Project Lia Ch. 01

About three months ago while John was heading to work on his bike, a van decided that stopping for him was optional and launched him directly into a mailbox. One badly broken femur, a few hours of surgery, and some titanium plates later, he finds himself crutching his way over to the physical therapy department at the local hospital. He's not really looking forward to his first session of medical-grade torture. His eventual goal is to be walking regularly, and maybe biking again if no other minivans or mailboxes jump out in front of him again.

Due to the weird hours working evening shifts at a datacenter, the only schedule slot that they could find was one at 10PM, which wasn't even listed in their system.

When he pulls up to the outpatient building, it's silent and dark. The gate to the parking lot is down, so he ends up parking farther down the road on the street. The address matches up though and the front door is open, so he heads in. He figures if he's in the wrong place a security guard will probably find him pretty quickly and point him in the right direction - a confused guy on crutches holding a folder full of paperwork is pretty unlikely to steal a laptop or something.

He pulls out the map of the building in the folder of stuff and wanders down some very dark hallways until finding the only office that still has the lights on, and heads toward it. The receptionist desk has a window facing into the hallway, and she perks up as soon as she sees him.

"Good morning! I mean, Good evening!" The receptionist is startlingly cheery for 10 PM.

"Hi there, am I in the right place? All the lights are off in the rest of the building, and the parking gate didn't let me in..." John says.

"Oh I'm so sorry! You were supposed to get an access card for after hours! I'll get you one before you leave today!" She might be a bit over caffeinated. He replies "It's no problem - thanks for the help."

"Any time! Also your physical therapist will be here in a few minutes, you can take a seat in the waiting area!"

The waiting room, a place designed to be as comfortable and welcoming as is profitable, has a handful of pastel-green chairs and benches. The whole place smells of gym mats and exercise balls with a tinge of standard hospital antiseptic.

As soon as he walks in he notices one other person sitting in the far corner chair waiting for the session to start; a woman sitting silently wearing a hoodie with the hood up, gray yoga pants and white running shoes. The handle of a thin white cane is sitting next to her, along with a gym bag.

In an attempt to head off the awkwardness of sitting in the waiting room silently together, John says "Hey, how's it going?"

...

There's no response, so now it's awkward- maybe she has headphones in?

He glances over at the girl and something seems off. He's not sure what though - with the hood of her sweatshirt up, a surgical face mask, and dark glasses he can't see much of her face but there are some waves of uncanny valley vibes emanating from her.

After sitting there for 10 or 15 minutes, the door opens and the trainers step in. Both are women in their 20s who obviously keep in shape as part of their job. One heads right over to the sweatshirt girl (clearly not her first visit), the other looks at John and says "Hi, I'm Alice and I'll be your PT for the next few weeks. How are you this evening?"

"I'm pretty good. A bit of a mix up getting here, but I arrived early so it wasn't a problem."

The other therapist and the mysterious gym partner have their phones out furiously texting each other, though they are only a few feet from each other - which seems a bit odd. After a short text exchange they both head in to the door to the training room, the trainer holding the door for sweatshirt girl as she carefully gathers up her bag and grabs her cane, barely using it to navigate as if she has done this many times before.

Alice leads John over to the training room, which has a rubber gym floor and various strange looking exercise equipment along with the more conventional weights, medicine balls and yoga-adjacent stuff. She leads him over to a set of parallel bars, and explains the plan - pretty straightforward, walking back and forth using the bars for support, assisted squats, lunges, etc. On the other side of the gym area, sweatshirt girl is doing some kind of balance exercises, working around and over obstacles and using her cane to navigate the room.

After completing the series of tasks, John tries to pay attention to Alice giving a rundown on stretches and exercises to do at home.

"OK, I think you're all set for the first day - good job." Alice says, as John just starts hitting muscle failure on the assisted squats.

"Thanks, that wasn't as bad as I thought, although I definitely have lost a lot of strength from the accident." In the background John notices the other pair wrapping up as well, with the other trainer texting her silent gym partner.

"If you keep it up and do the homework we give you, you will probably be back to about where you were before the surgery in a couple months, luckily you are still young so you should bounce back pretty well. Let's head back to the waiting room and I'll grab your homework packet." Alice walks John out to the waiting room, and although he is tempted to ask her about the mysterious girl he also doesn't want to cause any patient confidentiality issues or seem like a weirdo on the first day.

After standing in the waiting room for only a minute or so, Alice returns with the packet of take-home workout info. Alice says "Here you go, try to do these every day, and if you start to feel sore make sure to ice your leg - our schedule is pretty aggressive so I want you to be able to keep up."

"Thanks, I will - see you in a couple days!"

As he is crutching his way out into the hallway, the receptionist practically jumps in front of John and holds out a keycard and says. "Here's your card for the gate for next time, how did your first day go?"

"It went pretty well, but I bet I am going to be pretty sore tomorrow. I haven't done nearly this much since the accident." John says

The receptionist heads back into her glass cube / front office desk thing and says "Yeah, make sure to get plenty of rest - everyone says that the day after the first session is pretty rough."

Two days later he pulls into the parking lot of the clinic for another round, rolls his window down and sticks the access card against the reader at the gate. It beeps and the gate opens up, thankfully letting him park much closer this time. He maneuvers his way out of the car, grabbing his crutches from the passenger's seat and maneuvering himself into a standing position. He's not really looking forward to this again, both because of anticipating the pain of PT and the awkwardness of the waiting room.

Again the sweatshirt girl is sitting silently in the corner of the waiting room. Shortly after John takes a seat she reaches into her bag and takes out a pen and small notepad. She slowly and carefully writes something down, stands up and turns toward his general direction. She takes a few deliberate steps closer and stops about 6 feet away, holding out the notepad and facing the writing toward him. The note says:

Hi, I'm Lia. I can't talk but you can text me. My number is 311-555-2368.

She holds out the note for about 15 seconds, then carefully turns around and walks back to her seat.

John pulls out his phone and texts her, "Hi, this is John - what's up?" When the text hits her phone, it sounds like her phone is buzzing in rapid fire, and for much longer than one would expect for a text notification; yet another odd thing to add to the list.

She replies, and John gets a better look at her phone. It looks a bit like an old-school blackberry, with an actual keyboard and not much of a screen. "Hey, hopefully your first session wasn't too bad."

"It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but I'm still in a pretty good amount of pain - those ladies are friggin brutal."

"No kidding, they run me through their own Ninja Warrior program three times a week.

It's basically a free gym membership, and they are pretty cool when they aren't trying to destroy my whole body...

You got to see one of my easy days through, just navigation and balance work.

Today was supposed to be cardio training, but I think I might need to wait.

What's your schedule?"

John replies, "I'm on Monday, Weds., Friday - I'm glad I don't have to come in for the weekend."

She seems to tense up a bit while typing out a reply, but it's hard to tell from across the room and under a puffy hoodie. "Looks like we have the same schedule, did they let you know that I was going to be here too?"

John texts "No, I just showed up. I had to work second shift and all the morning sessions were full, so they put me in a weird time slot."

"So are you here for visual stuff also?" she asks.

"No, I broke my leg pretty bad and had to get a plate put in, now I'm working it out to get back to walking without crutches.

On the plus side, I can get around airport metal detectors now, and I can tell when it's about to rain lol."

She seems to be texting someone else now in a panic, and shortly after the receptionist waves at John through the back window of her cube-office area thing by the front door. She motions him to come over in a somewhat frantic manner, but that's probably just her normal setting. He works his way over to her cube, and asks her "What's going on?

The receptionist takes a huge, panicked breath and says "Lia is kinda shy, and I scheduled you with her but I thought she would be cool with it, because she is kinda lonely and she's been here for like months, and she only talks to the PTs and me, and only goes out at night which is sad, and she doesn't think she can do her stuff with anybody else here, and I told her you were cute, but she thinks you will freak out, and she has to do cardio today but she can't with all her stuff on, and I hope you don't freak out, but she has had some crazy stuff happen, but shes super smart and fun so just be cool and don't run away from here, but i guess you can't really run cause you broke your leg so just keep an open mind, and I'll tell Lia I talked to you and you seem cool and I don't want to get in trouble so be cool ok?

"What."

She catches her breath a bit, composes herself, and says "Lia has a unique condition, and she hasn't really interacted with anybody but us hospital folks. She's lonely. I thought I could do a little matchmaker work, you are both nerdy and single from what I read in your info. I figured you would get along and scheduled you in her unlisted session. Sorry about being weird, please don't tell on me or I'll get fired and that would be terrible, and Lia might get in trouble."

"OK, I'll try to be cool - why would I freak out? She seems fine other than having some sight issues." Now John is both confused and interested in finding out what the hell is going on.

She says "So she's totally blind. She can kinda hear with an app on her phone, but she has to communicate with it too unless you can read sign language. She can use her phone to talk but doesn't like to because she says it's creepy. She can do finger spelling, but that's pretty slow and touch only. She's had a really rough past few years, but she also is probably the smartest person I know - she wrote the programs she uses on her phone and is doing a bunch of research while she's stuck here. I'll let her know that you're cool and you have some idea what's going on, and I'll leave the rest up to the both of you. Worst case I can try to reschedule you. Also don't freak out."

"Thanks, I still don't fully understand but I don't want to mess up your whole situation so I'll try to keep an open mind, I guess?. I still am not sure why I would freak out - she seems like she's been through a lot, but I don't know why I would have an issue with that."

She's looking at her phone and already texting Lia and says, "You should chat with her, she seems like she's less likely to try to kill me now."

"I will, thanks." John says as he turns around and sits back down.

Lia texts him, "So has our overcaffeinated friend read you in on secret project Lia?"

"Kinda, she let me know that you use your phone to talk because of hearing and sight issues, and you are doing some programming and research. I'm pretty confused about some of the other stuff."

"I have an arrangement where they let me stay here and do my work and get ongoing treatment, and they get to keep their research going."

"Research?" John texts.

"I probably said too much already but the folks here can't really do anything, so whatever.

I had a disease that was eventually going to kill me, and this place wanted to try out an experimental drug.

It kinda worked, in that my brain is no longer turning into goo, but they messed up the dosage and there were some crazy side effects.

Now they owe me big, so I get to live here rent free and get taken care of, and they don't get sued.

If all goes well, I get to be patient zero in a whole new way to help people out, and I might get a payout at the end (or stock options...)"

"So the sight and hearing stuff was a side effect of the drug?" John asks

Lia responds "Not really, my eyesight and hearing had been getting worse for years, and I was starting to lose brain cells due to my condition.

They had an experimental treatment to force me to regrow nerve cells, so they were hoping to reverse the effects.

They totally hosed up the process though, so now I get to be a freaky haunted house attraction."

"You seem not-freaky to me, what do you mean?"

"I'm going to have to take this stuff off anyway for the workout, so screw it, I'll just show you."

She flips her hoodie back and it seems obvious that something's off. Her skin seems too glossy and plasticky. It also looks like she is wearing either a collar or thick choker made of black plastic around her neck, which is an odd choice for the gym. She types something in her phone, and I hear her phone start speaking. Confusion turns into panic as she reaches to the black choker around her neck and I hear a click. She hooks her hands under her chin, and lifts up on her head. It starts to rise, revealing that that choker is actually a black plastic cap covering the top of her abbreviated neck, and her head was a realistic fake. There's a hole in the front part of the cap, presumably for breathing but that's all John can figure out as he tries to simultaneously stand up, grab the crutches, head for the door, put away his phone and run away while physically unable to do all of that at once.

Her phone says out loud in the standard android voice "I said I was a freak, sorry."

While deciding whether to run from the room, ask for a doctor, or try to be cool, John is hit by a realization - she is still a person who is struggling and deserves a chance, also how in the heck is any of this possible?

John says out loud while trying to stay as calm as possible and making sure he isn't hallucinating "how in the hell? How are you not dead?"

Clearly she hears him, because her body language relaxes a bit and her phone speaks to John "I told you I was different. I had a disease that was destroying my brain and the drug they gave me regrew my brain cells, just not in my head. She holds out her fake head and says "check it out"

John gets up and takes a few tentative steps closer to her, having now relaxed a tiny bit and gets a closer look at her prosthetic. It's pretty convincing, but up close it's clearly made out of silicone and plastic.

Her phone says "It's pretty heavy so I hate wearing it, also I can't run with it on so I have to take it off on cardio days."

He texts her "Wow, I'm sorry - this must be really tough."

"It can be, and I definitely have my good days and bad but we all have to fight our own battles, ya know?" She opens up her bag and stashes her head in it, and zips It up.

After all that, the trainers open up the door to the workout area and John tries to play it cool even though he's still in a state of shock and disbelief. Alice asks "So you know about Lia? Did you know this whole time?" She clearly is in on it, and John lies and says he already knew in the most not-panicked voice he can muster.

Lia navigates over to the corner where the treadmill is set up and sets her gym bag down. She does a couple quick stretches and pulls off her hoodie. As John preps for his workout on the other side of the training room, he finally sees her without the prosthetic and layers of clothing and is intrigued, impressed and uneasy all at once. Although she is absolutely gorgeous her movements seem unnatural, and the lack of a head still is something that will take a while for him to process. She hops on the treadmill and starts slowly, getting her bearings and increasing the speed as she gets used to the rhythm.

John goes through the motions of his workout with a few more reps and a couple more exercises added in, the whole time being both highly distracted by Lia and trying to seem like he isn't. It becomes more difficult to stay focused as Lia heads over to the yoga zone and works through a sequence of stretches - she's pretty flexible and the lack of a head makes her movements seem both alien and really intriguing. John finds himself less freaked out and more curious by the minute. As the workout winds down and he heads out to the waiting room, he holds the door open for the rest of the group to pass by. Lia's trainer stays behind to wipe down the gym and close out.

"Thanks Alice, the workout was great. You were right about being sore though - I was pretty wrecked yesterday. John says, as Lia picks a seat and opens up her gym bag.

"You look like you are on track to recover pretty quickly, coming into the injury with a good fitness level certainly helps." Alice says, as Lia opens up her gym bag and retrieves her prosthetic.

She lifts her artificial head up to it's appropriate place, then pushes it onto her neck cap, tentatively giving it a little shake back and forth to check if it's clipped in. Her hair flips around a bit in the process, and she rearranges it out of the way.

John prepares to leave as well, and says "Hey Lia, nice workout today - I'll see you Wednesday! Text me if you want to chat later"

Lia gives him a thumbs up and signs something to him. She then catches herself and just waves to him.

John heads back to his car still a bit bewildered and dazed, but now open to the possibility that he may be getting to know someone who is truly unique, and although there will likely be lots of challenges he's down to see where this goes.