Bryce

Bryce Edmunds is a precocious (in a cool Hogarth Hughes way, not like Oliver from the Brady Bunch) 11-year old, filled with a mischievous curiosity about anything related to gaming or technology. He is also an unfortunate regular in the special care section of Seattle Memorial hospital. Diagnosed with an extremely rare form of blood cancer at age 6, Bryce is now on a first-name basis with much of the staff on the seventeenth floor of Seattle Memorial Hospital. Known as quite the charmer to the nurses, Bryce unfortunately receives few visits from his family as his mother and father are forced to work long hours to pay for his medical bills as well as care for his younger brother and older sister.

Background
Lifeline has taken a particular interest in, spearheading a dedicated team of doctors and nurses to treat and hopefully cure the youngster of his as of now terminal disease. Lifeline sort of assumed a surrogate father-type role in Bryce's life, spending some of his free time telling tales of the goings on with G.I. Joe. Bryce eats up Lifeline's tales of the Joes because despite his illness and punishing treatments, he hopes to join the Joes someday, or fight with the Autobots, depending on the week.

Bryce's case represents everything Lifeline loves and hates about the medical field. Representing the love end is the tangible experience of going through the euphoric strides and punishing setbacks in Bryce's treatment. But Bryce's case also is a reminder of everything Lifeline hates about the field as he routinely has to butt heads with insurance bureaucrats in justifying expensive treatments for his patient. This usually entails taking out an additional one or two hours a week to fill out excessive paperwork and justifying his treatment to insurance auditors who see Bryce's case as a financial liability to their bottom line. In addition, with the recent appearance of Deadline and Spike Witwicky, Lifeline routinely wrestles with more abstract ethical quandaries, such as how someone like Bryce could wind up suffering through years of crippling treatments while someone like Spike Witwicky can get physically beat into the ground by his ex-wife's boyfriend, interrogated and tortured for six weeks and more recently receive a near-fatal stabbing at the hands of Ebony and emerge relatively unscathed from these encounters with an almost Energizer Bunny-like obliviousness. All of this Lifeline has caused an amount of stress that Lifeline shoulders - and that's just for one patient! On top of his other patients and on top of the stresses of being with the Joes. Despite this, Lifeline shows none of this stress around Bryce's as the two have formed a deep doctor-patient bond.

IC Activity
March 7, 2010 Bryce has since barricaded himself in his room with his pillows and cushions from the couch his mom and dad occasionally sleep on ever since Spike Witwicky mistook for his son Daniel and threatened to "beat his ass raw" if he didn't visit his dad in the hospital.