Raising the Dead …Part 10 …Accepting Blame

It was ironic. Alex wanted to find out why a vision of a strange girl appeared in his mind when he used electric needling to induce a reaction in a sample of brain tissue.

At the time he knew nothing―privacy laws protected the identity of the donor of the brain tissue he was examining.

But Alex was fascinated by the girl's beauty and wanted to see if he could uncover more of details of the memory trace by using a larger portion of tissue from the same area of the brain.

Being able to decode any portion of a memory was an achievement in itself with exciting implications for science, but truthfully, the scientific inquiry was overshadowed by his fascination with the girl herself.

Her eyes haunted him. He yearned to know who she was.

It was Alex's own hubris that led to his putting his interests ahead of the scientific aspect of the research project.

He should have disclosed the truth to Elizabeth as to why he hired her as a researcher, but his real motive was to covertly observe her and try to connect her to the anonymous donor. And the more he worked with her, the more he admired and eventually fell in love with her.

So, when he secretly continued the research and discovered that the donor of the tissue sample was Elizabeth's dead fiance, he was in turmoil. The expression he saw on Elizabeth's face in the vision, he realized was actually a look of love but it was not meant for him, but for Mark, her dead fiance.

His whole memory project and entire relationship with Elizabeth was based on bad faith. Shame and remorse overcame him . In despair, he shut off the lights, locked the lab and drove home in silence.

The events of the past month all fell into place. He was nauseated by his callousness and monomaniacal pursuit of Elizabeth. He had interfered with a life that had already been lived and the lingering shame revolted him.

He would have to scrap the project and somehow distance himself from Elizabeth.

He felt dirtied by the whole experiment as if he were some kind of psychic voyeur.

To make matters worse, Elizabeth would be emotionally devastated. After losing Mark she'd have to deal with his btrayal and their inevitable breakup. But to end the relationship so abruptly seemed unbearably brutal.

He resolved to slowly disentangle from Elizabeth and gradually over the next few weeks signal to her that his feelings had changed. It was cruel in a way but ultimately kind. Telling her he truth would only inflict more pain.

Well, this was the rationale he told himself, and it wasn't fully convincing but it did provide Alex with an excuse to withold the truth from Elizabeth and avoid the anguish of admitting he deceived her.