The Awakened Pt. 01

He began to stare at one of the blobby things beside him. As he concentrated, trying to see some similarities between it and the body lying in the greyness below he slowly began to move towards it. He flinched in shock and looked around quickly and realised that he'd stopped moving again. He focused again and began to move closer to the weird Mr Blobby beside him.

If you really looked you could make out the outline of a jaw here and the shape of a nose there but you really had to look. And the blob just tapered into...nothing. It felt like he was in a weird undersea morgue with all these dead bodies floating around him.

He shuddered at the thought and tried to centre on something more normal. He looked towards the end of the bed and focused. He slowly moved in that direction. Hah! He turned and slowly looked around his own bed, ridiculously pleased with himself at this tiny victory.

He began to experiment with moving to the doorway out of the ward. His body...he couldn't call it his body...his form...his spirit, no. His...well, whatever it was, he managed to move it further away so that he could see around the partition to the nurses station. It was a strange feeling as he essentially willed himself to move.

He was strangely aware of his actual body at all times. It remained unmoving and unconscious on the bed. He was aware of the breathing, aware of the dull throb from his back and leg and aware of a nagging feeling from his stomach. He was hungry! Well, some things don't change.

He reached the doorway (there was no actual door) and peered around the separating wall at the nurse on duty. He recognised her from earlier but couldn't remember her name. She looked up from the paperwork and stared straight at him, making him react like a naughty schoolboy being caught out of class as he tried to move back out of view but she obviously couldn't or hadn't seen him.

He pushed a bit harder to move away down the wide hospital corridor but found it increasingly difficult. He stopped struggling forward and felt himself slowly moving back to his body almost like he was on a piece of elastic. He relaxed and allowed it to happen; tiredness washing over him. He slowly sank back towards his body and as he closed his eyes he drifted into whatever passed for sleep in this weird double life that he found himself in.

= = = = = = =

"Mr Daniels. Mr Daniels? Can you wake up? I've got breakfast for you if you can wake up?"

The deep insistent voice roused him from a blissful sleep and he blearily looked up into the face of a bearded man.

"The doctors will be doing their rounds soon and you'll be needing something to eat before they start poking and prodding at their prodigy."

"Their what?" grated out Kane, his voice still gravelly.

"You're the miracle. The one that defied all the odds from what I hear. Now enough of that, let's get you sitting up and some breakfast inside you while it's still hot."

Kane's nose twitched and the smell of toast made his mouth water and reminded him how hungry he was. He felt himself slowly tilted upright as the motor on the bed eased him into a more upright position. He squinted at the man's badge.

"Thank you...Jeff, is it?"

"That's right Mr Daniels, and you're welcome. Just eat up now."

Jeff began the same routine with the other inhabitants of the ward and Kane slowly became aware of the noise and natural light around him. He checked the clock above his bed - just after eight in the morning.

He set to his breakfast with a will, savouring a sip from his cup of hot tea before slowly working his way through a hearty if somewhat rubbery breakfast. He leaned back into the pillows, feeling thoroughly sated, and closed his eyes.

The guilt hit him at that moment as he realised that he hadn't thought about his family until then. What a callous bastard! He was still mentally chastising himself when he heard a voice from the bed beside him.

"So you're finally awake then?"

"Sorry?"

"You're awake are you?"

"Yes."

"About time. Hey, Don! You owe me a tenner."

Looking around, Kane saw the older man beside him cackling with glee as he looked at the sour faced man in the bed opposite him.

"That's not fair! Those doctors said that there was no way he was waking up!"

"You sneaky bastard, you mean you heard their diagnosis and then made that bet with me?"

The other man, Don he'd called him, had the grace to look embarrassed at being caught before the sound of numerous feet in a hurry could be heard entering the ward.

"Well, just you make sure that you get the nurse to pass it over here as soon as she comes by to sort out the bed pans."

Don looked sullen at the prospect of parting with money and seemed about to say something when a crowd of doctors swept into the ward.

"Blimey! You've really caused a stir. Look at them all!"

And that was all that Kane had time for before the curtain was drawn around his bed and seven doctors began poking, prodding and generally reassuring themselves that he was actually awake and able to hold a sensible conversation with no side effects.

The whole experience was exhausting. Questions ranged from the banal to the ridiculous as they tried to ascertain his memory function, cognitive ability and general reactions to being a medical miracle.

It finally ended with a promise to arrange an MRI as soon as they could. He was being fast tracked apparently and would soon be moved to a private room.

He collapsed back to his bed at the end of the ordeal.

"Your own room eh? How'd you manage that one?" said his nameless neighbour.

"I'm not sure."

"Private medical insurance, I expect," chimed in Don.

The old man who'd been so talkative this morning looked thoroughly disgusted at the idea and turned his back on Kane. Don looked as though he was about to say something and then lapsed into silence. It was strange being chastised for something that he wasn't sure he'd had anything to do with. He felt irritated with the irrational old man and grumbled to himself about the injustice before slowly relaxing and drifting off to sleep.

He awoke in the grey world as he'd half expected to. The spirit manatees were no longer hovering over the other beds. He puzzled over that for a minute before making the assumption that it was because their occupants were awake. Kane began to drift aimlessly around the ward. He could 'hear' Don and the other man bickering. The other occupants were mostly silent, listening to music or watching the TV.

His control was improving and he soon became bored with manoeuvring himself around the ward. He started to move himself towards the nurses station.

"Good morning Si!"

One of the nurses called out a pleased greeting to a smiling, middle aged man as he walked through the ward doors.

The nurse came out from behind the desk and gave the man a warm hug.

"We haven't seen you for a while."

"I know, I've been neglecting you shamefully and there's only one way to apologise for that," he said, producing a box of twelve Krispy Kreme doughnuts from behind his back and presenting them to the nurse.

"Doughnuts! Si's bought us doughnuts girls!" came the happy squeal from the nurse and a chorus of happy voices greeted her announcement from around the surrounding wards. They all gathered round, bemoaning how unhealthy they were before reaching for the sugary treats and the box was soon emptied.

The man called Si then started to move around the other wards where he was warmly received. He settled himself down and started talking to people that he appeared to have met before. After this small amount of excitement Kane retreated to his position above his body and out of sheer boredom began to experiment.

He tried spinning himself around faster. He moved higher in the room until he surprised himself by bumping against the ceiling. For some reason he'd imagined that he'd be able to move through the walls and ceiling of the building like a ghost but unless he was missing something that wasn't on the cards.

Moving back to his hover position he then tried holding himself horizontally and even head down. All of these things were fairly straightforward if a little disorienting. He sat up and cast around looking for something else to try.

He noticed an empty plastic cup on his bedside table. He reached forward with a finger and pushed against the cup.

Nothing happened.

He tried again and felt a slight resistance against his finger. Frustrated he sat back up and sighed, as it just didn't make sense. As he looked up he thought he saw the man called Si in the ward entrance looking directly at him. He was suddenly rooted to the spot by an irrational surge of fear. But then the moment was over and Si moved on and so completely ignored him that Kane began to look for what else the man might have been looking at. When he remembered that there was a clock directly behind him he cursed himself for a fool and relaxed.

In the meantime Si had moved into his ward and introduced himself as a volunteer visitor, someone who likes being around people and made time to visit those in hospital that didn't have anyone able to visit them. The other patients in the ward were delighted to have a new person to speak to and the conversation was soon bouncing back and forth.

Si enjoyed hearing about the miracle man and the grumblings about private health care and jumping the queue raised their heads again. It turned out that Joe, the older man in the bed next to Kane, was an old trade unionist who believed that the National Health Service was being sold off.

Kane continued to eavesdrop for a while, idly moving himself around the place.

He wondered if anyone had come to see him while he was in the coma. His work colleagues would have missed him for sure, as would his parents and older sister when he didn't get in touch. But Devon was a long way away and it would be expensive for them to stay for any length of time, especially when they didn't have keys to their house. His house. Tears welled up again. He sighed trying to think of something to do to distract himself from the awful truth.

He wasn't good at being idle and yet all his body seemed to want to do was sleep.

He mentally started a tally of things to do, people to contact and questions that he needed to ask his physicians.

With a new sense of purpose he decided that he wanted to be back in his body. It took him a moment before he realised that he didn't really know how. He tried to just relax and let the pull to his own body take him back but that just left him hovering in the default manatee position.

He focused on that link that he felt and "pulled" at it. He was suddenly awake and in his body, almost half-sitting up.

"Bad dream?"

Kane looked across the ward and saw Si looking at him from a chair next to Don's bed.

"You could say th..." he started to answer before he caught himself, "err...who are you?"

"Of course, we haven't been formally introduced. My name is Si. I'm a volunteer visitor. I like to come and spend a bit of time here, having a chat and trying to spread a bit of good cheer. And you're..?"

"Kane."

"Good to meet you Kane."

Si moved over as if to shake hands and then pausing obviously decided against it. It was rather awkward.

"Well, all good things must come to an end. Sadly I have other errands today," said Si, much to the disappointment of the others in the ward.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," he reassured them all before heading out of the ward. His cheery voice said his goodbyes in the distance and then he was gone.

Joe turned and stared balefully at Kane, the obvious cause for their loss of entertainment.

"Buggar," said Don, "I was enjoying that."

= = = = = = =

Two days later and Kane was in a private room, had a new Samsung phone beside him and was trying to make sense of everything that had happened.

After waking himself up two days ago, the first thing he'd done was to look in his side locker for any personal possessions that made it through the accident. The simple things, his wallet, watch and keys, brought back floods of family memories and it took him a long time to get his emotions back under control.

His guilt took over for much of that morning as he second guessed everything about the timeline of the accident, and he sunk into a deeply melancholy mood.

However, by lunch, he was feeling slightly more himself and began to enquire about access to a phone. The nurses promised to help but not until he'd had the scans that were scheduled for later that afternoon. One was a more general MRI scan to see the state of his injuries, one, an fMRI to scan his brain for any clues about the sudden recovery from his coma and the last a series of x-rays to understand how he was recovering.

He was very nervous about the brain scan as he had no wish to become a laboratory animal but then he also wanted to be reassured that he wasn't stark staring mad or suffering from some form of PTSD or whatever the correct term for the sort of loss that he'd been through was. In the end he'd decided they were care professionals and would do their best for him but it didn't stop him from worrying.

He hadn't been ready for the claustrophobic feeling of being inside the giant tube or for the sheer noise of the thing. He had to physically hold on to the sliding bench that he was on to force himself to stay still in the tube. On seeing how panicked he was they had someone counting down the number of seconds that he had left inside the machine and he held onto that voice like a dying man to a lifeline.

They'd been very careful moving him around. The doctors had explained that his back had been broken in multiple places during the crash, and while they were hugely encouraged that he could move his toes, they weren't taking any chances. His leg break was also a nasty one and it had been the thing that had nearly killed him. Thankfully when he was cut out of his car paramedics had been right there when his leg started to fountain blood from the damaged artery. It had been touch and go but they'd saved him.

All in all he was incredibly fortunate to have survived. That's what people kept saying to him. But it was no consolation to him. He'd lost his family. They'd been ripped from his life and he felt hollow and meaningless without them.

Not a day had gone by over the last five years when he hadn't hugged and talked to his wife and children. They'd been incredibly close, relying on one another for support without a larger extended family around them. Emma did have some family in the area but they'd never really warmed to him. Quite why he didn't know but they hadn't. Even grandchildren didn't seem to bridge that gap. So they made their lives together and it had been wonderful.

He began to settle into a self-pitying funk again. That funk wasn't helped when after the scans had been done, no one would tell him anything. He guessed that the brain scan might take a while to review and so he tried not to worry but visions of being poked and prodded for the rest of his life were abhorrent to him. He NEEDED to know what was happening.

But no. It had to come from the consultant and the consultant was a very busy woman so he would have to wait. All he could get was looks ranging from worry to awe from the various physicians which didn't help his stress levels at all.

He knew that he'd woken up from injuries that a lot of people didn't wake up from so maybe that explained some professional interest, but awe..?

They took him back from the scans through a different part of the hospital. A nurse called Sophie had supervised his transfer down to the scans and helped the orderly negotiate the crowded corridors. She collected him from the MRI suite and brought him back into a different and much quieter area of the hospital.

"What's all this, Sophie?" he asked the nurse, slightly suspicious that he was being put into some form of quarantine.

"Your manager has been in touch with your private health insurance details, Mr Daniels. Now that we have all your information we can make you more comfortable."

"My manager? You mean Gus?"

"Mr Lincoln has been in touch and has been waiting here for you for the last forty-five minutes. Would you like me to show him in?"

"That would be great Sophie, thank you."

He looked around and realised that his few possessions had been moved here. He triggered the bed to move into a more upright position just as his boss of the last three years walked into the room.

Gus Lincoln was a slight, bespectacled man. He was short, balding and intensely intelligent. He was one of the reasons that Kane worked where he did as he knew from the moment that he met him that this was someone that he could learn from.

"Well you gave us all quite the scare," said Gus with a warm smile.

Gus Lincoln's voice deserved its own story. It was bassy, rich and rolling. It encompassed every girl's dream of what a man, a real man, sounds like. Women had fallen in love with that voice. It was molten, dark chocolate on the smoothest ice cream you ever tasted. It was also totally incongruous on a man of his physique.

He sat on the bed as Kane realised that he was too choked up to answer. Seeing someone here that he knew, that he had a connection with, hit him like a tsunami and he couldn't speak as tears slowly fell down his cheeks.

"It's usually the women that cry when they see me, not the guys," joked Gus, though he couldn't hide the emotion as he saw his friend lying there.

Kane half-laughed and half-sobbed, remembering Gus's many stories of the women who'd fallen for his voice and weren't quite so enamoured with his looks.

He reached out and took Kane's hand. They stayed that way for a couple of minutes as Gus tried to convey his sympathy for Kane's loss through that contact. Kane finally got control of his emotions, took in a deep breath and slowly released it.

"Thank you for coming, Gus. I hadn't realised how much I missed seeing a friendly face."

"Oh, it's nothing, I...but surely you've had other visitors?" he asked, shocked.

Kane just shook his head.

"Not that I'm aware of. My parents are elderly and live a long way away and Emma's..." he had to pause. It was the first time that he'd said her name out loud since he'd woken.

"They were never that close were they..? Well, the good news for you is that I am your biggest fan, and the rest of the team are a pretty close second so we'll be around a lot more."

"Gus, you don't have to..."

"Don't be daft. Half the guys will be beating down your door when they hear about the gorgeous nurses and the amazing free coffee. If the wifi here is any good they'll probably come and work here!"

Kane smiled in spite of himself, buoyed up by the relentless good humour from his friend.

"Seriously though, is there anyone that you want me to get in touch with? Anything that I can do to help?"

"If you can get me a phone and my laptop that would go a long way to helping me feel a bit more normal."

"Done."

"And if you could just check that everything is OK back at the house..? I've no idea what I left on or what was being delivered in the last few weeks."

"Of course. I've got a phone coming in for a new starter today. She'll just have to wait until we get you up and running."

They chatted about work and other things for a while until Gus was shooed away by a nurse for tiring her patient. He left promising to be back tomorrow with all manner of electronics, the nurse smiling in spite of herself. Kane had been all set to argue until he saw the consultant outside his room and saw the excuse for what it was.

"Mr Daniels?"

"Hello."

"I'm Dr Sharanya Ramakrishnan, the consultant overseeing your case."

"Good to meet you doctor."

"If you're feeling up to it, I have some initial feedback from your scans."