Awareness returned slowly. At first John thought it was dark out, but then he realized that his eyes were closed and stubbornly refusing all attempts to open them. His head ached abominably, as did most of his torso and three of his four limbs.
He tried moving his fingers first, groaning as pain shot up his right arm and shoulder with the movement. His left arm seemed to be the least painful part of his body, so he again wiggled the fingers. This time they did more than merely twitch and he closed his hand into a fist.
The next step was attempting to raise the arm, bending it at the elbow. After several failures, he finally persuaded his hand to move up to touch his throbbing forehead. He knew the wet stickiness he found there was blood, even without seeing it. He tried again to force his eyes to open, finally succeeding after several attempts.
Above him, he saw blotches of green and brown interspersed with blue. He blinked, trying to bring it all into focus, but the blobs of color remained stubbornly blurred. Giving up for the time being, he closed his eyes and let his arm drop back to the ground.
He drifted in the darkness, but he had no idea how much time had passed when next he found awareness. Not caring to repeat the previous pain-filled experience with his hands and arms, he decided to move on to his other extremities and attempted to flex his toes instead. Another moan, this one closer to a scream, accompanied the pain that tore through both limbs. On one leg it was his ankle that seemed to be the source of his agony; on the other his knee seemed to be protesting the loudest.
He tried to take a deep breath and ride out the pain, but that act brought an entirely different world of hurt. He settled for taking rapid, shallow breaths until the agony returned to a more manageable level, but the darkness again stole him away before he could achieve success.
As before, he had no idea how much time had passed when he next opened his eyes. The green and blue blotches were slightly clearer this time, but still far from being well-defined. Whimpering, he turned his head to the side in an attempt to find some clue as to where he was--and how he got there.
Nausea threatened to spill the meager contents of his stomach, but he held on by sheer determination. Great, concussion on top of the broken ribs. Dislocated shoulder for sure, possible broken bones there, too. Ankle could be sprained or broken, no way to tell at the moment. Same with the knee.
It was then he became aware of the soft footfalls heading his way. He started to reach for his sidearm, but his dislocated shoulder quickly reminded him that it wasn't a good idea and he cried out in spite of his efforts to stifle the noise. That in turn, set off another round of agony in his chest. As his vision grayed out from the pain, he could do nothing save watch as a single pair of legs clad in tan-colored material stealthily approached. By the time the owner of those legs stood over him, John had again slipped into unconsciousness.