AUTHOR'S NOTE: I just got finished reading this book, and it is AWESOME; I just got the second book, and if it wasn't for work I'd be at home reading it right now!(Silly that they want you to do work AT work...LOL) Here is my little take on Scott's thoughts while he lay in the ICU.
Scott Eberman could hear the world around him but he was no longer a part of that world. He was under the influence of several different types of meds meant to keep the aneurism in his heart and brain from killing him. They were going to do a surgery to at least take the clot from around his heart, and then coil the weakened vessel. There would be no quick fix for the one in his brain; he had gotten sick right around the time his younger brother Owen, had gotten fallen ill with the virus. Owen's friend Rain Steckerman, and another girl Cora Holman had fallen ill too. He had doled out advice, pills, and comfort to the others, but had kept his own ailing to himself until he was nearly dead on his feet. To gain Cora's trust he had only revealed that he had a high fever, but that had been it. His ill feeling had ebbed and then ramped up, while he played medical detective, the flu like symptoms amplified making him feel lousy at all physical points. He had collapsed after he had helped Cora by stopping a mad man from poisoning her with an injection. Luckily the terrorist foot soldier injected the deadly cocktail into the girl's IV and not directly into her; Scott managed to pull out all her tubes before he had passed out.
Now he lay somewhere in limbo between sleep, and unconsciousness. He felt someone take his hand, but the voice and words were unrecognizable. He wondered how the others were; he was always the worrier, the one who had to take care of everyone. His Mother had always said that he had been born thirty years old, and even in high school when everyone thought he was going wild, he was always the designated driver, the sensible one, or the self-appointed chaperone for all his friends. The girls in his class though he was sweet, but many of them wanted more along the lines of the bad boy type; they fawned over him but he knew nothing would be long term. His mind, when he could think through the drug haze, wandered over the possibility of there now being really no long term for him. He didn't want to die; someone had to keep Owen, Rain and Cora out of trouble.
He heard more voices through the fog, nurses, doctors, and the gang from the paramedic squad. He wished to hear his Mother's voice maybe when he finally could wake up; this will all have been a dream. In his minds' eye, he tried to envision the look of a person who would poison people's water with a mutated virus; he tried to remember the face of the man who tried to kill Cora, but each time the image would become distorted by what he remembered seeing on TV when it came to those types of people. He recalled talking to Owen who was trying to find solace and answers in religion, but he too was at a loss. Scott did not believe in God, Jesus, Allah or any deity; he believed in himself and the general goodness and common sense in his fellow humans. He wished more people thought about taking care of others with kindness and help; over doing them in with cruelty, and hate. Nobody on their block were rich, the Eberman's were not well off, they were eking out a living the best way they could, Scott joined the Paramedics to help with the family finances so Owen could think about College. Their house was small, he and Owen shared a room, and their living room and kitchen was just one big space. The washroom was no more than a cubby for the two old machines that washed and dried their clothes. On good days they saved money by hanging out the wash to dry. Then who, he wondered, who would want to hurt any of them? Would anybody's cause really be helped with the deaths of a bunch of suburbanites who really never did any harm to anybody else? Scott hoped he would remember his mental musings once, or even if, he returned to the land of the alive and awake.
Scott opened his eyes, he felt like he was on fire, his head pounded sharply. He tried to move but another pain hit him in the chest; someone was talking to him, but he couldn't make his brain understand it through the throbbing. He tried to return to the haze where nothing hurt, and he did not feel the urge to projectile vomit. Someone was making a moaning noise; Owen would tell him later on that the pitiful noise had been him, right before he had thrown up. The pain in his head was the clot in his brain, the one in his chest was from the operation they had just performed, and the rest was the virus trying to kill him. Scott tried to take it all in between, bouts of fever, migraines, and nausea. He was happy that everyone was still alive, and now that he was awake he was going to make damn sure everyone stayed that way.