24.

The Return

Bond had envisioned his same old dad would wake up, take a look

around, and just need a little catching up on what had happened before
resuming my role as the father he’d always known.
He soon discovered, however, that it wasn’t going to be quite that
easy. Dr. Wade cautioned Bond about two things: First, he shouldn’t
count on my remembering anything I was saying as I emerged from the
coma. He explained that the process of memory takes enormous brain
power, and that my brain wasn’t sufficiently recovered to be performing
at that sophisticated level. Second, he shouldn’t worry much about what I
said during these early days, because a lot of it was going to sound pretty
crazy.
He proved right on both counts.
That first morning back, Bond proudly showed me the drawing he and
Eben IV had made of my white blood cells attacking the E. coli bacteria.
“Wow, wonderful,” I said.
Bond glowed with pride and excitement.
Then I continued: “What are the conditions like outside? What does
the computer readout say? You need to move, I’m getting ready to
jump!”
Bond’s face fell. Needless to say, this was not the full return he had
been hoping for.
I was having wild delusions, reliving some of the most exciting times
of my life, in the most vivid fashion.
In my mind, I was on jump run, ready to skydive out of a DC3 three
miles above the earth . . . going to be the last man out, my favorite
position. It was the maximal flying of my body.
Bursting into brilliant sunshine outside the airplane door, I
immediately assumed a head dive with my arms tucked behind me (in my