"I have, actually," Doctor Kalonia said with regards to having met Ben's uncle Luke. "A good man, but he and I disagree on a number of points, that being one of them." She wasn't Force-Sensitive herself, but having dealt with Leia, Luke, Rey, and now Ben, she was firmly convinced that while the Force itself might be all powerful and all knowing, the people whom it touched were just as flawed as any other individual in the galaxy. To try to pretend otherwise, she felt, only led to fooling oneself.
Leia loved Ben because the possibility of not loving him never entered her mind. It felt like an essential, almost physical property of him, like mass or height or his presence in the Force. She loved him because she knew his first smile, his first tears, his first breath. Sensed him and knew him before anyone else in the galaxy, even Luke. She was his mother. He never had to ask. -Never useless. I'm here. I love you. I'll catch you if you fall.- An old promise, not uttered since he was a child, but always true, even if she'd failed spectacularly at it before. Never again, though. She'd always be there if Ben needed a safe place to land.
"I'll put it on you," Doctor Kalonia said. She was sure there was some sort of silent conversation going on between mother and son, but she wasn't privy to it, and thus focused on her task. "I need to make sure the sensors are properly aligned. Look at me for a moment, please." Once Ben did, she slipped the sensor array over his head, adjusting it so it fit snugly without being too tight. The bits of sensory instrumentation were positioned on his temples and forehead with another being tucked carefully under his hair to contact the back of his head.
Checking the positioning one final time, she turned back to the console workstation next to the bed, entering a new sequence to activate the brain scanner. The scanner gave a faint, almost inaudible hum as it was activated, but then did its work silently, gathering data that fed back into the workstation, putting together two different holograms that projected out of it and displayed next to each other. One was a 3-dimensional representation of Ben's brain, picked out in shifting colors. The other was two dimensional, a simple bar graph with the names of various chemicals and neurotransmitters listed on the X-axis and amounts on the Y-axis.
Doctor Kalonia studied the two images as the colors shifted and the graph gradually filled up. By the time the scanner had finished its cycle and shut down, several of the amounts on the graph had been indicated in red, the numbers blinking to draw her attention. A few of the warning signs she could see she knew were the result of his starvation, but the others... Yes, that would do it alright. She compared it to the 3-D scan for a moment before turning back to Ben.
"I think I've found the root of your problem, Ben," she said as she came over to gently remove the scanner from him. "And better yet, I know how to fix it."
no subject
Leia loved Ben because the possibility of not loving him never entered her mind. It felt like an essential, almost physical property of him, like mass or height or his presence in the Force. She loved him because she knew his first smile, his first tears, his first breath. Sensed him and knew him before anyone else in the galaxy, even Luke. She was his mother. He never had to ask. -Never useless. I'm here. I love you. I'll catch you if you fall.- An old promise, not uttered since he was a child, but always true, even if she'd failed spectacularly at it before. Never again, though. She'd always be there if Ben needed a safe place to land.
"I'll put it on you," Doctor Kalonia said. She was sure there was some sort of silent conversation going on between mother and son, but she wasn't privy to it, and thus focused on her task. "I need to make sure the sensors are properly aligned. Look at me for a moment, please." Once Ben did, she slipped the sensor array over his head, adjusting it so it fit snugly without being too tight. The bits of sensory instrumentation were positioned on his temples and forehead with another being tucked carefully under his hair to contact the back of his head.
Checking the positioning one final time, she turned back to the console workstation next to the bed, entering a new sequence to activate the brain scanner. The scanner gave a faint, almost inaudible hum as it was activated, but then did its work silently, gathering data that fed back into the workstation, putting together two different holograms that projected out of it and displayed next to each other. One was a 3-dimensional representation of Ben's brain, picked out in shifting colors. The other was two dimensional, a simple bar graph with the names of various chemicals and neurotransmitters listed on the X-axis and amounts on the Y-axis.
Doctor Kalonia studied the two images as the colors shifted and the graph gradually filled up. By the time the scanner had finished its cycle and shut down, several of the amounts on the graph had been indicated in red, the numbers blinking to draw her attention. A few of the warning signs she could see she knew were the result of his starvation, but the others... Yes, that would do it alright. She compared it to the 3-D scan for a moment before turning back to Ben.
"I think I've found the root of your problem, Ben," she said as she came over to gently remove the scanner from him. "And better yet, I know how to fix it."