Diagnoses vary

It seemed like hours passed, but eventually John was invited to talk to a "case worker" about their assessment. A kindly-seeming nurse sat at a desk across from John with three file folders in front of her.

She started, "we have completed a pre-cure assessment on your wards", she opened a file folder. "Sabrina has some significant neural modification. Her mental influence score is 7/10."

See the confused look on John's face, she explained, "a patient with a score of 1 would typically not be diagnosed with AGS. Patients with a score of 10 have serious mental degradation and are often non-verbal. The score doesn't tell us everything about a patient, but it's a good summary of how serious their cognitive damage is."

John nodded and shifted nervously, worried how much damage he had done to Sabrina's brain. A 7 out of 10 sounded bad.

The nurse continued, "we can see from the way her blood work compares to her lipid analysis that most of Sabrina's damage is old," she shuffled through her file, "it looks like most of it occurred before you were registered as her master."

John relaxed slightly and offered, "she was with some other guy who was a bit of a freak. I took her in." He nervously added in his defense, "I tried to keep her safe."

She nodded and made a note in the file before continuing, "for patients like Sabrina, we like them to spend some time with us in an inpatient facility. It's best use their AGS to deprogram them somewhat before applying the cure."

John had heard about this. Counselors would make gentle AGS assertions to approximately reverse whatever beliefs the patients had acquired. Then they cure their AGS to prevent further beliefs entering their brain. The hope was that the gradual fading of AGS beliefs would take care of the rest.

The nurse confirmed, "it will speed her recovery if her brain is somewhat aligned with reality before she can't take any more suggestions. Our counselors have done a lot of work to determine how to best do that without further damage."

He asked, "how long do you think she'll be committed?"

The nurse sighed, "there haven't been enough patients through the process to really know but if I had to guess," she flipped pages in Sabrina's file and muttered to herself, "score seven... high lipid to blood ratio... no physical damage... still highly verbal," finally suggesting, "probably a month... maybe two?"

John nodded.

She put Sabrina's file aside.

"Looking at Haley," she opened another file and sighed, "her case is going to be more difficult. Her influence score is a 9." She looked at John, "honestly, her brain is a bit of a mess."

John winced at her description.

She turned some pages in Haley's file, "like with Sabrina, we can see that the worst damage is old, before she was registered to you."

John nodded. He knew that whatever he had done to Haley was much gentler than her previous master.

She flipped a few more pages and raised an eyebrow, "unusually, there are two tracking tags registered to her with different guardians. That is a violation of the AGS laws."

She looked up at John, who opted to respond with silence.

She continued, "given the nature of her neural damage, I think we'll opt to ignore the... creative application of AGS protections." She looked over her glasses at John and gave him a knowing smirk.

She continued, "to be honest, we're not even really sure what her real name is."

John was taken aback and sputtered, "it's... not Haley?"

The nurse sighed, "we think she was a corporate attorney named Rebecca, but we're going to have to compare medical records more carefully to be sure."

"Holy shit," John blurted out. He felt bad for not having any sense of this, but how could he? He offered, "I know a lot of the stuff that other guy shoved into her brain. Do you want me to tell her it's not true? Maybe I could make her treatment faster."

She shook her head, "with a case of her severity, that can be dangerous." Seeing John looking confused, she explained, "you know what it's like ripping off a band-aid?"

John nodded.

She continued, "imagine ripping off a really big band-aid... except inside your brain."

He shuddered at the thought.

"We need to take our time with Haley to make sure she can recover normal cognitive function after the cure." She flipped a few more pages in her file and shook her head, unhappy with what she was seeing, "she's going to be with us for a long time."

She put Haley's file away, "now, Veronica...".

John's heart leapt into his throat. He held his breath. How much damage had he done to Veronica? There was nobody else to blame but him. How could he live with himself? What if... he couldn't even bring himself to imagine the what-ifs.

"She was a first-wave diagnosis... we typically see scores above seven in cases that old."

John almost threw up.

She flipped a page in Veronica's file, "but Veronica's score," she flipped another page as John held in his breakfast down, "is a three."

John exhaled.

Her expression softened, "it's not the lowest score I've seen from a first-wave patient, but the damage is pretty minimal. For a case like Veronica, we'd like to do some outpatient counseling sessions before curing her AGS."

John swallowed hard as his nausea cleared.

"Can you continue to act as her guardian during her treatment?"

John nodded.