Disclaimer: I don't own the Dead Zone…. sob
A/n: Okay, I totally suck at writing, but I enjoy doing it, and my friends all seem to think it's rather good. So, this I thought up right after my own fateful tumble… I tripped and fell down my stairs about a week ago, and no one was home, and I couldn't get up. Mind you, I'm like, 17, not eighty…
Prologue
"Where the hell did I put that remote?" Johnny dropped the couch cushion he was holding and frowned. This was the second time in a week he'd managed to forget to put the remote back in the basket on the table. Now it was gone, having apparently grown legs and walked away while he'd been asleep.
The thunder that rolled across the Maine landscape reflected his mood, and the headache forming behind his eyes throbbed in time with the storm that was brewing outside. Yep, just another average day.
He almost didn't hear the phone ring. Seating himself haphazardly on the couch cushions that were stacked on the floor, he grabbed the receiver off the cradle and hit the talk button. "Hello?"
"John? It's Sarah. How're you doing?"
John shrugged. "As well as can be expected. How's the cabin?" He leaned back against the couch cushions and closed his eyes. "Oh, well, it'd be more fun if you were here. Walt and JJ need some fishing lessons. If it was up to them we'd starve." She laughed, and Johnny responded in kind, though it was a slightly false laugh, since this didn't, at this moment, strike him as very funny.
"Please come up, John. Maybe some fresh air will help your headaches." She sounded so hopeful. "Alright, give me some time to pack and stuff. I'll call you when I'm almost there." He set down the receiver and groaned. He didn't need fresh air. He needed some aspirin and a soft pillow. Standing shakily, his headache protesting any kind of movement, he stumbled into the kitchen and grabbed the aspirin. Dry-swallowing two, he climbed the stairs and headed to his room. Closing the door, he collapsed onto the mattress, asleep before his head hit the pillow.
The caterwauling of the telephone poked a hole in his bubble of solitude. Opening bleary eyes, Johnny struggled into a sitting position and looked around. The room was dark, save the beam of light on the floor from the street lamp outside. He'd slept through the entire day.
The phone insisted that he get up, and he did so, falling almost immediately back onto the bed. An explosion of painful colors burst across his vision. His headache was back with a vengeance. The sound of the phone cut through his skull like a chain saw. If it was Sarah she would keep calling until he answered. He needed to get to the phone.
Johnny's own home seemed foreign; everything was distorted and painfully bright, even in the near-darkness. He stumbled down the hall to the stairs and took them slowly, leaning heavily against the wall. He never saw the wallet on the stairs he'd conveniently forgotten to move.
The fall was short and brutal, and he landed on hard floor at the bottom. His back struck the ground first, and he cried out as his spine's screaming agony joined that already radiating from his head. As the phone continued to ring, Johnny felt the world tilt and toss him into oblivion.
He hardly wanted to wake up again. As soon as he was aware enough to open his eyes the pain from his spine returned, firing agonizing signals all over his body. The headache was gone, and that was only one of the small comforts he'd been awarded. The phone had also stopped ringing. That probably meant that Sarah had given up on him coming to the cabin.
Come to think of it, John's outlook was bleak. Bruce was in New York for a medical convention, and the Bannerman family were enjoying themselves out by the lake. Reverend Purdy had made a habit of avoiding Johnny since the incident with John The Baptist's finger bone. It could be days until someone found him.
John tried to move and was rewarded with a particularly vindictive throb of agony from his spine. He collapsed back onto the floor and tried to breathe deeply, but he ws panicking. Nice one, Johnny. Brilliant, a psychic that can't predict the wallet on the steps. What have you gotten yourself into?