The Murphy Problem
They had lost so many friends that walking into the lab to find Murphy and Emori on the brink of death was almost too much. The wounded from the last war came flooding in behind them and suddenly Jackson had his hands full. Levitt and Echo were both hurt pretty badly and Jackson was struggling to keep up with the overwhelming influx of injuries. Those who knew how took over the minor injuries, lightening some of the load from Jackson. Clarke and Niylah, along with some healers from Sanctum, took over the people whose injuries were bad, but not life threatening. Jackson focused his efforts on the critical patients, 7 people including Emori, Murphy, Echo, and Levitt, whose conditions could result in death. Once he had everyone stabilized to the point where he was no longer greatly concerned, he turned his attention to Madi.
There wasn’t much he could do for Madi. Time would heal her, or not, but Jackson could do nothing as of the present. He stayed with Madi, checking her vitals and doing what he could to keep her stable. Clarke joined him as soon as she could.
“Hey, how is she?” Clarke asked softly, taking Madi’s hand.
“Stable,” Jackson said. “There’s nothing else I can do for her now”
Clarke nodded, on the verge of tears. “It’s not fair. She’s been through so much already and now…”
A few of Madi’s friends rushed into the lab asking for her and Jackson took that as his cue to leave. He returned to Raven, at Murphy’s side. Raven had her thinking face on, intensely concentrated on Murphy in front of her.
“What if I can find a way to save both of their consciousnesses to the same mind drive?” Raven blurted. She moved to the computer, typing away. “That way they both survive until we have a better solution”
Jackson stuttered. “That could kill them!”
“Or, it could save both of them,” Raven countered.
Jackson moved to stop her. “Raven, he wants this”
“What if there's a way to bring Emori back? Don’t we owe it to them to try”
Jackson sighed, defeated. “Okay. We take Emori’s mind drive out. Then what?”
“We find a solution,” she said.
“And when Murphy wakes up and realizes that we took Emori out of his head, then what?”
“Do you want to save our friends?”
“Of course I…” Jackson drifted off. He laid a hand on Raven’s shoulder. “Look, I want both of them to live. But John wanted this. He wants to stay with her”
“Imagine if Miller died. If you had the chance to spend a little more time with him or a vague chance to spend the rest of your life with him, what would you choose?” Raven knew what she was doing, using Miller.
Jackson went silent. “Fine”
“So, how do we go about removing the mind drive?” Raven asked.
“From what Gabriel left in his notes, we have to wait until Murphy’s heart stops. Both his and Emori’s minds will back up to their mind drives. Then we can take Emori’s out,” Jackson said hesitantly. “Murphy is going to be mad when you take it out”
Raven smiled. “Don’t worry Jackson, I’ll make sure he knows it was my idea. I’m not losing another friend”
At that moment, Murphy’s heart stopped. The monitors he was hooked up to went wild, beeping for attention. Jackson rushed for a scalpel.
“Tilt him forward! I need to get to his neck!” Raven pulled Murphy towards her, letting him rest against her chest. She gently stroked his hair, knowing it would do nothing. Jackson emerged seconds later with a scalpel, forceps, the defibrillator, and an adrenaline shot. He held eye contact with Raven. “Hold him steady”
Raven did just that, holding Murphy firmly. Jackson sliced right below Murphy’s hairline and pulled out a bloody, black mind drive. He set it down on a nearby tray. Raven pushed Murphy back and gently lowered him to the back of the chair. Wordlessly, Jackson placed the defibrillator.
“Clear”
The shock rippled through Murphy’s body. It was enough to knock his heart back into rhythm and he let out a soft breath. Opening his eyes, he tried to reorient himself.
“Hey,” Raven said, looming over him. “Welcome back, cockroach”
“Emori?” Murphy asked softly. He was vaguely aware of a pair of hands on his neck, covering it with gauze. Thoughts came rushing through his head and he sat up, awake. “You took it out?”
He saw a guilty look pass between Raven and the person standing behind him, who he assumed was Jackson. He scrambled to his feet, struggling to stand, and snatched the bloody scalpel from the tray beside him. Pointing the scalpel at Jackson, he found his voice.
“Put it back in!” he screamed. He could feel Raven reach for him and he swatted her hand away. “You promised me you wouldn’t take it out! You promised!”
“I made him do it,” Raven reached Murphy’s shoulder. He seemed to shrink curling into himself as the words sunk in. “I couldn’t lose another friend. Not after everything that's happened”
Murphy shook her off. He stared at her coldly and shook his head. Murphy made his way to Emori, dead of the nearby table. He pressed his lips into her hair. “I love you”
Tears were streaming down his face. Jackson looked pale, and when Raven turned to say something to him he bolted from the room. Raven stood alone with Murphy.
“I couldn’t just let you die without trying to bring her back,” Raven’s voice cracked. “Murphy, I…”
“I love her,” he said, voice seething with anger. He softened with a glance to Raven, who looked guilty and worn down from the past few days. “I wanted to die with her. Because without her, I’m not living. I’m just...alive”
“We’ll find a way,” Raven said, attempting to convince Murphy and, on some levels, herself. “We’ll bring her back”
“What? Become body snatchers like the primes before us. No one will agree to that, Raven,” Murphy said. “I killed Abby that way. I can’t live with killing someone else”
Abby was a sore spot, still. At the mention of her name, they both broke. Raven let out a long repressed sob and Murphy wrapped her in a hug, desperate for human connection. Raven’s legs gave out and Murphy lowered them to the floor.
“Listen to me. Let's make a deal. I give you and Jackson one year to find a way to bring Emori back that doesn’t involve murdering someone. If that doesn’t happen, you put the mind drive back in my head and let me die with her,” Murphy proposed.
“No. I’m not doing that,” Raven’s voice was broken. “I’m not losing another friend”
“Raven, I can’t live the rest of my life without her,” Murphy replied. “Besides, who else can I trust to find a solution to an impossible problem?”
Raven chuckled. “I don’t want you to die”
“I don’t want to die either,” Murphy said. “So get to work”
-----------------------------------
The first month without Emori was hard. Murphy had tried to revert back to drinking, but he was immediately stopped by all of his surviving friends. They needed workers to rebuild and Murphy needed to make himself useful in the reconstruction. Drinking would prevent that from happening, so Murphy needed to stay sober.
He was assigned to a work detail with Miller, building a new life back on Earth for the people who would soon return there. Murphy spent his days sorting through old stuff in the bunker to determine what was and was not useful. He was always given more work than he could reasonably achieve in his shifts, something he imagined was designed to keep his mind off of his other problem.
When he wasn’t working, people would find a reason to keep him company. There was always something. Jeremiah, the Sanctumite whose son he had saved, insisted on teaching him new recipes. Raven would teach him simple engineering concepts in their shared spare time. Echo or Niylah would pull him aside and ask questions about Sanctum that he was not qualified to answer. Blythe Anne was constantly seeking him out to taste test her newest creation. He even found himself roped into games of soccer with the kids of Sanctum every so often. He enjoyed the soccer distraction the most of all of them, since the people he played soccer with weren’t actually trying to distract him from Emori’s predicament. They would just need an extra man for a team and he was always up for a game.
All the action made Murphy tired. Later on in the day, he would instinctually find himself turning to Emori to suggest they head to bed or get some food, only to find her not there. Those days would leave a stab of pain radiating throughout his chest and an inescapable panic that something might happen and he would never see her again.
-----------------------------------
Raven wore Emori’s mind drive around her neck. It was for logic purposes. She would lock herself in the lab with a computer and the mind drive and search for solutions to their ever growing problem. Jackson was the only person she allowed to have consistent access to it, since he too was searching for answers.
Murphy had begged for the mind drive to be put back in his head a few times in the first few weeks. His pleas were immediately met with negative answers from everyone around and he would be purposefully distracted by another task.
After three months away from Emori, Murphy approached Raven and Jackson with a strange, but reasonable, proposition. He would be allowed some time every day to go through the memory files on Emori’s mind drive. It was his compromise between having her in his head and the torture of not being able to see her. Jackson initially protested, but changed his mind when Murphy proposed his alternative plan of allowing Emori’s mind drive to be put inside of his head for a stretch of time every month.
So, starting the next day, Murphy was allowed an hour a day with the mind drive. He was under strict instructions not to try anything and, for once, had no intention to do so. Instead, he went through all of their memories together, noting what Emori liked and didn’t like. He left the memories he wasn’t involved in untouched. Even though Emori had told him about much of her childhood, Murphy felt it an invasion of privacy to look through her memories. At the end of his designated hour, he unplugged the mind drive, gave it a gentle kiss, and returned it to Raven.
-----------------------------------
In a cruel twist of fate, or so Murphy perceived it, Madi got better. The constant care from Jackson and Levitt, along with her fighting spirit and Clarke’s overbearing motherliness, aided her progression. She wasn’t back to old Madi yet, but she was no longer locked in. She could form phrases and basic sentences. She started physical therapy with Jackon to improve her range of movement. She was never alone for long, with constant visitors and Clarke sleeping by her daughter’s side. Murphy envied that.
He wished it was that easy with Emori. He wished that she would just slowly get better and that he could sit with her and nurse her back to health. He could almost hear her in his head, pestering him about being too involved in taking care of her and reminding him to take time to think about himself. But that wouldn’t happen. Emori wasn’t like Madi, she didn’t have that luck.
Emori’s body was stored in a cryopod, up on the Eligius mothership. They had decided on that after not knowing what to do. It was still entirely possible that the solution to their problem would require Emori’s original body. Murphy considered joining her, waiting out the twelve months in a cryopod to feel like no time had passed. Something deep down inside of him had convinced him that he was needed in Sanctum and that he couldn’t abandon his friends just yet.
So Murphy stayed in Sanctum. He spent all of his free time with Madi. She seemed to enjoy his company the most. She hadn’t been given the memo to distract him from Emori’s death, so her distractions proved to be genuine and kind hearted. Murphy hated himself for hating her luck and shared that with Madi. She seemed to understand and agree with his anger. She didn’t let that change how she interacted with him and he appreciated her all the more for it.
-----------------------------------
Month nine brought relief. Jackson had pulled Murphy aside and given him the news that there was a possible way to save Emori.
Going through some of Gabriel’s old files, he ran into a tree sap that had curative properties. He brought it up in conversation and Octavia confirmed its existence. She also happened to know exactly where to find some and would be taking a team out the following morning to collect some.
Jackson did warn Murphy that Emori wasn’t in the clear yet. Even with the sap, she would most likely need a new liver. The rebar had completely torn through hers, destroying it beyond repair. The donor didn’t need to be a nightblood, which widened their options, but the process would require a full liver, which was not a survivable procedure. Murphy tried to volunteer but Jackson shot him down, insisting that saving Emori would be pointless if he didn’t survive.
That conversation was the first time that Murphy had the chance to truly look at Jackson. He looked exhausted. Miller had alluded to how much finding a solution to Emori’s condition had drained him, but realizing it was a different ballpark. From the looks of him, Jackson hadn’t slept in a few days. He had lost weight, most likely due to skipping meals, and he looked stressed to the point of collapse. At the end of his speech, Murphy confronted him.
“We’ll do the sap transfusion the moment the team gets back,” Jackson said.
“While that’s good to hear, but I don’t think you need to rush that,” Murphy turned on his kind voice. “Look, man, I appreciate what you’ve done for me, but you need to rest. Miller is worried sick about you and I need you working at your best. So, unless you have a liver lined up and ready for Emori right now, you need to eat something and then get some sleep”
Jackson nodded hesitantly. He glanced one more time at the computer, then moved to exit the room. Murphy stopped him.
“I know I haven't said this enough before, but thank you”
-----------------------------------
There were only two weeks left in Murphy’s promised year when the liver showed up.
A member of Wonkru came in, carried by a few others who Murphy had seen around before. The woman, who was promptly plopped unceremoniously on the table, had seemingly suffered from some sort of sudden heart failure. A few of her friends had found her and had rushed her to medical. Jackson did what he could to save her, but it seemed that her heart had collapsed.
Murphy and Jackson shared a look before Jackson brought up Emori’s situation to the friends of the deceased woman. They all quickly agreed, citing that Zellia, the woman who had just died, would want her organs to be used to save other lives if they could. The liver came back a positive match and the process began.
They had drilled it a few times before. Time was quickly becoming a critical factor. As Zellia’s body was being rushed to the transport ship, Raven lowered the shield. The rest of Jackson’s team met them at the ship and they were off. Murphy wouldn’t be present for the surgery, since he had no prior knowledge and there were others who did. It didn’t stop him from worrying every moment of the surgery.
It ended up being an 8 hour surgery. Jackson and the others emerged exhausted and covered in black blood, but optimistic. Emori had responded better than they had hoped and now they were just waiting for her to wake up. Jackson let Murphy in to sit with her, knowing he would want to be there when she woke up.
-----------------------------------
Emori woke in a panic, flailing and reaching for something that wasn't there. She gasped for air, looking around. Murphy was there, right next to her, reassuring her that everything was okay and holding her mutated hand. She scanned her surroundings
“John?”
“Hey, hey, hey. It's okay,” He smiled at her.
“What happened? Are we still…” Emori’s voice faded out when she realized. “We’re not in the mind space”
“No,” Murphy choked out with a smile, “you’re alive”
“What?”
“It took him eleven and a half months, but Jackson found a way to save your body. Don’t ask, he tried to explain it and my brain nearly melted. But you’re alive,” Murphy squeezed her hand. “God, I forgot how beautiful you are”
“Jackson!” Emori tried to sit up, but Murphy stopped her. “He…”
“Woah, woah, woah, I’ll go get him for you. You just stay still and let yourself heal. I’m not losing you again,” Murphy exited the room and came back moments later. “I’ll give you some space”
Jackson fluttered around Emori wordlessly. She kept trying to find the right thing to say to him. He evidently blamed himself for her death, though he tried to conceal it.
“Jackson, you know I don’t blame you,” she said quietly.
He glanced down at her briefly. “Doesn’t mean it wasn’t my fault”
“You did what you could, Jackson,” Emori said, adjusting her position and getting a better look at him. He looked exhausted and drained. She grabbed his hand as he passed. “It wasn’t your fault, Jackson. What matters is you tried to save me”
Jackson opened his mouth to say something, but stopped himself. At that moment, Clarke and Niylah barged in excitedly. One last look passed between Emori and Jackson as Clarke and Niylah took over the conversation.
It took time, but Emori returned to her old self. Once Jackson cleared her medically, they returned to Sanctum. Murphy was glued to her side, never letting her out of his sight. She enjoyed the constant company of friends, eating meals with her, drinking with her, even just having a genuine conversation with her. She readjusted to life in Sanctum remarkably well considering she had just missed almost a full year of them being there.
Emori did make herself useful. She took up a job as a teacher on Earth. Passage between Sanctum and Earth was free and unrestricted, but she stayed on Earth once she got there. She only went back to Sanctum briefly in the following weeks to help plan a Unity Day celebration. It was nice to feel needed, to feel wanted. There was always someone asking for her or something she needed to do.
She found herself in Murphy’s arms on a late morning, one where neither of them had something they had to do. He was spooned behind her, nuzzling his nose into the back of her neck, arm wrapped around her protectively, still asleep. She shifted to face him, unable to fall back asleep. This seemed to wake Murphy a little, who tried to pull her in closer. She giggled softly. The sound pulled him out of his sleep fogged state.
“Good morning,” she said with a soft smile.
He seemed to study her face, taking in every little detail. “Wow. You are astonishing”
She pulled him in close for a kiss. This seemed to be the result Murphy wanted and he hummed happily into her mouth. They stayed close, foreheads touching, breathing in each other, for a moment. Murphy broke the silence.
“Did you ever think we’d get here?” He asked, his voice soft and genuine. “I mean, I always hoped that we’d get to this point. But I honestly never thought that moments like this would happen”
“Ever since I met you, I hoped this would happen. But I never thought…” Emori drifted off, looking away. “People like me didn’t get happy endings”
Murphy took her hand into his, rubbing his thumb along the back of it. “Well, I will do everything I can so the two of us can have our happy ending. I promise”
“Don’t you mean the three of us?” Emori said slyly. Murphy’s mouth dropped open. He dropped her hand and rushed his to her stomach, feeling over it softly. Emori giggled. “Jackson said you won’t able to feel anything for a few more weeks”
“Mom?” Murphy asked, stumbling over his words. Emori nodded. He gasped, tears forming in his eyes. “Dad?”
“Yes, John, we’re going to be parents!” Emori giggled, realization dawning on her. “We’re going to be parents!”
Murphy leaned in to kiss her, pulling away at the last second. “How long have you known?”
“A week,” she said guiltily. “I just hadn’t found a good time to tell you”
“Jackson knew for a week before you told me?” Murphy growled.
“To his credit, I made him swear he wouldn’t tell anyone, even you. Under threat of harm”
“You threatened Jackson?” Murphy asked, amazed. “I think I love you even more now”
Emori’s face fell. “How are we going to raise a child? Neither of us had happy childhoods and…”
“Hey, we’ll figure it out together. And we’ve got friends, remember? We can always ask them for help if we need it,” Murphy kissed her forehead. “Happy ending, right?”
“Happy ending”
And that's what they got. Despite their initial fears, they turned out to be fine at parenting. Much to everyone’s surprise, Murphy was a fantastic father. He knew exactly what their son needed every time, as though he had an instinct for it. In the end they had everything they wanted.
They got their happy ending.