Things were less frenetic the second time I came to; or rather I feel like that was the second time. I felt a certain kind of bedsore as if I’d been laying in a sarcophagus for centuries; so much was my disbelief that the first thing I did was to moisten my lips to make sure I wasn’t a desiccated pharaoh. Trust my mind to come up with the most absurd of thoughts given the situation, but during embalming, pharaohs were divested of their tongue. Mine was intact so rather than a therian god or goddess responding to my wakefulness, a chubby faced nurse with freckles attended to me.

“ How are you feeling?” she said, pulled up alongside. I could barely rasp back a thing as she went about her duties, checking what I supposed was the IV drip overhead. She pulled down the side rail on my left and pressed the bed’s controls. Servomechanisms hummed somewhere underneath my upper body and slowly elevated. I felt like we’d done this many times before but I had no memory of having met her.

“ Oh, sorry…” she said, bringing a glass of water. Embarrassing as it would be to admit, I could not bring my own hands to hold it and so the nurse held it for me. Her eyes seemed to crinkled with mirth as her cheeks dimpled.

“ Awh, finally managed to keep down a whole glass,” she cooed. That did not inspire confidence at all. I had the feeling she was treating me like a puppy who’d just been housetrained but that was just my cynicism talking. At least she smelled good; far much better than the harsh stick of antiseptic pricking my nose. By the jovian moons, I sure hope I was not in a mental asylum because the walls were so searingly bright even with the lights low. The curtain had one of those kiddie patterns of stars, clouds,spaceships and caricatures of bobble-headed astronauts.

While noting a couple other things on her notepad, the nurse whose name I hadn’t caught kept humming while she checked my eye dilation, and my tongue. I just mechanically went with it as if it was routine. Which of course, I had not the luxury to think about because I felt like my train of thought was slogging through several pounds of viscous fluid.

Or perhaps my brain had been doused in engine coolant and mutated into a pumpkin― I swore I could hear things and see things that were not there. If this was not a mental asylum, there was no reason for me to voice such things while the nurse enunciated some random yes and no questions. I could only bob and shake my head in response. Maybe this was what they called being vegetation―or vegetable; I could not bring myself to care. I don’t remember how the nurse’s prodding ended but somewhere along the way I must have fallen asleep from exhaustion. I dreamt of strawberries.

Dyschronometria; losing track of time―fortunately, that was only my self-diagnosis. Paranoia because I could not explain how much time I’d lost. I was comatose for the better part of three weeks. Joy!

My initial prognosis was not good when they found me washed up ashore. The good doctors had feared cerebral hypoxia and some other neurocognitive disorders I shuddered to even mention. I had been presumed missing for the better part of three days when the authorities had scoured the sea near the place we’d dived. I have no idea how or what transpired as my memory of said day was vague and every time I tried to recall it I would get a migraine.

On the day I’d gained my full cognitive faculties, the doctor had dubbed it a miracle. I never met the nurse who had tended to me throughout the ordeal. Maybe It was because I had changed rooms or something. I didn’t catch her name nor could I remember her face except for the scent of strawberries, her dimpled face and the freckles on her nose.

I could remember her curled hair bouncing on her shoulders―I think her hair was ginger. Nonetheless, the description of her uniform was a disconnect. Perhaps It had been a figment of my time semi-comatose because how to explain that she’d been wearing nurse chapel’s uniform? Maybe I was still comatose and these hallucinations of me suddenly making a full recovery were my brain’s wiring trying to make sense of things. Maybe reality would start fraying at the edges, like an unraveling dream and one day I would wake up and find myself a disembodied entity drifting through the aether .

But if this was just a lucid dream, perhaps I would go with the flow. I had mastered the philosophy of going with the flow for the last decade or so. The doctors kept me for one more week of observation and then, on the last day of that week I was discharged with much fanfare and less bureaucratic hassle. Insurance had covered my bill but the hole in my pocket from footing was devastating. I wasn’t even sure if I still had my job at the Old Raven but I am sure the owner would have understood. He was good people, bless his heart.

On the same day I was discharged, a familiar sunny face that was less sunny and more snotty showed up to pick me from the hospital. Though the spells of lethargy had somewhat abated, I had become willowy and a ghost of what I once was. Given a pair of mallets I bet I could play a percussive tune on my ribs; I only had myself to blame for not keeping down food because everytime I swallowed something, my gag reflex was involuntarily triggered. I would hate to think what had to have happened to me to affect me but I suppose I would never know―or would I?

“ How are you feeling?” Lucas asked me. Concern wrought his face as we made our way down the ramp. The nurses had insisted that I take things easy and as a result, I was being carted down to the parking lot in a wheelchair.

“ Splendiferous,” I said. It was hard to miss the flinch from Lucas. He was no doubt berating himself for the incident and my sarcasm had come out with more bite than I intended. I could see how guilt had been eating him from the inside; he must have lost a lot of sleep as his face had none of the shine to him. The eyebags under his eyes were a testament of that.

“ I’m sorry Lu,” I said. And I meant it; I had to swallow my pride and walk the high road. This was not one of those times I could stay pushy; not when my best friend had been in the dumps for gods know how long. I guess my misplaced indignance was just one of those times I felt high-string for being helpless.

“ It’s fine bruv. No biggie,” he said, offering a wan smile. He knew how much I hated mollycoddling, especially when I was sick. Believe me, he’d seen me at my worst but that was no excuse to be a jerk to him. Humans had only so many elastic limits to their tolerance. We passed the rest of the time in awkward silence as the wheelchair rattled across the cabro.

I had meant to ask how Cassandra fared; we found her waiting on the curb while waiting for our cab.

“ Hey,” she said, voice breaking as she came for a hug. Cass had never given me a hug, nor teared up while her body wracked with sobs.

“ You dummy, I was worried sick!” added, squeezing me like a stuffed toy. My bones protested at being subjected to such a crushing embrace as I repressed an inadvertent urge to squirm. The only thing on my mind at the time was how prickly her sweater was despite the summer weather and how intoxicating her sandalwood perfume was. It was the only thing that kept me grounded, because what was I supposed to say to her? I patted her back as one would a cat that would scratch you as she continued to soak the front of my chest. Luckily, my jacket was in the way―as if one crybaby wasn’t enough.

When the cab from Hail-O finally pulled over, she extricated herself while sniffling. Her eyes were red and puffy and realizing how vulnerable she’d let herself be, she hastily tidied up. Before we got into the cab, me tottering along with the help of a cane like someone geriatric relative, cue the cardigan over my back she said to forget that it ever happened. I knew how mean of a punch she could throw while drunk―I shuddered to think how painful her haymaker would be while sober as I mimed zipping up my lips and throwing away a key.

The scenery from the hospital was all a blur―hypnotic even. Before I knew it, we were boarding a flight from Copenhagen. In right under two hours we would be landing in Zurich. From the cab to the boarding lounge I walked on autopilot.

Maybe I should have called it hobbling because boy was I winded. Down to my marrow, I could feel a sense of weariness like I hadn’t felt before. Every flex of my joints brought twinges of pain as though grinding against the very bones. Again, as embarrassing as it was to say, I needed help part of the way. I had to do a double check to ascertain someone hadn't pushed my clock 10 years forward― I should have asked for the wheelchair instead.