A/N: Yay for rough beginnings~~

-nd cold

And space

And noise

I thought I was dead

…

What the fuck was this?! A moment later a force of vertigo sickened me, and a sharp crack that brought a sharp pain stunned me into wailing. Wailing. Cold air forced its way into my lungs and I was using it to wail? I didn't have to breathe one minute ago! I kept wailing and sobbing as I felt a rough material make its way up and down my body- rubbing me. And then I was moved around and finally placed in an alcove of sorts, it felt like a indentation of a firm pillow maybe. I didn't think it was foam. My muscles and throat were starting to ache. But then I felt the same steady thump-ing I'd heard in my last world. It was strong, steady, not erratic like before. I was so relieved to have some remnant of my old world that I calmed down, breaths coming slower and softer by the second. Replacing my cries were voices, I realized.

I almost started crying again when I'd realized that I'd probably just wailed like a baby in front of doctors who were dealing with a bullet-wounded teenager; but, seriously, something must've gone extremely wrong with the anesthesia if I woke up with senses this bad. Seriously, my sense of direction was still shot (was I laying on my back or on my stomach or my side?), my eyesight was worse than when I wasn't wearing glasses or contacts (everything was damn fuzzy), and I couldn't understand a word the medical team was saying. The sensory overload was incredible- I couldn't take it.

I passed out listening to the steady beat I remembered from my unconsciousness earlier. Louder now, it sounded like the iambic pentameter my old hag of an English teacher taught us. She'd probably be happy I was identifying it correctly, even if it took me almost dying to understand it better.

When I woke up, I still couldn't see, my head felt too heavy to lift from my pillow, and the most movement I could manage in my limbs were slight shudders. I gave up on moving shortly, the attempt leaving me strangely tired and hungry. I tried to puzzle out reasons as to why I would be so, so...nervous. Maybe I had been in a coma for a decade? Maybe I didn't have any limbs, and what I thought I was feeling was my nervous system unaccustomed to the loss of appendages? Maybe I had been turned into a tranny to survive the operation?... Yeah I was just passing time, really. I didn't know what happened to me yet so my lack of worry didn't really bother me. I could just worry about it when the time came.

Until then, what did worry me was my growing hunger. When I woke up it was the sort of hungry you get when you eat and an hour later there's bacon in front of you so you just have to eat it. But now it was quickly morphing into something emptier and painful. Who would leave a wounded teenager for this long? What kind of pricks were running this hospital? I tried to move around again, getting steadily more and more frustrated at my lack of progress. My arms and legs started brushing against stuff and against each other (Ha! I did have my limbs) and I could feel odd stuff sticking out of them, some wires or shit, life support maybe. Who cared. I needed food.

I tried flailing my arms to the right or left, and when they were finally outstretched I tried maneuvering them through, short, jerky movements to try and find that damn nurses' button you always see in the shows, but didn't feel anything besides the bed sheets. This was a nice bed. I could've been on the shittiest bed in existence right now and I wouldn't have cared.

I freaked out.

Eventually, not immediately. I did still have some self-control, thank you very much. But it wasn't like, 'dammit my team lost the game' freak out, but a 'holy shit my girlfriends are gonna find each other'...or what I thought the second would feel like, anyway. But my nonexistent love life wasn't the problem right now! My empty stomach was.

No joke. It felt like the only thing I could and would ever feel for the rest of my life. I vaguely felt guilty for wailing my ass off like some sort of newborn, but hell, it was a violation of my human rights to be left alone this long without food.

I don't know how long I wailed; my diaphragm was starting to burn but nowhere near as bad as the ache in my belly. I didn't stop when I felt like I was being shifted or moved, nor when I was settled into that same alcove foam thingy from before. I did feel when something soft was pressed against my open mouth however, and through natural reaction I tried to bite it.

Thank God it's food. I had a miniature fanboy squealing inside my psych, although it kinda sucked that I had to be fed liquids, maybe I really had been in a coma for a long time. I'd seen documentaries where people wake up from year-long comas, and that shit ain't like TV. People like that wake up with different personalities, new and long-lasting disabilities, and almost always royally fucked for the rest of their lives.

Well, maybe not that bad, but still. Look at my situation right now; I was being tube/bottle fed because I didn't have enough muscle control to feed myself. If I were given solid food right now, I'd probably choke on my own saliva. The thought was depressing; thinking that one of the things I'd have to completely relearn was how to feed myself.

Actually…. It really was incredibly depressing. I probably wouldn't be able to speak anymore, walk, use the bathroom- nothing on my own. For a very long time. The thought was all-consuming and I fell asleep while eating (that probably made the nurses' lives harder) thinking about just that. Even when I woke up it was still the only thing I could think of.

I was moved lifted again (what is that?), and through my horribly blurry vision I could see the ceiling lights and gray objects like cabinets, doorways and huge people. Like, I'm pretty sure Goliath would've been impressed with these suckers.

Besides my transfer to the hospital where the Green Giant and his spawn were treated, I could see lots of faint colors, but I wasn't sure what they were, and focusing on them made my head hurt. Someone needed to get my prescription glasses soon, I may have been reduced to a liquid-eating vegetable but I didn't appreciate this neglect. 'Someone is getting sued when I get out of here', was my mantra for a short period. Being outside was awesome however. It felt wonderful, if a bit chilly. Although, now that I thought of it, why would the hospital take a post-coma-vegetable outside? To remind me of everything I wouldn't be able to enjoy for the next few months of rehab, maybe? Sadistic bastards.

However pointless my inner monologue was at the moment, it was doing a great job to distract me, which I was incredibly grateful for. I didn't want to have a rambling, moaning, groaning fit because I couldn't properly form words yet. I just (tried to) relax and closed my eyes when the sun was too bright.

When I closed my eyes however, a whole different issue was brought to my attention. Things were fucking loud. Was everyone shouting? Was everyone deaf? Why couldn't I understand anyone? Everyone seemed to be talking to fast or too oddly accented or maybe even in a different language? Did I forget my language while I was out?! I started crying again, overwhelmed by all this sensory overload. I tried not to wail like before, but my emotions were so touchy I couldn't control my tears or cries or sniffles. I was transported again, or set in a sitting position and leaning against something, something like that. There were soft touches on my back, rubbing and soothing relaxing and as I settled down I heard an old, familiar sound, lub-dub, lub-dub. Kinda weird, but I was starting to love that sound. It anchored me back to the real world- one that could live without me but was still kind. Relaxing again I stayed quiet until the light dimmed and the air stilled. Being laid down, I fell asleep again.

The service this facility had was awful. I had to cry whenever I wanted to be fed, no one got me glasses, and no one tried to communicate with me when I was awake to see how my mind and memory were. The worst was when I was being cleaned. I didn't have body-image issues, or any of that complicated stuff usually reserved for girls, but I knew I wasn't exactly a work of art. It was embarrassing, mortifying even. I didn't realize how much I took my covered nakedness for granted. Besides that though, there was this one nurse, and I knew it was always the same one, because when the natural light in my room started to fade into darkness she would always sing.

A week? I didn't know, but later (I counted days when the nurse alway sang) I could see better. A lot better, in fact.

Another …..later. Clearer focus. I could even see colors now. Of course, I didn't realize I stopped seeing them in the first case, so that was disorienting.

I tried to start counting the days to make time pass quicker. I was asleep a lot of the time so my sense of time was still awful, all I had to rely on was the nurses' voice, so I made it my personal mission to make sure I knew how many shitty days I spent doing nothing except cry/eat/sleep/shit before someone realized I was coherent and tried to treat me like an actual patient. So far I chalked up maybe a day or two that I spent in that whitewashed room after I first woke up.

Then I almost cried when I realized I didn't really have an accurate way of tracking my time because I didn't know if the nurse changed shifts, only sang to me if she wanted me to sleep, or if I was even conscious for half the times she sang to me. Actually, I did cry. A lot. I felt a tiny bit bad for the nurse, she was moving my bed softly and rubbing my back and tried to feed my and checked if I was clean but I didn't stop crying until I was too exhausted to do anything but sleep.

I had to scratch all my previous dates and give up with trying to figure out the time, but I was still going to try to keep track of something. So I went with bodily progress. My vision and sight had slowly been improving the entire time I was under singing-nurse's care, my movement was still just awful though. So I tried to give it a shot. It worked. Slightly, I guess. Whenever I was awake I tried to make more sense of what was around me, trying to see what was more clear today than yesterday. The white ceiling gradually became distinguished from the beige walls, and later there were blurry outlines of picture frames. I realized my bed had high railings that looked to be made of wood, and the sheets were a pale- blue?

An odd sense of foreboding built in my chest when I first laughed. My laugh was high-pitched, child-like. It was raining when I could first sit up by myself. I stopped crying so much; I could sense it puzzled the nurse.

But that alone built an unimaginable horror. My nurse was too big. All those times I thought I'd been moved on a gurney or wheelchair before I had to rewrite in my memory as being carried. The lub-dub, a heartbeat. The tender voice that sang to me-

A mother's lullaby.

Shock was a funny thing. Before, when I'd experienced it, my heart was beating fast enough to run away from me but I couldn't move a muscle. Now, I grabbed random objects that came into my hand, I chewed my own fingers, chewed other people's fingers, and I was always still and calm.

Because that's just what babies do.

The law of conservation of mass, as my chemistry teacher would say, meant that everything in the world stays the same. If oceans disappeared it's because they froze, evaporated, or were now in living bodies. If a mountain fell then the area around it would have a higher elevation above sea level. But nothing was spontaneously added to the world, a system, because it would take something to make it in the first place.

But what made a person, a person? Their thoughts? Did they have souls anchored to a physical body? I thought that when when people died, they were gone. Simple. Their bodies were left to decompose and make topsoil for farmers 50 years later.

But later on, in my naive baby world, I could finally walk. The mom and other people I had originally mistook as nurses were very happy about this. Lot's of high-pitched squeals and laughter. Many hugs and kisses and rides on people's shoulders. After the high wore off, I found an old mirror on the corner of my baby room. And that was when it all really set in. I didn't see myself anymore, the slightly overweight teenage male with acne and acne scars, big glasses and messy hair. I was a child. Maybe a year old by now.

A year but not a year old. Fuck my life.

A/N (again): I just had to get on this bandwagon. *Bows* I'm sorry...