Bring 'em Back Johnny

Warning: this one is very long but I really didn't want to split it into chapters. There is not a lot of sex in it (it is in the romance section) and it is definitely not a quick tug story. My apologies for any mistakes, particularly in the medical details, that is not an area of expertise for me.

As usual it is my own work and isn't to be reproduced without permission.

Please feel free to vote and or comment, I'd love to hear what you think. BB1212

There was no single point in time where you could say I woke up. Or regained consciousness. I gradually became aware of extreme pain, but it wasn't as if the pain was suddenly increasing. No, it had always been there, just as strong, but I simply hadn't realised that it was pain before. My realisation that it was pain kind of phased in, and soon enough I felt like I was drowning in a bottomless sea of agony. It was so bad that I couldn't work out where the pain was, it was just everywhere. I vaguely remember trying a couple of times to work out where the pain wasn't, but that didn't work either. The pain was a monstrous thing that wrapped around me, and penetrated me right to my core. It was omnipotent, ever present, all seeing and totally pervasive. Even when the regular, but not nearly frequent enough, calming rush of what I later found out to be morphine brought some fuzzy relief, the pain still didn't go away. It just stepped back as I soared on the strange and drugged-out winds of chemical fantasy. It watched malevolently as my mind drifted off to strange places that I had never been to, or even heard of. Places of the fevered imagination, of dragons, of flying people and of talking animals. But even then, in those far off fantasy worlds, I knew the pain was waiting. It was just biding its time, and the drug fueled hallucinations began to incorporate a sinister and dangerous edge of fear. I didn't want to return, I wanted to just keep floating away and escape the pain forever. I searched for the way out, I chased after it in my mind but for some reason my mangled body and my drugged out semi-consciousness would not permit me to leave.

I vaguely remember voices, usually female, and lights. Not 'the light', my way to escape, just drug diffused regular lights. I vaguely remember cries of distress that occasionally weren't mine. I vaguely remember flickering movement and noise. I vaguely remember being held down. But these things were just fleeting snippets of awareness that punctuated the pain. They were the tiny high points that seemed to only be there to make it more obvious how low the low points really were. I had no sense of time. I remember voices around me, but it was like the people were talking another language or were under water. The voices were frustratingly indecipherable and my brain eventually stopped struggling to understand and just gave up and let the noise wash past me. To my battered consciousness it was just a rambling bunch of incomprehensible sounds drifting down the relentless river of life as I absently watched from afar.

Then I remember laughing. Not happy laughing but vicious, malicious laughing. When this happened, the fuzzy relief wasn't nearly as noticeable as I had come to expect, and the pain laughed manically too as it remained in control and prevented my drug fueled flight.

"Who are you?" a quiet, feminine voice asked. It took me a while to realise that the noise was words and that I had actually understood the words. My heart soared as I suddenly realised that I must be on the way back from wherever it was that I had been. But then I tried to think of the answer and I came to the horrifying realisation that I couldn't answer the question. I don't mean that I was physically unable to talk, which was certainly the case, I mean that I didn't have that information available. I had absolutely no idea who I was. I couldn't remember my name, and on top of that I also didn't know where I was from or what I did for a living. I could suddenly remember lots of relevant questions, but I didn't know any of my answers to them. I froze up in panic.

"I know who he is," a second voice said, and the words were dripping with contempt. Somehow, I knew that the nasty voice matched the evil laugh. I waited, hoping desperately to hear her next words, but the voices faded away as the pain came rushing back, seeking once again to invade my helpless body. But this time it wasn't just physical pain, it was mental pain too. I hadn't realised up until that point that I had no memories, but now I was suddenly faced with the fact that I had just a basic awareness. I was only the broken physical outline of a person without any detail of who or what that person actually was.

The lights and the blurs eventually morphed into the vague shadows of people, then the vague shadows of people eventually morphed into actual people, and those people were all nurses and doctors. I had already guessed that I was in a hospital, but the reason became obvious as I discovered that my left leg was in traction and both of my arms were in full casts. I had bandages covering parts of my head, chest, left hand and my left leg.

"What is your name?" I looked beside my bed and struggled to focus. Eventually I saw a woman of about forty staring at me with a somewhat disapproving frown. She was in a spotless white nurse uniform, and her black hair was tied back in a very severe looking bun.

"It's... it's... uh, don't... remember..." I croaked. Even my voice wasn't working properly. Strangely the nurse smiled at my response, and when she did, she looked so different that it was almost as if a new person had arrived.

"You're with us at last," she said happily.

"How... long...?" I was trying to talk, but it felt like my throat didn't know how to.

"I'll try and answer all of your questions at once," she mercifully interrupted. "We don't know who you are, but you were brought in eleven weeks ago after a serious car crash." I mentally reeled, realising I had been unconscious in hospital for almost three months.

"Do you remember what happened?" I shook my head a tiny bit. Damn that hurt.

"Your car went off the road near the top of Hansard Mountain," I knew Hansard Mountain, it was spectacularly steep, and very rugged going.

"You went about eight hundred metres down the side, and the car was burnt out and totally unrecognisable." She looked at me for a moment.

"You were totally unrecognisable too. You were the only survivor, and there were many times when we didn't think you'd pull through." I shivered. There was someone else in the car too. Was I driving? Then the fog started to come back and the nurse started to get blurry again.

"You have no ID and the car was registered to your boss, but even he has no idea who you really are..." Then I was gone again, the real-world ghost returning to his fantasy world where the ghosts were suddenly real.

I developed a new nightmare after that brutal revelation. A nightmare that consisted almost entirely of tortured screams and tearing metal. Of huge jagged immovable rocks that effortlessly and uncaringly ripped through steel and flesh and of flying slivers of blood red broken glass. This macabre nightmare was harshly lit by an evil flickering fire that licked at my legs, coming closer and closer while I was broken, trapped and totally unable to get away. The nightmare looked like a classical old testament depiction of hell, it sounded like four horror film soundtracks playing simultaneously, and it smelled like charred flesh and burnt hair.

Eventually I began to have more frequent moments of reality. It didn't stop my pain, but I was mostly able to understand it. I slowly discovered what parts of me had been broken, what had been burned, and I began to mentally deal with the damage to my body. It occurred to me that my prolonged and agonised suffering could be a karmic punishment that I had been given just for surviving. The nurse who had told me what had happened was Charlotte, and she was the Head Nurse. She came to talk to me a few more times but steered our short conversations away from any further discussion about the details of the accident. I did find out that my seat belt had partially crushed my windpipe, and that was why talking was still so difficult for me. But I always tried to croak something out every time there was someone nearby, and with time and use it slowly began to improve. Nobody would tell me who had died in the car crash, but from the way they all looked at me I knew I was responsible.

One day they closed the curtains around my bed and positioned a sheet over my waist as a screen so that I couldn't see my legs. Doctor Arnold was the doctor who I saw most frequently, and I had been told he had saved my life when he provided some very unconventional treatments which had been brought about by desperation. I owed him big time. To look at him you would be hard pressed to believe he was a doctor. He was very short and rather overweight which made him look round. He also had curly bright red hair and a very patchy red beard. Doctor Arnold and Charlotte were checking the progress of my skin grafts and burns treatments. I felt them moving my hospital gown up and then there was a very vague sensation in my groin.

"Is that painful?" Doctor Arnold asked. I shook my head. He grunted and ducked behind the sheet. I heard a murmur that sounded far too much like 'nerve damage' and once again I was thrown into a state of panic. I hadn't been at all concerned about my cock because it hadn't hurt, but now I realised that I also hadn't had any sensations from it at all. I faded off into a new nightmare, one in which my cock and balls were entirely destroyed, replaced by a repulsive and festering mound of scorched flesh. Sleeping was becoming a form of torture to me, and I was moved into a private room because my night time screams and moans were disturbing the other patients in my ward.

"Why," I asked Susan one day, "does Vicky hate me?"

Susan coughed and turned away, her face flaming red as it frequently did. Susan looked for all the world like she was about twelve years old. She had a slim boyish figure, and her white uniform hung pretty much straight down in those places where tits and ass would enticingly shape those of the other nurses. Her medium length dirty blonde hair was almost always done up in childish looking pigtails and she never wore any makeup or jewellery at all. Apart from her very professional approach to her job you would swear that she was just some kid playing dress ups. But Susan was the only one who looked at me as if I was a real person. Sure, she sometimes looked scared of me, but she often looked a touch sorry for me too.

"I don't know," she mumbled guiltily, still averting her gaze.

"Don't lie," I growled, and her neck turned a deeper red, proving to me that I had guessed right.

"Ask her," Susan said quickly, and she hurriedly left.

I felt guilty for making her feel so bad, but I really had to know why Vicky was so much against me.

Vicky was the nurse with the evil laugh, and when I had finally seen what she looked like I was astounded. I had expected some sort of ugly 'wicked witch of the west' type crone, but instead I found myself looking at the most physically attractive nurse in the hospital. Well, she would have been the most attractive except for the permanent scowl she had every time I saw her. Rather than Susan, who was built pretty much like a fifteen-year-old boy, Vicky was built exactly like that fifteen-year-old boy's wet dream. Vicky had a tiny waist, with curves of epic proportions above and perfect proportions below. Her legs were delightfully toned and they seemed to go on forever. Her long straight strawberry blonde hair framed a delicate face with amazingly deep green eyes. But she was also vicious and cruel. She never spoke to me unless it was absolutely necessary and she went out of her way to increase my mental and physical pain whenever she could. I had started to dread her visits, because I could not defend myself and nobody else seemed to want to step in. It was a paradox to me, because I wanted to be free of her but I also needed her. I vaguely remembered her voice saying that she knew who I was.

I was pretty fragile emotionally at that stage. I had no idea who I was, but I did know that I had crashed my boss's car, killing someone else. I had no idea if I would ever walk again, hold anything properly again, or even know what it was like to live without pain ever again. There was also something badly wrong with my cock, the details of which nobody would discuss with me. I also knew that I had not had a single person visit me in the three and a half months that I had been in the hospital. Even my boss apparently didn't know who I actually was. The only person with any idea of my identity was the nurse who was committed to making my life sheer hell. Sure, my body was slowly healing but my mind was still broken into tiny jagged fragments.

They had finally taken the casts off my arms, and also one off my right ankle that I hadn't even registered was there. To avoid me touching my very itchy skin grafts my arms were now kept firmly strapped to my sides, except when I was being subjected to the two hours of excruciating physiotherapy which I had to endure each day to try and get some strength back into them. I was finally talking properly again, and the head bandage was gone too. Apparently, it was good news that my regrowing hair now covered the worst of the scars. There was now even talk of the traction being removed 'soon' as well.

It was evening, and I heard footsteps approaching my room. I could tell it was Vicky, and I knew that she was coming for me. I twisted around desperately, trying to free my arms, and when she saw that she laughed maliciously.

"What's the matter?" she sneered, "scared of a girl are you?"

"Why?" I asked desperately, "Why do you hate me so much? What did I do to you?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" she said, and then she took something out of her bag and strapped it to my face. It was a gag. I broke into a cold sweat. She had never done anything as serious as this before, and I panicked as I realised that I might die in the next few minutes. Vicky whistled cheerfully as she wedged the door closed and then she came back.

"Time for a sponge bath," she said. The next half an hour was absolute agony. Vicki stripped off my gown and started scrubbing my skin brutally. Anywhere it hurt got special attention, and there will still plenty of places that did. The final straw was my cock. When I finally got to see it, it was quite red, but mercifully intact. My relief only lasted moments as Vicky grabbed it firmly and twisted. The stars exploded in my head, and I heard her saying triumphantly, "Maybe those nerves just need more stimulation."

When I recovered consciousness, it was morning and Vicky was gone. My robe was on and the only proof I had that the sponge bath episode had really happened was the fresh aches and pains all over my body, and the fact that the strapping was off my arms. My cock felt like it was on fire. I pressed the call button.

"What happened to you?" Rosemary asked when she came in. Rosemary was short and plump, and her white uniform bulged in a lot of places where it really shouldn't have. She had dark skin with black hair in ringlets, and the whitest of teeth.

"Vicky," I groaned, "last night she..."

"Don't be silly," Rosemary said abruptly, "Vicky is on holidays. You just got your hands out and just had to touch it didn't you? Typical man." She roughly bound my arms again and left.

Doctor Arnold finally stopped the arm binding after that. He said that I had been an idiot, but it looked like the damage was just minor, and it would heal quickly. He also told me that my legs and groin had been badly burned in the accident, and that they had done a number of skin grafts there early on. The redness would eventually go away. Maybe. His other news was that the traction would come off in two weeks.

A week later I saw Vicky again. This time I didn't hear her coming, but she appeared, and once again it was during the early hours of the morning when no one else was around. I hadn't got full strength back in my arms yet, but I prepared to fight her off. She stared at me for at least a couple of minutes, and the extended silence between us was like the gathering of dark and ominous storm clouds.

"You want to know why I hate you?" she finally asked, her voice raw with emotion. I stared for a moment.

"Yes."

"You want to know what you did?"

"Yes."

"You killed my twin sister, you shit head."

Oh fuck, I thought, now I get it, and I deserve it too. But Vicky just left without saying or doing anything else. The corridor lights reflected in the shine of tears on her face as she turned to leave.

It all made sense now. I finally knew why Vicki hated me, and I also realised that it was justified. Somehow something that I had done had taken away someone who was precious to her. To add insult to injury Vicki was then put in the position where she had to care for me. It didn't take much to work out that it must have been Vicki's sister who was in the car with me when I crashed. Suddenly I was more frightened of me than I was of Vicki. What sort of a person was I? How had I managed to conveniently forget the seriousness of my sins while someone else was dead and others were suffering as a result of their loss?

Doctor Arnold then picked exactly the wrong time to finally open up and tell me the details of what had happened. Apparently, I was driving my boss's new BMW convertible on Hansard Mountain and I missed a corner. There were no other cars involved. He said that there were three women passengers in the car, not just the one as I had assumed, and they had all died. According to Doctor Arnold they were all 'women with very dubious morals' and he refused to say anything further 'out of respect for their families'. I asked if he knew that one of them was Vicky's sister and he just looked at me with a very confused expression. I think he thought that was just my wandering mind talking again.

As well as having to deal with the fact that I had been responsible for the death of Vicky's twin sister, I now also had to deal with the fact that I had taken three lives, not one as I had previously assumed. I hadn't handled the idea of one at all well, and this new revelation simply overwhelmed me. I began to seriously wonder if I deserved to be alive at that point.

Just for the record, in my opinion, there is nothing to justify a healthy (or in my case recovering) person wanting to end their own life. The lower you are, the more room you have to improve, and things can change so quickly. But that starting position had been seriously undermined by the fact that I had killed three young women and on top of that I had failed to do the honourable thing and die along with them. As a direct result, I had to deal with a nurse who wanted to make me suffer.

Add to that the fact that I still had no idea to what extent my injuries would be permanent and that I had no memories of who I was.

As the final damning indictment, not a single person in the world had thought I was worth identifying, or even just visiting in hospital.

To say I wasn't thinking clearly was an understatement, but my severely disturbed thoughts were all I had. It was at that point that I lost any interest in trying to get better.

Doctor Arnold begged and pleaded with me, and I could understand his concern. He had a lot of time and effort invested in my survival and eventual recovery. But that didn't change what had happened, and I remained lethargic and totally unmotivated.

A couple of nights later Vicky suddenly appeared again.

"I..." I wanted to tell her that I was sorry, but what difference would that make to her?