Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
“So,” she said, glancing over at Miguel in the passenger seat as they pulled away from the school, “What should we do with our afternoon?”
Elena scoffed. “Absolutely not. I thought I told you to delete that horrible video game?”
“Oh, right… I did delete the game. Just like you asked me to.”
Elena rolled her eyes at his blatant lie.
“You can play it the next time Finn comes over.” The words slipped out before she thought them through. There were no plans for Finn to come over. That wasn’t something that could happen again. So why had she said ‘next time’, like it was inevitable?
“Cool.” Miguel said casually.
Elena glanced over. He was staring out the window, but she could see the smile he was trying to hide.
They got ice cream first, chocolate in waffle cones.
While they ate, they debated their afternoon movie.
Elena let Miguel talk her into some action movie called ‘The Unit’ about a special-ops military unit defending the planet from an alien invasion.
Miguel insisted it was a thoughtful, slow-paced film.
That turned out to be another lie. It was mostly explosions with occasional dialogue.
After the movie ended, Elena glanced at her phone. Almost time for Eric’s final check-up. “I need to go back to work for a bit. It should only be an hour or two.”
She braced herself for Miguel’s disappointment. But he just nodded, still relaxed on the couch. “Another movie when you get back?”
Elena smiled. “Okay. But I get to pick this one.”
Miguel’s head dropped in dramatic fashion. “Please tell me it won’t be three hours of people talking about their emotions and crying.”
“I promise it will have at least one explosion. Happy?”
“Perfect. That should be everything we need.” Elena removed the sensors that were attached to Eric.
“Wow, I can’t believe it’s been three months already,” Eric said, rubbing the back of his neck where the sensors had been.
“Thank you for taking a chance on us, Eric,” Finn said. “I know it wasn’t a sure thing, but you trusted us anyway.”
“Are you kidding me?” Eric looked at them. “I should be thanking you. Both of you. I haven’t felt this good in a long time.” Eric smiled and picked up a bag from beside his chair. “Which is why I got you these.”
Elena exchanged a quick glance with Finn. Their patients rarely brought gifts, and there was something almost mischievous in Eric's expression that made her curious.
"You didn't have to do that," she said, though she leaned forward to see what was in the bag.
"Oh, but I did." Eric reached into the bag with dramatic flair and pulled out two boxes. "Ta-da!"
Elena stared at the flamboyant packaging. FlexiKnives, complete with Brad Valentino's overly enthusiastic face plastered on the front.
"They were running a three-for-one special," Eric explained, beaming. "So I got one for myself too." He pulled out a third box, cradling it like a precious family heirloom.
Before Elena could respond, she noticed Finn's reaction to the knives. His face had lit up in a way she'd never seen before.
"Are these really...?" Finn asked, reaching for one of the boxes with surprising eagerness.
Eric grinned. "Oh yeah. The complete set. Even comes with the bonus paring attachment."
Elena watched in bewilderment as the two men began unboxing the knives.
Their excitement was so genuine that she couldn't help but smile.
Finn removed his knife with the same precision he used when handling delicate lab equipment.
The intense examination was far more than the cheap merchandise deserved.
"They're supposed to cut through anything."
"Supposedly," Eric agreed. Then, with the timing of a magician revealing his final trick, he produced a large box of ripe tomatoes from his bag. "I came prepared," he announced.
Elena looked from the tomatoes to the knives to the two grown men grinning at each other like co-conspirators. "You can't be serious," she said, though there was no real objection in her voice.
"Dead serious," Eric replied. "These babies need a proper test run."
She thought about objecting to this. But nothing in the employee handbook covered chopping tomatoes in the lab, Elena was pretty sure.
"I can't believe I'm saying this," she said. "But take it away."
The lab workbench was hardly an ideal surface for a knife demonstration, but Finn was treating this like any other experiment.
They lined up the tomatoes in a neat row.
Elena remained at her computer, completely unable to focus on her work.
Finn picked up his knife, weighing it in his hand.
His eyes darkened, like a cat that had just realized there is a mouse in the vicinity.
He sliced through the first tomato slowly, almost gently. The blade glided through with surprising ease. "Wow," he said, looking impressed. "That felt... really good."
Eric laughed and raised his own knife dramatically. "This one just needs ONE CLEAN SLICE!" he announced, mimicking Brad Valentino's infomercial delivery. He brought the knife down with theatrical precision, decimating his tomato with a satisfying thwack.
Juice splattered across the counter, a few droplets landing dangerously close to the lab equipment they'd pushed aside. Elena's inner-mom emerged before she could stop it. "Don't get tomato juice all over the lab equipment, guys!" she warned, stepping forward with her hands on her hips.
Both men froze, looking sheepish for a moment, like schoolboys caught misbehaving. Eric was the first to recover.
"Sorry, Dr. Herrera," he said, grabbing a paper towel to wipe up the splatter. "Got carried away with the sheer cutting power."
Finn turned to her, and then… he winked. A small, quick gesture, but Elena felt heat rise to her cheeks. Something fluttered in her stomach.
Within minutes, the tomato cutting devolved into controlled chaos. The two grown men casually decimated the pile of tomatoes, comparing cutting techniques and quoting lines from what Elena assumed must be the infomercial.
"Brad Valentino sends his regards," Finn muttered, before attacking another tomato with unnecessary intensity. The juice splattered, but this time he was careful to contain it to the cutting board.
"Hey man," Eric said while lining up another victim, "we're still going bowling on Saturday, right?"
Elena blinked, certain she'd misheard. Bowling?
"Oh absolutely," Finn responded, focusing on his chopping. "And you will not see a single gutter ball from me this time."
Eric snorted. "That's rich, Doc. I'll believe it when I see it."
Elena's mind stuttered over this new information. Bowling? They were friends now? When had this happened? She'd always pictured Finn going straight home after work, perhaps reading research papers or working on analyses.
She was still processing this revelation when she realized both men were looking at her expectantly. One of them must have asked her something while she was distracted. "I'm sorry, what?" she asked, feeling embarrassed.
"Are you going to join us?" Eric asked again, gesturing with his knife toward the remaining tomatoes.
Elena's mind was still stuck on the bowling. Were they asking her to come bowling with them? That seemed... complicated. The boundary between them was already strained enough.
"Yeah, Elena," Finn added, holding up the extra knife. "Come chop tomatoes with us!"
Oh. Tomatoes. They were asking about tomatoes.
"I should really finish this analysis," she said, gesturing vaguely toward her computer.
"More for us then," Eric said, returning to his chopping.
Elena lingered for another moment, watching them. Eric demonstrated what he called the "proper wrist action" from episode six of the infomercial series, and Finn laughed loudly.
"You should've seen this guy the first time we went bowling," Eric was saying, gesturing toward Finn. "He’s got an IQ of 500 but couldn't keep a ball out of the gutter to save his life."
"It was those damn shoes they gave me. I couldn’t get my footing!" Finn protested, though he was still smiling.
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 the world 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 voice dropping 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.