Page 12 of Not Quite Dead Yet

‘The fracture was successfully mended during surgery. We’ve reconnected the skull pieces with screws and wire mesh. Stitched up your scalp.’

It flared and itched as she mentioned it.

‘And after surgery, you were sent for another CT scan.’

She pulled out a scan from the file, the plastic quivering with an almost comicwub-wubsound, not reading the room. Dr Lee held the scan up, against the afternoon light streaming through the window. A black background. White writing glowed at the very top:Margaret Mason, Age: 27, 11/01/2025,more numbers Jet didn’t understand. Below was a grid ofpictures. Different angles of her brain, dissected this way and that, rendered in a strange pale blue.

‘There is a bone at the base of the skull, at the deepest part, right in the middle of your brain, called the clivus. The trauma to the back of your head has resulted in a fracture to the clivus.’ The scan trembled in Dr Lee’s hand, threatening that noise again. ‘A clivus fracture is an incredibly rare event, seen in less than 0.5 percent of traumatic head injuries. And if you look here’ – she pointed to the scan, to an image taken through the top of Jet’s head – ‘you can see there is a small piece of bone fragment separated from the clivus.’

Dr Lee’s finger pressed against a tiny pale white orb, floating there in the middle of Jet’s brain. She pointed it out in the side view too, checking that Jet could see. Not even an orb, just a speck really.

‘OK,’ Jet said. ‘But it’s tiny, right? And I’m fine. Look, I’m fine.’

Luke pulled out the chair on the other side, made Mom sit down.

‘Jet,’ Dr Lee said, her teeth holding on to thet,chewing on it, so she didn’t have to continue. ‘That tiny bone fragment is leaning against the wall of your basilar artery.’

Jet breathed out. ‘That sounds important.’

‘One of the major arteries supplying blood to your brain.’

Yep. Important.

‘A surgery to remove the fragment would normally be considered impossible. It’s so deep, so hard to access without damaging other parts of the brain. Too easy to accidentally nick the artery and cause a catastrophic bleed. Chances of mortality far too high. Better to leave it and, in time, the fragment may migrate to the outer edges of the brain, where it could be more easily accessed and removed. But.’

Anotherbut.

The throbbing was a drumbeat in Jet’s head now, mirroring her heart, answering fear with fear.

‘You have polycystic kidney disease, Jet.’

‘I’m well aware.’ Jet sniffed. Again, those weeks of pissing blood, pain so bad it doubled you over, the phantom bruises, quitting her job and moving home because it all got too much, the high-blood-pressure pills she took every day, never smoking, not too much salt, even though she’d once loved fries. ‘What does that have to do with my brain?’

Dad was standing behind Mom now, hands on her shoulders, lips in a tight white line to stop him from crying.

Dr Lee swallowed.

‘A complication of PKD is that patients have much weaker arterial walls, in the heart and … and in the brain.’

‘Right.’

‘I’m sorry, Jet, there’s no easy way to tell you this. With the fragment’s position, putting extra pressure on an already weak arterial wall, an aneurysm will form at the site. A large one. And when it ruptures, the resulting hemorrhage, the bleeding, it … it would be fatal.’

‘O-K,’ Jet said, nodding, stopping when she realized that hurt. ‘And how likely is it that an aneurysm would form?’

‘It’s a certainty, Jet. And it would be fast.’

‘How fast?’

‘It’s impossible to accurately predict, especially before the aneurysm has formed.’

‘Give it your best guess, doc.’

‘Jet,’ Mom sniffed.

Dr Lee straightened, looked at the floor instead of Jet. ‘Given the particular circumstances of your case, I would say we have just days. Maybe a week until it ruptures.’

Jet clicked her tongue, to hide the thrum of her heart, fight-or-flight fast. This couldn’t be happening. Was thisreally happening? ‘So … you’re saying that I’d be dead in about a week?’

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