Chapters (67)
“Well, holy moly to you too.”
They spent the next six hours chatting.
They were married three months later.
And a year after that, I arrived.
Babies sleep a lot, so neither of my parents were overly concerned when I was only awake for an hour that first night. In fact, for the first day, my parents were convinced they gave birth to the easiest baby on the planet. I slept until 3:00 a.m., woke up crying, my mother nursed me, I goo-ed and gaa-ed for a little while, and then boom, 4:00 a.m. hit, and I was out like a light. When my parents couldn’t get me to wake up the next morning, they rushed me to the emergency room.
They ran a bunch of tests on me, and then at 3:00 a.m., I woke up with a loud cry and everyone celebrated. At least for an hour.
I stayed at the hospital for the next four months until every test was run. I was fed intravenously during the day, then nursed by my mother for the hour I was awake. Finally, when I reached fourteen pounds and I was deemed as healthy as any baby in existence, save for my peculiar sleeping schedule, my parents took me home. They continued to feed me intravenously and my mother continued to nurse me each night for the hour I was awake. I can only imagine the stress and worry I caused them.
They waited and waited, hoped and prayed, that one day I would wake up like a normal baby, but it never happened.
My father took me to see twenty specialists in six different states and three different countries. No matter what time zone I was in, I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and fell asleep at 4:00 a.m. After twelve years of tests and more tests, no one could ever determine why I was only awake for this specified time. What they did discover was that I had an excess of melatonin in my bloodstream. Melatonin is the hormone that regulates the body’s sleep-wake cycle. My pineal gland, found in the center of the brain and responsible for melatonin secretion and regulation, was three times the normal size.
When I was fourteen, I had brain surgery and the gland was removed.
Nothing changed.
The condition was thusly named Henry Bins.
::::
There is a file attached to the email and I click on it.
A PDF downloads.
It is the full report.
I read the small blurb prepared by the co-founder of AST, Mike Lang.
Mr. Bins,
I am sorry to tell you that we matched the fingerprints you provided us to a Jane Doe pulled from the Potomac River on Monday, October 4th, 2014, in Alexandria, Virginia.