I opened my eyes cautiously, looking out from under my lashes trying to scope out my surroundings. To see if it looked safe or familiar. Like if I was back in Great-aunt Elmira’s nut house/prison.
No. This small room with blue-gray walls, no windows and a corner hutch didn’t look like anyplace I’d been before. In any lifetime. I let my eyelids flutter and took a second wider look. There wasn’t anything on the walls. No pictures, photos, posters. Not even a clock or a vent. I didn’t see any obvious or hidden cameras. Maybe I was hooked up to monitors that told someone when my vital signs changed from a coma to awake. Nope. Nothing attached to my wrists, finger, chest or – I lifted the thin blanket and sighed in relief. I might be in disposable underpants, but I did NOT have one of those painful and embarrassing tubes in my wiener.
The corner hutch was bare, too. No photos, knickknacks or personal items of any kind were stacked on the shelves. Just some folded clothing, more paper underwear and sheets, towels and pads in case I had a major blow out that the paper pants couldn’t handle.
I didn’t feel any lighter and my ribs, hipbones and wrists seemed to be the same size. So, I must have been eating on my own; I didn’t see a g-tube in my stomach like when I woke up from my coma. Nor did I feel as weak as I had then.
I checked my legs. No cast, just a thin scar where the bone had torn through the flesh and where the surgeons had fixed it. That leg did look smaller than the other. I took that for normal, my past-life memories told me that muscles not used for 6-8 weeks atrophied. It also defined the word for me. None of those memories had a clue where I was presently, only that it was not good.
I sniffed the air, hoping to catch a scent that could give me a hint as to where I might be. It only smelled like recycled air-conditioning, so it must be somewhere warm outside.
I sat up slowly and even that was enough to make my head spin. I waited until I was okay before sliding my feet out of bed onto the cold linoleum floor and stood up. It was an unaccustomed rush. For the first time in a long time I sensed, I was on my feet.
The door was steel with a glass insert, a long thin strip with wire inside, that allowed me to see out a hallway which went a long way in both directions. It allowed someone on the other side of the glass to see inside the room with the emphasis on the patient in the bed.
I pushed gently on the door and was very surprised, shocked even to find that it was unlocked. Opening outward, I checked up and down the hall, looking for hidden cameras and security.
The hall was painted in bland ivory, the floors industrial tan tiles. There were heat vents in the floor, covered with metal grates like in old houses. The ceilings were those white panels with recessed lights. It seemed to be a rest home, or institution. I would have guessed a hospital except that it did not have the noisy bustle of life and death; it was too quiet. It had more of an air of time slowed down, of the past. An old place with its musty memories and creaky corners.
There was only a handful of other doors on the hallway like mine and when I finally slid out of my room, I peeked into each one as I passed, crossing from side to side. The rooms were empty, they did not even have a bed in them or other furniture. I was the only living being on the floor.
At the end of the corridor were double doors that pushed out. When I opened one, I inched my head out to see what was there. I saw a hallway that split into two more both leading to staircases that went up. Here, the woodwork was old, polished oak and handcrafted. The ceilings were ten feet high and had that fancy molding painted white. It was an old house.
I was just about to turn the corner and head for the staircase when a short, stocky man with gray hair and blue eyes wearing an expensive three-piece suit stepped out of a door near the foot of the staircase. He wasn't surprised to see me, but gently took my outstretched arm, turned me in a circle and pushed me back toward the room.
"Up again, John?" he asked me cheerfully. "My, you do like to sleepwalk. That's the fourth time this week."
His hand was firm on my arm, yet not so tight as to bruise me. We marched back to the little room and curious to see what he meant, I did not fight him. Once there, I waited to see what he did. That surprised me too, as he lifted me onto the bed as if my weight and stiff body was nothing.
"Are you hungry? Thirsty?" he asked, but I could tell he wasn't expecting an answer. He took my vitals and pushed me onto my back before tucking the sheets in around me. All the time he was giving me a running commentary on what he was doing to me.
A phone trilled, making me jump but he didn't notice as he had turned his back on me. I heard both sides of his conversation as he spoke into the cell phone.
"Hello, Mr. Hooper," he said. "Yes, I found him wandering the hallway again. No, no response when I turned him around and returned him to his room. His vitals are good, no sign of any temp, seizures or infections. His lungs are clear, his pulse strong and even. He's been eating well, but still not on his own. He has to be hand fed. I see no sign of cognitive recovery, no attempts to communicate or interact with any of the staff around him. You can tell his father that he remains stable, safe and mentally incompetent as per the terms of the Trust."
He turned around to stare at my face as he listened to the speaker on the other end. He asked if I had said anything.
"Not a word. It's kind of creepy, in a way. He's like a little robot. Wind him up, turn him loose and he goes until he wears out. Never goes further than the staircase, not that he could use the lift or open the metal gates. That and the locked doors on either end of this wing will keep him confined to this floor. Besides, no one else is on this part of the campus."
Campus? I was on a campus? The pictures in my head of the fancy wooden staircase was suddenly familiar, but the harder I tried to pull out the memories, the weaker the images became.
Darkness fluttered at the edges of my vision, almost as if I was going to faint. My ears buzzed, and I fought it. By the time I had pulled myself out of the fit, he was gone, and I was alone again.
The next time that I woke, I was in a room set up as a lab, stuck in one of those super-sized highchairs used for taking blood samples. A sour looking man in dark blue scrubs was poking a needle into my elbow. The rubber tourniquet on my upper arm hurt but I managed not to make a face or a sound. His face was making squirming movements like he was handling crushed bug guts. Under his breath he was bitching about getting all the shit jobs, working on retards and perverts, criminals and low-income rednecks. He was talking about me.
There were tubes, vials and equipment on long blue counter tops. A computer with the biggest monitor I’d ever seen was near the doorway. It was bigger than mom’s TV. The image on it was rolling back and forth on the Windows screen-saver. Nowhere did I see anything to tell me where I was, no calendars on the walls from Brandow’s Feed and Grain, Otego, NY or Clarke’s Funeral Home in Masonville, TN.
An older gray-haired woman stuck her head in the doorway, looked at me, the lab tech and asked if I was done. My ride was here to pick me up. She gave me a second, sharper glance as if she knew I was suddenly awake and aware.
I let my gaze drop, my eyes go out of focus and she watched me for a few minutes longer before she asked him if I had done anything weird when he’d inserted the port into my vein. He was on the sixth vial of dark, rich blood. He paused to stare at her.
“Weird how? Done something? Like what?” He seemed puzzled.
“Did he jump? Wince? Act like he felt it?” she asked.
He picked up another needle and because I was expecting it, I didn’t move when he jammed it into my arm. I managed not to react even though it hurt like crazy. Blood trickled down the curve of my skinny arm and he wiped it with an alcohol pad.
“See? Nothing. He’s totally gone, even his brain scans show no activity. I heard the neurologist say they can’t understand how he’s even alive. He’s a vegetable, shouldn’t have enough brain stem left for autonomous functions yet, he breathes, eats, defecates and sleep walks.”
“Well, those two goons from the school are here to pick him up and take him home. How much longer will you be?”
“This is the last tube.” He loosened the rubber and snapped it against my arm, leaving a red welt. Pulling the needle out, he wiped off the blood, taped a folded-up piece of gauze over the pinhole and secured it with a Band-Aid.
Unhooked me from the chair and slipped the armrest from in front of me so that I could move forward. I sat quiet, not moving, not making eye contact as both hurried off, leaving me totally alone.
I waited for five long minutes and when no one came back, slid off the chair and peeked out the door. A long, empty corridor ran both ways from the lab, to my right and left. Institutional blue colored with pale beige floor tiles and a handrail on both sides of the hallway. Like a hospital. They must have sent me to a hospital for blood work. I dithered, deciding which way was left and which right, opting to take the one by the hand I wrote with.
At one end of the hall were double doors that worked on sensors and led to the outside. I was pretty sure that there would be a desk with administration sitting there to check in patients. They would definitely question me if I should saunter past them. I was also sure that the two goons who had come to get me were also waiting down that way.
The other end of the hall had elevators and a sign leading to the cafeteria. The whole place looked and felt half-empty, rundown and desperate. As if it were a rural community clinic that didn’t have enough money to provide services.
I walked slowly toward that area. Not because I wanted to go slow but because my body couldn’t go any faster. When I reached the cafeteria, my assumption about the place was correct. This clinic/hospital was only partially open – the cafeteria was dark with its tables and chairs piled against the far wall. The food line was dark and dusty, the only food purchases available inside this place were from the various vending machines along the back wall. They included coffee, tea and soup.
But, the doors to the kitchen were unlocked and I slipped inside heading for the back where fresh produce and food supplies had once been delivered. That door was locked from the inside, but no signs warned me that opening it would sound an alarm. Nor did I see any cameras above the doors or in the hall.
I could barely push the heavy outside door open but managed to get it wide enough to slip outside on to a badly paved, potholed parking lot surrounded by dark hemlocks that shaded the entire back lot. It was very dark, no moon, no stars and no lights, but I could just make out the bulk of the two-story building behind me. I could see the glow from around the corner where the lights from the main entrance must be located. I wasn’t brave enough or curious to walk around and check out the name of the place.
Instead, I continued through the parking lot and into the woods behind the building. Before I had gone very far, I was hurting. My feet hurt so bad. When I looked down, I saw that they were barefoot, wearing only a pair of slipper socks and thin scrubs that did little to keep me warm.
Whoever had sent me out to the lab for blood tests hadn’t cared enough to dress me in decent clothing for the weather. Or in shoes.
Stumbling, I kept going trying to avoid the rocks, sticks and roots that seemed to be under my every footfall. I walked until I was so exhausted that I simply couldn’t move another step, so I looked for a place to hide and curled up under a thick bush at the base of a downed tree.