It wasn’t the worst pain I’d ever felt, but a deep ache permeated every inch of my bones and my muscles shrieked if they so much as twitched. My skin felt stretched too tight over my body, like I might bust apart at the seams if I moved too quickly.
“Do you want to try sitting up a bit?” the nurse asked.
Wetting my lips with an equally dry tongue, I thought about it for a moment, then nodded. I knew that moving was going to hurt, but I found that I really wanted to sit up. A whisper in the back of my mind said that I’d been lying down for far too long and I was desperate to see the world at a different angle.
The nurse didn’t expect me to move on my own. With the touch of a button, the bed shifted under me and guided me into a partially upright position. As expected, even this much movement caused every inch of my body to cry out. I was like the layer of ice over a frozen pond that someone had just stomped on. The very center of me seemed to shatter, and I shivered as if I were cold, though I also sweated with heat at the same time.
On instinct, the pain made me reach out. I don’t know what I was searching for.
Comfort?
A solution to my pain?
Neither of those were readily available, and my outstretched hand hovered uselessly in the air. I grasped at nothing. I expected nothing.
Then, to my surprise, something gripped my hand back. The other man that I’d noticed earlier, the one with the little girl, had returned to my bedside and held my hand between his own. His hands were larger than mine, and his palms easily engulfed mine. The pressure of his grip was neither too hard nor too soft, and so pleasantly warm that for a brief moment I forgot my pain.
“Uh,” the man said when he noticed me staring at him. “Don’t push yourself too much. You’ve been out for a while.”
Out?
I’d been “out”?
What did that mean?
The way he said it made it seem like I’d gone somewhere, but I had the distinct impression that I’d been trapped for a long time.
Luckily, after I sat up, nothing more was expected of me. The nurse kept asking questions, most of which I barely answered or barely managed to slur out a few words. A couple of other nurses eventually came into the room, chatting among themselves like twittering birds as they checked the machines connected to me. The image of their faces swam in and out of view as I struggled to focus, and without realizing it, I fell asleep with my hand still held by the strange man.
I didn’t dream. It felt like I barely blinked before I opened my eyes again, but there was a heaviness behind my lids that said I’d been unconscious longer than I thought. The room was the same and I was still propped up slightly, but the man who’d held my hand and the little girl were gone.
Maybe they were a part of the dream after all and never actually existed in the first place. Or maybe they were real, and this was the dream. It was hard to tell.
Just a few moments after I opened my eyes, a familiar redheaded nurse stepped into the room.
“There you are,” the nurse said with a smile on his face. “Awake again already. We expected you to sleep for longer. You must be eager to get on your feet.”
Ignoring him, I looked around the room.
“There was a man here. With a kid.”
The doorway was empty now, but I could have sworn the man and child and been standing right there.
“Mister Conway has been coming frequently to read to you and keep you company while you were healing,” the nurse said. “He was also here with his daughter when you woke up, but he went home after you fell back asleep.”
The name meant nothing to me, but hearing that the man read to me struck a spark of familiarity. The few words the man had spoken to me while I was conscious had been comforting. He had a very pleasant voice. Deep yet soft. Confident yet soothing. I imagined that it would be very nice to hear him read.
“Will he be coming back?”
I was finally forced to look away from the door when the nurse stepped into my line of vision. “Perhaps. Mister Conway volunteers often at the hospital and I’m sure he’d be happy to visit you next time he’s here. Now, if you could please keep looking at me. I need to check the reaction of your pupils.”
A bright thin light shone directly into my eyes, making me flinch. Then it disappeared, before coming back again. Light and dark. Light and dark. Tears gathered in my lashes as I tried to keep looking at where I thought the nurse was standing. Whatever my eyes were doing must have been the correct response because the nurse made a pleased sound and proudly announced that everything was in working order.
This nurse had already introduced himself before. I remembered that much, but I didn’t remember the name. It had been some sort of animal.
Frog?
Otter?