What Dreams May Come Ch. 07

Her eyes dropped a bit, disappointed, and I looked down to see that she had been rolling the side of the pen against my nail bed. Fuck! I thought I'd felt something in my hand, but I was too distracted by her closeness and her smell to focus on whatever I was supposed to do about it. Do it again! Give me another chance, Nurse Lee! I wanted to yell at her, but she'd moved on to the next thing already. This was that damn Glasgow coma test and I was screwing it up. She sighed, and made a note on her device putting a '1' on a 4-point scale for the category "Eye Opening."

"Can you tell me the name of your team, Cole?" she asked. "Try to open your mouth and say the words. Tell me the name of your team, okay?" Easy. Talking was my thing, I could do this. Colorado Rapids. Colorado Rapids! A noise came out of me, but it sure as hell didn't sound like Colofuckingrado Rapids. Frustrated, I looked down and realized I was still on the ventilator and had no way of even saying the team's name. "Good start... is that the best you can do, Cole? Try it again for me?" she leaning closer, her eyes lighting up. God, they were beautiful... the kind of eyes that looked a little like she was smiling, even when she was relaxed. Jasmine and those eyes... Her eyebrows twisted again, and I realized that I'd fucked up another category. She put down a 'Not Testable - Ventilator" on a 5-point scale for "Verbal Response." She tested me on a category she knew I couldn't do! What the fuck, Nurse Lee? What a ball buster!

"All right, this next part won't be your favorite, but bear with me. It's called 'Motor Response' and it looks at how your body moves when I cause you some pain. The thing is, I'm not sure how much nerve damage you've got and where, so we'll need to try a few things. I assure you, this is only to test your reflexive responses to pain and not because I'm pissed that you had to be a show-off and kept that Sounders ball in play instead of letting them take the foul last year. It would be completely unprofessional of me to enjoy even a little bit of this. So, do us both a favor and give me a good response, okay?" she asked, digging her fingers into my trapezius muscle between the neck and shoulder. A jolt of pain ran through me and my body reached my hand up and touched hers.

At the touch, an image flashed through my mind. Nurse Lee and I were frozen in a moment of climax, my mouth at her breast, her back arched, her head back and mouth open as she sat astride me, her hand clutched in my hair. Her smooth mocha latte skin shimmered. Her eyes were closed, but her mouth was a cupid's bow, perfect and pouty. We were sweating as if we'd been going at it for hours, and were too into it to even think about stopping. I was in a fucking coma and Nurse Lee still wanted to bone me!

She moved her hand, taking that sweet money shot image away from me before I was done with it. Triumph shone in her eyes and she wrote down and underlined a "5" on a 6-point scale for "Motor Response." Pride surged in my chest. Fuck yeah! I'd show her Motor Response. Just let me wake up and I'd have her screaming numbers she'd never heard of. Those eyes of hers were smiling again. I did that.

"I knew you were flopping on me, you big faker," she said, her eyes drifting downward to where my body had a glorious erection making a tent under the blanket. Nurse Lee's eyebrows went up. My body made another sound, that was almost close to the laughter I was feeling. She leaned in and I was intoxicated by her jasmine scent again, "Well, they don't have a test category for that, Cole, but it's good to see you taking an interest in life again," she said, chuckling. "Next time we do this, I want you to open your eyes for me, I want you to tell me your name, and I want you to do what I ask you to do. I'm going to start decreasing your propofol and see if we can get you off your ventilator and breathing on your own. Your brain swelling has gone down enough, and I think you're ready for it. If it turns out we're wrong, we can put you back on it, but I want you to show me what you can do. The Rapids ended the season 3 games down without you, so the least you can do is let me see you suffer through some physical therapy when you wake up, Cole."

She was going to start decreasing my propofol? What did that even mean? I looked down at the hospital ID badge dangling from her hip and saw the name "Leela Vaidya, M.D. Neurosurgeon." Yeah... I definitely wasn't getting laid. Nurse Lee wasn't a nurse, she was a fucking brain surgeon.

***

I woke up to see Sloan restlessly pacing in my room, tapping his lips with steepled fingers. He stopped when he saw me awake and walked to the bed. "How's Lake?" I asked.

A look of annoyance flashed across his face, "Fine. How many buttons were on the shirt I was wearing on your first day here?" he asked.

"What?" I said, baffled.

"Answer the question!" he yelled, leaning over me. The vein in his temple was throbbing and I figured this wasn't a good time to lighten the mood, so I thought back to the day.

"Well, four were showing, but you had it tucked into your jeans. Wait... you freed up things to have the threesome with Cake and I—"

"Cake and *me*" he corrected, like it was some kind of reflex for him to kill bad grammar. "Go on..."

"Yeah, then two more were showing. There were two on each cuff... and you had two buttoning down each collar tip because you're a control freak who needs even his collar tips to stay still..." I said, as Sloan made a noise of annoyance. "Plus the three extras sewn below the button holes. Fifteen buttons. Why the hell are you asking me this?" I asked.

"Visual memory... photographic..." he muttered to himself, then started pacing again. "Dare I hope you have any life skills other than running and talking women into pointless sexual encounters?"

"You know, being a stuck-up prick is funny for a while, but you gotta—"

"You are going to wake up and resume life again. It will not be the same life you lived before, but it will be life. It will be hard. The memories of life before your accident will haunt you, mock you at every turn. You will feel useless and be tempted to despair. Still, I have no other choice. I need you. She... she needs you," he said, leaning over me. There was none of the usual aloof coolness in his face and I realized he was being an asshole because there wasn't anything left that wasn't thinking about how to help Lake. The guy couldn't hold still and began pacing again.

"Um... what do you need? I can tell them she's schizophrenic and hearing voices, but they'll just think I'm crazy..." I said.

Sloan stopped pacing and had that same guilty look on his face as when he heard the voices in her head. "Lake is not schizophrenic... she is suffering because of my arrogance," he said, his face twisting. "The voices are real. After listening to them long enough, I recognized them. They are Bates... they are all Bates," he said, looking like he was going to be sick.

"You mean he found her and he's doing this to her? I thought you took care of him! How is he doing—"

"Bates is not doing this to her. The voices *are* Bates. The one doing this to her is Mantha."

"You're gonna touch me and make me see stuff again, right?"

"No, there is no time. You are beginning to fade. Your propofol levels will soon have you conscious. You see, I implanted Rose and myself with micro-sensors inside the ear canal and sinus cavities. These sensors had other functions, but I was only interested in the inputs from the limbic system. Mantha must have activated the other functions of the sensors. It is intermittent... possibly using Wifi or other mobile connectivity. The potential is incredible... if only we could... the problem with the voices is that Mantha has begun steadily feeding Rose with demonstrations of the new functionality it has learned. In my habitat demonstration with Bates, Mantha learned the more negative aspects of the human experience... and when it found Rose it began proudly showing her what it has learned in the voices that are most familiar to her."

"Oh my God... like a kid proud of their new drawing showing it to their mom... only with fear and agony..."

"Exactly. We need you to stop Mantha."

"Stop your genius computer system designed to think better than I can? Sure. No problem. Tell me how."

"I cannot. Wakers almost never remember more than flashes of their experiences in this place. Even if you could remember more than that, which I doubt, you would never be able to get access to her. I set up stringent security measures before I left. No... you will need to take over the company."

"Oh... well, that sounds much easier," I said, convinced that the stress had finally gotten to Sloan. "I don't remember squat on a good day, and now I'm supposed to just figure out how to take over a company with just flashes of memory.

"Exactly... but you remembered the cat, didn't you?" he said, muttering to himself and pacing again. I didn't know what he was even talking about. Then he stopped and looked at me, his eyes brightening. I was about to ask him what was going on when he slapped me in the face really hard.

"OW! What the fuck—"

"F4453213303 DA61F20BD67 FC233AA33262 E9873D79C6 D87DC0FB6 A5778633389 - REPEAT IT!" he yelled.

"What? You gotta be kidding me! What's wrong with you?" I yelled, rubbing my face. Then he rubbed his knuckles into my sternum, making my body twist up in agony.

"You had 17 unnamed women in your life and yet you remembered Bobbin's name because it was connected with pain. You need to help Rose, you need to take over Cerebrotech. You need to memorize and retain this data this in order to do so. F4453213303 DA61F20BD67 FC233AA33262 E9873D79C6 D87DC0FB6 A5778633389 REPEAT IT!" he yelled again.

"Can't we try making it into a song? AAAAAAGH!!" I asked, as he began randomly jabbing at parts of my body that caused insane amounts of pain while yelling the number at me again. So, that was my afternoon with Sloan, the applied learning teacher. I felt myself fading, but then he just worked me over harder. I guess he wasn't good at goodbyes. After this, I'd be a little leery of them myself. I tried as hard as I could to say that insane sequence for him, but never really got more than 6 or 7 numbers. I worried about what would happen to Rose. I worried about what would happen to Sloan. I wished I'd had a chance to have more hot coma sex before rejoining the world in a broken body, but I guess we don't always get to choose these things.

***

Flying across the field, I saw Dr. Lee standing next to the goal doing a knee bounce with the ball. She watched me zooming toward her with a smirk on her face, not even bothering to look at the ball. I knew she could bump it in and score at any moment, but she wouldn't do it until I was just within reach. She wouldn't score until I had my hopes up... she wanted it to hurt. Looking around for my team, I spotted Cake wearing nothing but keeper's gloves, suspended and tangled up in the goal net and getting it in front and behind from the defenders.

As I closed in on Dr. Lee, I ran so fast, I couldn't even feel my feet anymore. Dr. Lee raised her eyebrows and lifted her shirt up, slowly, still bouncing the ball effortlessly on her knees. She tossed the burgundy jersey down on the grass, still bouncing and bouncing and bouncing. Her wavy black hair shimmered on her milk chocolate shoulders, her breasts jiggling with each bounce. Then, she pulled down her shorts, still somehow keeping that fucking ball in the air, and was a soccer fan's dream come true wearing nothing but knee socks and a smile.

The closer I got, the slower everything went. My feet felt unreliable, like they were there, but that they weren't stable. Dr. Lee kept bouncing that ball, moving from knee, to head, knee, knee, head, head and back to knee. She was so fucking brilliant with that ball, I wondered what the point of even getting closer was. She could do anything, and I was just this guy that was helpless and uncoordinated. Still, she looked at me with those eyes and I knew she wanted me. She wanted something I didn't know if I could give her.

I stopped running. There was no way I could win this. Dr. Lee stopped bouncing the ball and tucked it under her arm, her eyebrows knitting in disappointment. A whistle blew and Sloan threw a red card down on the field. He looked ridiculous wearing a yellow referee jersey and dress pants... and a tie. There was a weird "B" symbol on his jersey with a bunch of numbers mixed with letters below it. The idiot called a fucking offsides on me and I completely lost it. I yelled that there was no way I was offsides because I was on the defending team! Dr. Lee wasn't offsides because she wasn't behind the defense because the defense were behind Dr. Lee having sex with Cake in the goal! Who the hell made him a referee, anyway?

Sloan raised his hands like there was nothing he could do about it, and that I would have to be ejected from the game. He looked desperate and hopeless at the same time, saying that people never remember the important stuff when they wake up. He picked up the red card, wrote on it, and handed it to me. I looked down at it in confusion. He had written the weird "B" symbol on it with the same long number/letter combination as he had on his shirt. "This is a souvenir. You need to help Rose, Cowboy. Remember to help Rose." Then he poked his finger into my eye. Well, not my eye, but up into the bone that goes around it. I smacked Sloan's hand off me, yelling that it fucking hurt. He just nodded and stared into my eyes. "Remember to help Rose," he said, again. "Now, can you show me your tongue, Cole?" he asked.

I backed away from him, feeling disoriented. His yellow shirt was so bright, it hurt my eyes. Everything hurt. "Cole, show me your tongue. Can you do that?" a voice said again. I groaned and tried to turn away from the brightness, but it was hard to move. A sweet smell drifted into my head when I inhaled, and I opened my eyes wider to see these beautiful sparkling black eyes looking into mine from behind a plastic shield. "That's it, Cole... you're in the hospital. You were in an accident. Now, can you show me your tongue?"

My throat felt dry and raw. I swallowed and tried to clear it. A water bottle was held to my mouth and I sucked some of that cool heaven into my mouth. She wanted to see my tongue. She wouldn't be the first. This was my body. I had made it run miles after it begged me to stop. It obeyed me when I told it to go faster when faster was impossible. A beautiful woman wanted my tongue, so I opened my mouth and told my tongue to get the fuck to work. "You'll have to buy me dinner first..." I rasped.

A loud cheer went up in the room, and I noticed a couple people in masks and shields standing behind the woman with the gorgeous eyes. One was clapping, one putting a hand on her shoulder and squeezing it. The woman kept her hypnotic black eyes only on me, though, laughing and nodding her head. "If I hadn't taken hundreds of bone bits and garbage out of your brain and reconstructed your skull, myself, I'd swear you'd been flopping this whole time, Cole. Welcome back," she said, squeezing my hand. "My name is Dr. Leela Vaidya, and you'll need to remember that because you'll be cursing it a lot as you recover. We're going to be making you do a bunch of stuff that will test how much damage there is, and where we need to help you recover. Coming back from this is going to be frustrating, embarrassing, and you're going to hate every minute of it, so can you tell me your new swear word, Cole? Va-id-ya... see if you can say it," she prompted, her eyes filled with triumph and joy.

Nothing around me made sense. The last thing I remembered was flying over a cow just seconds ago, and these people were acting like I've been here for weeks. My body felt weird. The world came into my brain too fast in some ways, too slow in others, like it couldn't agree with itself. I also had the feeling that I had been told an incredible secret, but that it was just past the edge of my mind. I could smell it, feel it, hear it breathing just beyond a veil of understanding... and then, like the memory of a perfect dream in the waking moments, it slipped away. I looked back at the pretty eyes that wanted me to do something. I loved that she wanted something from me... it made me feel like I still had something to give. "Leela Vaidya... best doctor... in... world..." I said, with enormous effort.

"You're damn right about that, Cole," Dr. Vaidya said smiling, the shield glare hiding her eyes as she turned to poke at different parts of me, testing for reactions. "You've been laying around here long enough. Let's get you to work."

What Dreams May Come - Ch 07