Not Quite Dead Yet

The basic premise of Not Quite Dead Yet hinges on the idea that Jet will inevitably have a brain aneurysm that will kill her as a result of her attack. Her injury is rooted in medical fact, as she breaks her clivus bone, a piece of which threatens to puncture an artery or embed itself in her brain. Because of the proximity of the clivus to the brain and its major arteries, a fracture there would threaten to irreparably damage the brain, likely leading to death. As Dr. Lee tells Jet, the bone is “so deep, so hard to access without damaging other parts of the brain [it is] [t]oo easy to accidentally nick the artery and cause a catastrophic bleed” (25). As the National Library of Medicine explains in a case study examining a clivus fracture, the risk is high “because of anatomic proximity to neurovascular structures like the brainstem, the vertebrobasilar artery, and the cranial nerves. Longitudinal clivus fractures [which Jet has] have a special risk of causing entrapment of the basilar artery and thus ischemia of the brainstem” (Evers, Julia JE. “Management of an Extended Clivus Fracture: A Case Report.” National Library of Medicine).