I lay there for a while in bed.

I might have dozed a bit.

All the stiffness and aches I was feeling were fading as I stretched and moved. My body still felt odd, but I was getting used to it. I don’t know how long I was lying there but the light in the curtains but increasing over time. I think a few hours, maybe.

Outside my room, I could hear the increased movement noise as more people began their days. I knew it had visitors who would come and end what quiet I had.

I felt oddly relieved now that I knew I was done. I knew there would be trouble and threats, but I was mentally ready for them. No matter what they would do or threaten me, I was not going back into a zone. A little part of me felt bad for those who would still be going in, but the greater part was happy that I was never.

Usually, I would be nervous about such a big decision and the repercussions, but I was okay. I was not anxious or concerned, just relieved.

The thought of my room finally opened and two familiar faces walked in. One I was happy to see, the other not so. Dr Helena and Dr Holland came with purpose toward me.

“John, we are so glad you are finally awake.” Dr Helena greeted me. Dr Holland chose not to but was staring at my vitals and comparing them to data on a pad in his hand. I had drunk a lot of water, so my throat was fine.

“Nice to see you too. So how long was I out this time?” I had no means of discovering this information in the room, so I decided to ask.

“There’s no need to worry about that for the moment. We need to get you checked out to ensure you have healed properly.”

Okay, that’s not a good sign. No. Looking closely at them, I noticed that they were more stressed. Tired, I think. Another bad sign in my book, so I pressed ahead.

“That’s good to know, Doctor. But how long?” I pressed.

They both looked at each other and I knew that look. They were trying to decide whether or not to tell me. In the end, it was Dr Holland who spoke.

“Six months.”

“Six months!” I exclaimed. Okay, I was not expecting that. My vitals spiked.

“Please try to calm down, John. A lot has happened.” Dr Helena said in a soothing voice.

No shit!

“When you were brought in, you were badly wounded. Your left lung had collapsed due to being perforated by the claws of the creature you fought. Its claws secreted a nasty neurotoxin-like poison which your body took time to fight off. You are placed in a medical coma to help your body heal.” She continued to explain.

This was all a lot to take in. Six months! Neurotoxin!

“The good news is that your body has completely healed and fought off the poison with no lasting effects. With some physical therapy, we expect you’ll be back to full health within a few months. I know you don’t want to hear this, but with you now awake, command will need a full debrief of your actions on the mission. I will have to wait until you’re ready, so let me know when that is.” She continued knowing I would rather have all the information than people pussyfooting around any issues.

That was expected.

“We will need to discuss your medical condition with you in-depth as soon as you’re ready as well.” Dr Holland added, which got a glare from Dr Helena.

Okay, that did not just sound oniums as hell. Before I could ask what the hell he meant, Dr Helena continued. I watched the non-verbal communication between the two doctors and even someone as blind as me in this regard could see the tension and if I was seeing it, it was bloody obvious to anyone else.

“We’ll do that later first; you just need to rest.” She indicated to Dr Holland that they should go and they began to leave. But I was not having any of it.

I pulled back the blankets, swung my legs off the bed and stood on the floor, much to their surprise.

“John, you should not be up!” Dr Helena exclaimed, coming over to me. I waved her off, showing I was fine on my feet. Dr Holland looked down at his pad at the site me standing and began furiously typing.

“Don’t worry about looking around for a while.” I told her.

“How long exactly?” Dr Holland asked.

“I woke up this morning. I made a few trips to the bathroom.”

This was when they noticed that the catheter tube was no longer attached to me but was hanging from the side of my bed, where it had been wrapped to prevent it from lying on the floor.

“You should not have removed that. You could have injured yourself.” Dr Helene scolded me.

“Sorry, I just need to get up and walk around and that was sort of limiting me.”

“Are you experiencing anything odd or any pains?” Dr Holland continued still typing on his pad.

“I feel a bit weird.” I told him. “I can’t explain it. It’s just that the body feels a bit off.”

He doesn’t say anything, just nods as he records my answers on his pad. Do I decide to ask a question of them?

“You said I’d been unconscious for six months.” The above nod confirms that’s what they said. “So why haven’t I lost most of my body’s muscle mass as I had in the past?”

Holland paused his typing for a second and looked at Helena with a side-eye glance. It was she that answered my question.

“During your time unconscious, we supplied your body with the required amount of protein and nutrients to keep you healthy. It has slowed your loss of body mass as your body didn’t need to cannibalise itself as it has done in the past.”

I nodded at this pretending to accept her answer, knowing it was complete bull shit. The human body does not react that way when in a coma. I should have lost all my muscle mass due to inactivity as it was converted from muscle to fat. The fact that most of it is still there as muscle is concerning to me.

“To follow up on my earlier question, is anything else you have noticed.” Dr Holland returned to the conversation. I decided not to hold back.

“My eyes seem extremely sensitive at the moment.” He again is typing on his pad as I answer. “My hearing also seems a bit more sensitive.”

They ran me through a series of questions and tests for the next half-hour. Of course, samples were taken and handed off to a series of nurses that entered the room. They quickly left to have them processed in the base lab. I noticed this as they usually would take them as one large group, but now, they were being handed off as soon as they were taken and labelled.

“We need to put your body through some tests, John, to find out how long it would take you to recover with physical therapy.” Dr Helena was talking to me at the moment. “Command will be interested to know when you will be able to be rated for action again.”

“No.” She pauses at that, along with Holland.

“I’m sorry.”

“I said no. I’m not going back into a zone. Tell anyone you want, especially command, that I’m done!”

They both look at each other again.

“Okay, let them know.” Helena says to me. “They still wanted to brief you about what happened in your last mission.”

“That’s fine. You can send them when they’re ready to talk to me.”

She nods at that and they both continue for another few minutes, checking the data from the monitors against my actual physical vitals. They say their goodbyes and leave me alone once more in the room.

Lying there in bed, I feel relieved that I have now committed to my course of action. No more. No more zones for me.

## ## ## ## ##

The two doctors left John’s room behind and walked through the medical facility. They did speak to each other as they walked, both thinking. Helena on what John had said and Holland on what his body had been through.

“We will have to notify them of his decision.” She finally said some distance from his room.

“We both know they will not let him go, not now.” Holland did not look up from his pad as they walked. This caused Helena to stop.

“What about his rights? His mental health? Let alone his physical health.”

Dr Holland paused, walking and turned to look at his colleague.

“Six months ago, he would have had a chance. An extremely slim one but one nevertheless. Now, he will not be given one.”

She stood there for a few moments hating herself because she knew he was right. The last six months have forced them all to make terrible concessions and choices that haunted many.

They continued walking. They eventually reach some security doors and use their passes to get through, nodding to the guard stationed in a separate booth. They were in the secure section of the medical facility now. Here they could talk.

“What did you do to him, Michael?” She asked when they reached his office.

He looked at her, deciding what to tell her. He was no fool and knew that she would be able to figure it out quite quickly as she was John’s primary doctor. So, he would give her most of the facts but not all.

“When he was brought in, his body was under assault from the neurotoxin-like poison, as you know. That, combined with his injuries, should have meant his death. One lung had collapsed and he had lost a lot of blood.” She nodded, knowing the extent of his injuries from the reports. She had not been on duty that day, so she had not been here when he had been brought in. The trauma team had him for two weeks before he was rereleased to her care.

“Well, we didn’t put everything into the report we gave you.” He held up his hand to prevent the storm of outrage he knew would come. “His condition was far worse than we revealed. His lung had not collapsed. It had been shredded; there was damage to his heart as well. The neurotoxin was attacking his nervous system and the ghoul virus was attacking the rest. The toxin was in his brainstem and was trying to shut down his body. His body was going through rapid mutations, trying to survive complicating things in the two weeks before we released him to you, yet crashed six times. The longest was for two minutes before we got heart started again. His body was cannibalising itself, trying to repair the damage and fight off infections. That is when I requested and was approved for a more radical approach.

His body was demanding fuel, so we gave it to him. We stepped back and allowed his body to do what it needed. Every day for the last week, we were dumping 10 thousand calories and massive amounts of calcium with other nutrients into his body every day. In all my career, I’ve never seen how the human body can aggressively absorb all that and use it in such a short period. The mutations accelerated to the point that we have no real idea what some of them are doing. He then stabilised and injuries that should have taken months at the very least, with healing in days. His body thought of both the virus and the neurotoxin. Flushing them from the system by the end of the second week. The side-effect was that his body needed time to incorporate the changes and heal fully. So, we placed him in a coma that should have lasted only a few days, but the changes were so drastic and aggressive that it’s taken six months for the body to realign itself.”

The revelations Holland had dropped on her shocked Helena to a core. She was aware that there had been additional changes to John’s body from the limited information she had gathered but nothing on the scale that was being hinted at.

“I need to see his real records and results.”

“You will have them.”