Sentinel reporter Pietro Salk revives briefly from his coma to work furiously on his key, before collapsing again. The fruits of his labour are posted by his wife on their family website.
(The doctors aren't saying what caused the coma in the first place, but it looks very like a malicious attack using some kind of neural disruptor - the same kind of weapon used in the Cube theft. Has Pietro become another victim of V?)
By JEREMY CLARIDGE
Sentinel reporter Pietro Salk emerged from his coma for several hours yesterday, only to collapse again after spending hours working feverishly on his key. Salk's wife, Sylvia Salk, had found him collapsed in their office upon returning home Monday evening.
She has been unavailable for comment, but according to the account written on her family web site, she "had brought in dinner from Calla's, as usual. But when I came home, the door was open and there Pietro was, in his office, gasping for air." According to the site, Pietro Salk's key detected his distress and summoned emergency services, who arrived shortly.
"Looking at [Salk's] brain patterns over the last three days, ... it looks like he simply burned out like a candle," said neurologist Dr. Lillian Anderson. She said, with the family's permission, that the potential for Salk to make any sort of recovery is very low, and that even his lower brain functions appear to be deteriorating rapidly. "I'd be very surprised to see him survive a week, at this rate," Anderson said.
According to Anderson, Salk was in a sort of fugue state during his brief respite from coma. Salk interacted only with his key, responding to almost no stimulus outside of that. "The only way to rouse him was to try to take the key away, and then he became like some sort of wild beast," said Anderson. "He clearly had not made any sort of substantive recovery."
Sentinel medical advisor Dr. Stuart Ivanovitch said that this kind of pathology is rare, but not unprecedented. "The medical establishment has seen this sort of last-ditch neural activity before, but it isn't often that it makes any sort of sense," he said.
Doctors have not offered any guesses as to what precipitated Salk's neurological crisis, saying only that it was a private matter, and that only the patient's family could decide whether or not to reveal that information.
