cast his gaze down to his chest and was surprised to see a line of stitches running horizontally from one arm pit to the other.
"Don't mess with that," a sweet voice sounded from a lovely young woman entering the room. She came to give him lunch and his medicine. Nothing like a good dose of analgesics and antibiotics, she joked, and he laughed.
He couldn't help but notice that he didn't feel scared around her, even in his vulnerable and weakened state. She was kind as she spoke to him, gentle as she examined his stitches and breath sounds, and motherly as she answered all the questions he could muster between bouts of breathlessness.
Her father, he learned, was a pulmonary specialist and he worked primarily with lungs and diseases and injury thereof. When the destructive virus struck L2, there was a fairly rapid response for immunization against and treatment to kill the virus. It almost completely eradicated it, she told him.
That was all well and good... but the plagued who were lucky enough to get medicine in time to survive the bug rarely survived the damage sustained from the illness. The good doctor had been experimenting to find a suitable treatment for the full recuperation of those scarred by the virus.
"And you, dear Michael, are the first of many, many successful operations," she said.
"Michael? Me? No, my name's Solo. Who's Michael?"
"The couple that found you and brought you in gave you that name so the hospital would have something to put on the forms. That's what we've been calling you all along. We didn't see any reason to not."
"They... found me?"
"Yes. They said that while they were walking home one night, they heard crying in an abandoned building. They said it sounded like a child. Due to the nature of the neighborhood, they didn't stop to investigate. It kept them up all night with worry, and in the morning, they gave in and checked it out. They found you, cold and almost lifeless, and brought you into the hospital. They stayed with you for two weeks and picked up your treatment bills out of their pockets. They didn't want a child to suffer, and they wanted you to have something more than the hospital room to wake up to. They were very generous, very nice people. Just a pair of good Samaritans."
"What happened to them? Where are they?"
The woman contracted the virus herself. The man couldn't keep up with the bills of his wife, and an unknown child they found on the street. The story of their selflessness made its way around the hospital. The news of the man's conflict followed, and although discounts from the hospital and donations from some of the staff and even some of the patients poured in, it just wasn't enough.
When his wife's lungs failed at the end of the two weeks, the man gave all the money to his name to the hospital, and was never heard from again. The money wasn't enough to cover the debt left by the man from the care of his wife and Solo. It certainly wouldn't work to continue the critical life-sustaining measures needed to keep Solo alive until something could be done to awaken him. Although proper medication removed the virus from his body, Solo wasn't healing. Without anyone to claim guardianship over him, he was just another ward of an overcrowded system. The hospital would have no choice but to pull the plug, even against the staff's wishes.
"I'm an intern in the pediatric ward where you were. When I heard the news, I called my father and bawled like a baby because they were going to remove life support from this beautiful angelic child and it wasn't fair!" she laughed. "He reacted immediately. It wasn't ten minutes after I hung up before we were told to disregard the order to pull the plug. Instead, we were supposed to prepare you for surgery, and we had thirty minutes to get you ready."
Her father called in every favor in the book. He bargained with the in-charge, saying he would take the boy off her hands for his experimental procedure. If the procedure was a success, the boy would live. If not... at least she wouldn't have to be the one to order his death. She agreed with all haste and within the hour, Solo was under the surgeon's knife.
"The damage to your lungs was irreversible. One was completely destroyed, and the other was only working at fifteen percent capacity. That's why you hadn't come out of the coma. Your blood didn't have enough oxygen in it to sustain anything more than the brain."
She told him that the supply of human lungs for transplant was rare enough as it was, and with the extra strain of trying to keep people who could afford it alive, the supply had dropped unbelievably. They'd had to resort to artificial lungs to keep others alive. She told him that in his case, they were forced to take a desperate measure- a porcine lung.
His face ran the gamut from confused, to startled, to stunned, appalled, aghast, disgusted, and finally mild dislike. It made her laugh and she continued the story.
The dead portion of the partial-working lung was removed and the damaged area- lung, nerves, muscles, vessels, and so on- was treated with stem cells. The procedure was a success. When all signs and evidence suggested a positive trend towards total recovery just six days later, it was approved for further practice. All others who underwent the procedure began to see improvements, and most were already off living life as they had before the illness. His advanced state of deterioration held back his rate of recovery, but nobody had anything but great hopes for Solo.
"And here you are! It will still be a while before you're up and on your feet again, and even then there's still a lot of therapy and medicine for you to muscle through. But, you're alive, and everything looks absolutely wonderful!"
She wasn't kidding about having a while to go before he could be up again. He was bed ridden for the next six weeks, only having enough strength to make it to the bathroom and back to the bed. He spent his time lifting light weights, simple stretching, watching TV, and getting school lessons from private tutors. At the end of every day, he worried himself to sleep about his group of hoodlums. He wondered how they were, how they were faring without him... and about that kid...
Andrea made visits to the old spots, trying to check on the crew for him. 'Tell them Solo sent you,' he told her. Sometimes she'd leave food, blankets, and medicine near their old hiding place. While she never made contact with the band of orphans, she often brought back news that the sandwich plates and soda cans were empty and the blankets were nowhere to be found. So, when the day came that the supplies were still there, untouched, he truly became concerned. As soon as he was well enough, she took him to his old hide out.
As much as he called and searched neither he nor Andrea, nor her fiance, could find any sign of the other kids.
"There was no sign of a fight or violence," Andrea told him as she held him close.
"That's right. That means they're at least alive somewhere. Maybe they moved on to more fruitful stomping grounds, or maybe they found homes. Whatever it is, I'm sure they're fine, Solo."
Andrea, Forrest, and Dr. Durham humored him and let him keep his street moniker, but in that moment, the name burned his ears like acid and made his heart tight. He'd chosen the name for himself because he was alone, and for the longest time, he was alone. Even when the one friend turned into a group of kids relying on each other, he was still all on his own to bear the burden of getting them from one day and one shelter and one meal to the next. But now, he wasn't alone. He wasn't on his own taking care of anyone anymore. And it didn't seem like he would be alone again any time soon.
If the others had moved on... maybe, he thought, so should he. He had a second chance at life, and perhaps it was time to leave the old behind and go into the new with a fresh start of his own. The pack didn't need Solo anymore. Solo wasn't solo anymore.
"... it's Michael," he corrected and was silent.
Although the xenotransplantation medications hampered recovery, his youthfulness was just enough to help him quickly regain the strength to be up and out of bed for extended periods of time, by the end of summer. Thus, he was enrolled in a private school where luck reunited him with two of the kids from his old group. As they caught up, he learned about their capture by the military and subsequent release to the Maxwell Church, where they were taken care of and adopted out to loving homes. The ones that hadn't moved kept in contact through email and sleepovers. That was great news for Solo! What about the Kid? Last time they saw him, he was at the Maxwell Church. Their sudden solemnness caught him by surprise.
"... it burned down a few months ago, when it was caught in massive crossfire. Two hundred or somethin' people died, Solo. We ain't heard from him since that."
He felt a cold numbness radiate through his body, not unlike the chilly numb of the last time he saw the Kid, and not like it, either.
Michael had to be excused from school that day and two days after.
At the end of his seventh grade year, Andrea and Forrest married. He went with them to the courthouse to sign all the legal documents for their marriage certificate, and for his official adoption. When he started eighth grade, he didn't have guardians, he had parents.
In high school, he found an undying love for the saxophone and theater. Although he never passed the physical to march with the band, he played his heart out during concerts and symphonies. Michael never had the role of a main character, either, but oh how the audience fell in love with his supporting roles!
Michael enrolled in college on a scholarship for performing arts. In his freshman year, he was cast as a spy. During his research and investigation for the role, he quickly learned he had an incredible fascination for the profession. He began sacrificing his sleep and social schedule to make time for more research and practice into the tricks of the trade. Even after the performance was long gone, Michael still always made time to continue playing in the role of the private spy.
He picked it up fairly easily. It seemed like everything he needed was already granted to him by his years on the street. At that point, it was merely honing his skills. Acting covered all other bases. It wasn't hard for him to play through the day as John Smith, or spend a weekend as a business owner. There wasn't a persona that he couldn't snap into and maintain.
By the end of his schooling, he had two careers just waiting for him.
Michael Bowman works in a performing arts academy for children, teaching introductory classes for acting and brass. During the weekend, he works with a colony funded organization, reaching out to homeless youth. Three nights a week are spent on the stage of the local community theater, where he's made a name for himself on the marquee of live theater. Sweet, gentle, playful, charismatic Michael still unfortunately fights with his respiratory issues every now and again and it may land him out of the game for days or weeks at a time.
Wylie Leggett, however, spends his acquired days and weeks working undercover for whatever company or organization decides they need him.
The brain is a selfish master. It uses 20% of blood oxygen for the 2% of body weight it makes up, and leaves only 80% of the oxygen to the other 98% of body tissues. It consumes over half of the body's glucose and 30% of the body's energy overall. It demands an entire liter of blood just for itself and lets the rest of the body make do with three liters or less.
The brain cannot stand anything less than optimal flow and intake. It will do anything it can to maintain its own internal environment, or at the very least, simply keep itself alive. The brain is not unwilling to take drastic measures to ensure its own survival, including shutting down all auxiliary functions. In extreme scenarios, entire limbs can be forced to die, all for the sake of letting the brat have its ATP, its O2, or its heat. That's right: if it meant the brain could survive for five seconds longer, it would gladly kill off the entire body... exactly like what happened one Winter-cycle night on the frosty streets of L2.
A ruthless virus had demolished a young boy's lungs and the ability to keep the body oxygenated was lost. In response, the selfish taskmaster went to work to preserve itself.
First, the body shut down heat production to all but the core areas. The sting of the internal chill started at his toes and slowly crept over his frail form. Afterwards came the ache of his muscles being unable to trade cellular waste for oxygen, and having to convert it to lactic acid for storage. Thankfully, the pain only lasted until his nerves shut down and he lost feeling from the chest outward. Soon, it became apparent to the brain that its only chance for survival was to shut down and hope for the best... and the boy closed his eyes. He could hear soft crying beside him until, at last, the body gave in completely and the boy fell into a deep, conserving sleep.
Solo didn't know when the cold air of the L2 street turned into comforting warmth, or when the hard ground turned into a soft bed, or when the crying turned into a rhythmic mechanical beep. The only constant was the horrible pain all over his body.
It hurt to move and he was reluctant to do so, but he wanted to see what was going on around him. One bout of considerable effort later, and he was sitting up on a bed, shirtless, in the middle of a bright and sterile room. There was a vitals monitor, an oxygen tank, and an IV pole next to the bed, and they were all hooked up to him in one way or another.
His chest hurt the worst. It wasn't the ache of the virus. There was a stronger and more superficial one, like the pain of an inflicted wound similar to slicing open a leg. He cast his gaze down to his chest and was surprised to see a line of stitches running horizontally from one arm pit to the other.
"Don't mess with that," a sweet voice sounded from a lovely young woman entering the room. She came to give him lunch and his medicine. Nothing like a good dose of analgesics and antibiotics, she joked, and he laughed.
He couldn't help but notice that he didn't feel scared around her, even in his vulnerable and weakened state. She was kind as she spoke to him, gentle as she examined his stitches and breath sounds, and motherly as she answered all the questions he could muster between bouts of breathlessness.
Her father, he learned, was a pulmonary specialist and he worked primarily with lungs and diseases and injury thereof. When the destructive virus struck L2, there was a fairly rapid response for immunization against and treatment to kill the virus. It almost completely eradicated it, she told him.
That was all well and good... but the plagued who were lucky enough to get medicine in time to survive the bug rarely survived the damage sustained from the illness. The good doctor had been experimenting to find a suitable treatment for the full recuperation of those scarred by the virus.
"And you, dear Michael, are the first of many, many successful operations," she said.
"Michael? Me? No, my name's Solo. Who's Michael?"
"The couple that found you and brought you in gave you that name so the hospital would have something to put on the forms. That's what we've been calling you all along. We didn't see any reason to not."
"They... found me?"
"Yes. They said that while they were walking home one night, they heard crying in an abandoned building. They said it sounded like a child. Due to the nature of the neighborhood, they didn't stop to investigate. It kept them up all night with worry, and in the morning, they gave in and checked it out. They found you, cold and almost lifeless, and brought you into the hospital. They stayed with you for two weeks and picked up your treatment bills out of their pockets. They didn't want a child to suffer, and they wanted you to have something more than the hospital room to wake up to. They were very generous, very nice people. Just a pair of good Samaritans."
"What happened to them? Where are they?"
The woman contracted the virus herself. The man couldn't keep up with the bills of his wife, and an unknown child they found on the street. The story of their selflessness made its way around the hospital. The news of the man's conflict followed, and although discounts from the hospital and donations from some of the staff and even some of the patients poured in, it just wasn't enough.
When his wife's lungs failed at the end of the two weeks, the man gave all the money to his name to the hospital, and was never heard from again. The money wasn't enough to cover the debt left by the man from the care of his wife and Solo. It certainly wouldn't work to continue the critical life-sustaining measures needed to keep Solo alive until something could be done to awaken him. Although proper medication removed the virus from his body, Solo wasn't healing. Without anyone to claim guardianship over him, he was just another ward of an overcrowded system. The hospital would have no choice but to pull the plug, even against the staff's wishes.
"I'm an intern in the pediatric ward where you were. When I heard the news, I called my father and bawled like a baby because they were going to remove life support from this beautiful angelic child and it wasn't fair!" she laughed. "He reacted immediately. It wasn't ten minutes after I hung up before we were told to disregard the order to pull the plug. Instead, we were supposed to prepare you for surgery, and we had thirty minutes to get you ready."
Her father called in every favor in the book. He bargained with the in-charge, saying he would take the boy off her hands for his experimental procedure. If the procedure was a success, the boy would live. If not... at least she wouldn't have to be the one to order his death. She agreed with all haste and within the hour, Solo was under the surgeon's knife.
"The damage to your lungs was irreversible. One was completely destroyed, and the other was only working at fifteen percent capacity. That's why you hadn't come out of the coma. Your blood didn't have enough oxygen in it to sustain anything more than the brain."
She told him that the supply of human lungs for transplant was rare enough as it was, and with the extra strain of trying to keep people who could afford it alive, the supply had dropped unbelievably. They'd had to resort to artificial lungs to keep others alive. She told him that in his case, they were forced to take a desperate measure- a porcine lung.
His face ran the gamut from confused, to startled, to stunned, appalled, aghast, disgusted, and finally mild dislike. It made her laugh and she continued the story.
The dead portion of the partial-working lung was removed and the damaged area- lung, nerves, muscles, vessels, and so on- was treated with stem cells. The procedure was a success. When all signs and evidence suggested a positive trend towards total recovery just six days later, it was approved for further practice. All others who underwent the procedure began to see improvements, and most were already off living life as they had before the illness. His advanced state of deterioration held back his rate of recovery, but nobody had anything but great hopes for Solo.
"And here you are! It will still be a while before you're up and on your feet again, and even then there's still a lot of therapy and medicine for you to muscle through. But, you're alive, and everything looks absolutely wonderful!"
She wasn't kidding about having a while to go before he could be up again. He was bed ridden for the next six weeks, only having enough strength to make it to the bathroom and back to the bed. He spent his time lifting light weights, simple stretching, watching TV, and getting school lessons from private tutors. At the end of every day, he worried himself to sleep about his group of hoodlums. He wondered how they were, how they were faring without him... and about that kid...
Andrea made visits to the old spots, trying to check on the crew for him. 'Tell them Solo sent you,' he told her. Sometimes she'd leave food, blankets, and medicine near their old hiding place. While she never made contact with the band of orphans, she often brought back news that the sandwich plates and soda cans were empty and the blankets were nowhere to be found. So, when the day came that the supplies were still there, untouched, he truly became concerned. As soon as he was well enough, she took him to his old hide out.
As much as he called and searched neither he nor Andrea, nor her fiance, could find any sign of the other kids.
"There was no sign of a fight or violence," Andrea told him as she held him close.
"That's right. That means they're at least alive somewhere. Maybe they moved on to more fruitful stomping grounds, or maybe they found homes. Whatever it is, I'm sure they're fine, Solo."
Andrea, Forrest, and Dr. Durham humored him and let him keep his street moniker, but in that moment, the name burned his ears like acid and made his heart tight. He'd chosen the name for himself because he was alone, and for the longest time, he was alone. Even when the one friend turned into a group of kids relying on each other, he was still all on his own to bear the burden of getting them from one day and one shelter and one meal to the next. But now, he wasn't alone. He wasn't on his own taking care of anyone anymore. And it didn't seem like he would be alone again any time soon.
If the others had moved on... maybe, he thought, so should he. He had a second chance at life, and perhaps it was time to leave the old behind and go into the new with a fresh start of his own. The pack didn't need Solo anymore. Solo wasn't solo anymore.
"... it's Michael," he corrected and was silent.
Although the xenotransplantation medications hampered recovery, his youthfulness was just enough to help him quickly regain the strength to be up and out of bed for extended periods of time, by the end of summer. Thus, he was enrolled in a private school where luck reunited him with two of the kids from his old group. As they caught up, he learned about their capture by the military and subsequent release to the Maxwell Church, where they were taken care of and adopted out to loving homes. The ones that hadn't moved kept in contact through email and sleepovers. That was great news for Solo! What about the Kid? Last time they saw him, he was at the Maxwell Church. Their sudden solemnness caught him by surprise.
"... it burned down a few months ago, when it was caught in massive crossfire. Two hundred or somethin' people died, Solo. We ain't heard from him since that."
He felt a cold numbness radiate through his body, not unlike the chilly numb of the last time he saw the Kid, and not like it, either.
Michael had to be excused from school that day and two days after.
At the end of his seventh grade year, Andrea and Forrest married. He went with them to the courthouse to sign all the legal documents for their marriage certificate, and for his official adoption. When he started eighth grade, he didn't have guardians, he had parents.
In high school, he found an undying love for the saxophone and theater. Although he never passed the physical to march with the band, he played his heart out during concerts and symphonies. Michael never had the role of a main character, either, but oh how the audience fell in love with his supporting roles!
Michael enrolled in college on a scholarship for performing arts. In his freshman year, he was cast as a spy. During his research and investigation for the role, he quickly learned he had an incredible fascination for the profession. He began sacrificing his sleep and social schedule to make time for more research and practice into the tricks of the trade. Even after the performance was long gone, Michael still always made time to continue playing in the role of the private spy.
He picked it up fairly easily. It seemed like everything he needed was already granted to him by his years on the street. At that point, it was merely honing his skills. Acting covered all other bases. It wasn't hard for him to play through the day as John Smith, or spend a weekend as a business owner. There wasn't a persona that he couldn't snap into and maintain.
By the end of his schooling, he had two careers just waiting for him.
Michael Bowman works in a performing arts academy for children, teaching introductory classes for acting and brass. During the weekend, he works with a colony funded organization, reaching out to homeless youth. Three nights a week are spent on the stage of the local community theater, where he's made a name for himself on the marquee of live theater. Sweet, gentle, playful, charismatic Michael still unfortunately fights with his respiratory issues every now and again and it may land him out of the game for days or weeks at a time.
Wylie Leggett, however, spends his acquired days and weeks working undercover for whatever company or organization decides they need him.