Suzanna Johansson, wife of Andy Johansson.

The room was pretty cramped. Andy had been given a private room, to maintain the secrecy of his condition after the operation. Besides myself, his wife there were the parents of Rosanna Rodriguez, the senior surgeon Dr Hausmann that had carried out the operation, the hospital administrator Dr Rudkin and a pair of lawyers. The press of people plus the banks of monitors my husband was hooked up to took up most of the free space not taken up by the hospital bed. Andy had been in a medical induced coma for almost a week following the crash. I did not really grasp the intricacies of the induced coma, but the surgeon had explained that keeping him under any longer would worsen his prognosis for recovery.

Taking a look at the faces of those around me there was a gamut of emotions. The surgeon looked exhilerated and barely suppressing his enthusiasm. Considering that he had performed a medical first, assuming Andy came out of the coma, I guess that was understandable. Dr Rudkin looked on the point of a nervous breakdown, she had made it clear the operation had been unauthorised and it was obvious that her life would have been simpler if Andy had been allowed to pass away instead of being saved. The pair of lawyers were almost stony faced and emotionless, typical grey suits. It had been this pair that had negotiated the non disclosure agreement and the huge compensation paid to both me and the Rodriguez family.

Mrs Rodriguez was puffy faced from crying, she had cried every time I had met her and when she was not crying she had been praying loudly in Spanish. Mr Rodriguez on the other hand was trying to look solemn, but could completely not hide his excitement. I don't know exactly how much compensation they were receiving, but I would guess it was considerably more than I had received. If Mr Rodriguez looked like he had won the lottery that would not be far from the truth in terms of cash settlement he had coming to him. I admit to taking an instant dislike to him, he seemed to view what had happened as nothing more than a free meal ticket for the rest of his life and had shown no real grief about the of his daughter.

Myself? I was still in shock and silent. Looking down at the hospital bed it was impossible to view the patient as my husband. Andy had been thirty eight years old and nearly six foot tall of Scandanavian descent. The figure on the bed with their head swathed in bandages was an olive skinned Latina barely looking the eighteen years of Rosanna Rodriguez. Her face was not covered and even in this state she was undeniably beautiful, though a sheet covered her body I could tell she was slim and petite. I knew little about her, she had been in the glee club and a cheerleader had been in her senior year at the high school Andy had been a teacher at. Andy had been driving the glee club across the city with Rosanna in the front passanger seat when the semi truck jacknifed and totalled the front of the bus. Andy had been crushed and barely alive when they cut him free, Rosanna had suffered massive head trauma leading to a brain heamorrage.

Those two contrasting injuries had led to the present situation. One victim, his body mangled and his organs failing, one suffering brain , but with her body almost unscathed. Hausmann had aopparently been researching the possibility of transplanting a brain, or at least the cerebellum and had some degree of success with rhesus monkeys. I guess the neurosurgeon had seen the two crash victims being there at the exact same time as some sort of sign from the heavens or just too rare an opportunity to pass over. Either way he had carried out the operation to perform the world's first cerebral transplant and miraculously it appeared to have been successful.

"Carry on Doctor Hausmann." The hospital administrator ordered before turning to myself and the parents of Rosanna. "I would like to stress again that we are in completely uncharted waters of brain surgery at this moment. Despite Doctor Hausmann's optimism we can not guarentee if or to what degree the procedure will succeed."

Mrs Rodriguez fell to her knees at the bedside, her hands clasped in prayer and speaking Spanish as the neurosurgeon connected a syringe to a shunt in the slim arm and injected the to bring Andy or Rosanna or whoever out of the coma.

For a minute or two nothing seemed to happen and then I saw the long dark eyelashes flutter. Then there was a drawn out inhalation of breath from the bandaged form on the bed and everone visibly jumped as the eyeslids abruptly flicked open. There was a soft groan and those large brown eyes, so different to Andy's blue green, moved slowly to survey the room and people.

"Wha...." The soft voice was raspy like a croak.

The eyes blinked several times and the pretty face screwed up as they tried to focus. The eyes turned to stare directly at me and I saw a definite light of recognition in them despite them being completely unfamiliar to me. The full and pretty lips moved tentatively, trying to form words with clearly great effort.

"Suzy?"