-Chapter 21: Homecoming-

They said it was a Christmas miracle. They said the doctors were baffled that a brain dead patient suddenly woke up, especially when those same doctors had been pressuring my parents to take me off of life support.

I felt horrible when I wished they had.

I wasn't suicidal or moody after awaking to the mundane world I was born and raised in. I was just sad I had to, once again, give up an entire world. The doctors talked with my parents and to me, testing and prodding to make sure I was OK to head home. I guess I was, because home was where I was heading right now in my dad's car.

I was in a fog; on auto-pilot. It was a familiar sensation; one I had experienced in my early high school years. I would sit in a classroom or a library and simply check out of reality, escaping into my head and becoming completely oblivious to the world around me. Sometimes I would re-watch old memories and sometimes I would create exciting worlds inside my head.

It was doubly worse that I wasn't sure which one it was this time.

I wanted to believe the world I had been living in for over a month was legitimately real, but I had to consider the possibility that it wasn't. Stories like mine weren't completely uncommon. A girl has a near-death experience and sees an angel or a man sees his grandfather's ghost. These things were reported all the time.

I just never actually believed any of them. I thought they were nuts or delusional and decided that if that ever happened to me, I would remain rational and remind myself that there was nothing beyond the physical realm – no magic or mythical creatures. It was…difficult, now, to remain true to my 'oath.'

I wanted so badly to believe the Cullens existed in that alternate reality. I wanted to believe that I had visited them and that my month-long stint in the hospital wasn't just wasted time.

But I couldn't do that. To believe it was real would be insanity – literally. I pushed back the comfort the thought of that world gave me and focused on the here and now.

The car I was in pulled into our driveway and the engine shut off. I stared at the once-familiar paneling of the single-story house as my dad got out and came around to my side, opening the door and helping me down. The process was awkward, since I was a few inches taller than him and had a bigger build, but my weeks in the hospital had greatly weakened my muscles and I needed the help.

We limped up the newly-built ramp and arrived at the front door, both of us out of breath. Dad opened the door and I followed him inside, insisting I attempt to get around on my own as my mom walked behind us. The process was slow going.

The living room was painfully the same, though the strangely-familiar scent of the house made me pause, before I remembered it had been over a month since I had been here. Of course I would be unfamiliar with the smell of my home. I smiled a sad smile as I considered I was mentally commenting on the smell of my home.

In the dream, Emil's body had been more sight-oriented. His eyes were nearly perfect and I had no trouble reading things far away. In contrast, my own body had trouble focusing on distant objects – only seeing blobs of color. My sense of smell was greatly superior to Emil's, though. Nowhere near vampire levels, but definitely on the high-end of the human limit if the comparison to Emil was worth anything.

In the corner of the kitchen, a small Christmas tree was decorated with flashing lights and ornaments. There were only a few presents under the tree this year, and only three stockings were propped up against the wall instead of the usual four.

I turned around in the living room, taking in my dad's deer heads and the ancient television set, when I heard a creaking, rolling sound coming from the hallway. I turned around and was nearly knocked over by the sight of my brother slowly wheeling himself into the room on a wheelchair.

"Brian," I half croaked, half whispered.

"Davis," Brian swallowed.

The sight of him sitting there in the wheelchair was…wrong. My mind rebelled against the thought and sight of it, half-expecting him to just rise right out of it and skip over to me. He wouldn't, though – the chair was for real.

Once I had gotten through the worst of the shock of not waking up in the Twilight world, I had asked about Brian. As happy as my parents were to have me out of the coma, their faces fell at my question.

Where's Brian? Is he OK?

He didn't die, which we were all grateful for, but the accident left him paralyzed from the waist down. His face showed me just how difficult it was to be a paraplegic after almost two decades of being a normal, healthy kid. His brown eyes were sunken in, red-rimmed, and had shallow circles underneath them. He was thinner as well, and though I tried not to stare, I could tell the muscles in his legs were already starting to shrink and wither from lack of use.

"I'm glad you're back," Brian said, a forced smile on his face. "I'm so sorry…" I shook my head at him and held up an unsteady hand.

"It's not your fault," I cut him off. "That deer came out of nowhere." Brian flinched at the reminder of what caused us to crash. "Sorry."

"That's my line," Brian mumbled, though I could tell a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders, seeing that I was OK and didn't hold him responsible.

And even if I did, he's the one in the wheelchair for the rest of his life. I looked down at the floor as the thought came to me. It was almost a heartless thing to say, but it was true. Brian was forever changed by that accident. It was too early to tell if I was as well.

My mom and dad invited Brian's and my grandparents out for a small, celebratory post-Christmas dinner. It was a bit improvised and my mom hadn't been planning on preparing a meal for everyone, so the food was a bit removed from the Christmas standard of food. Or, at least from the cliché Christmas food.

Roasted chicken, pork and beans, and potato chips were the first real meal I had since I woke up out of my coma, but I honestly didn't mind. The others didn't, either. Or, at least they didn't comment.

Grandma Anne and Grandpa Bill were the first to arrive, since they lived on the other side of Washington. My grandpa's face was lit up with a mega-watt smile, his white, scraggly beard that reminded me of George Carlin in full bloom. He placed a hand on my shoulder and gave me the standard 'hey, kid' greeting, though this one seemed more strained.

My grandma, a warm, slightly overweight woman, grabbed me up into a hug with more strength than I thought she could manage. I let out a whoosh of breath as I was nearly crushed.

"Don't you ever scare us like that again, Davis," my grandma whispered in my ear, not quite relinquishing her hold on me.

"No promises," I gave a low chuckle and pushed away from her as she let me go.

We all sat down at the table and started our ad lib meal. The conversation was light and touched on all subjects but my coma. It was only a touch awkward, since everyone wanted to ask how I was handling being back but didn't want to think about the damage the accident had caused all of us. Mostly, though, we talked about my future.

The topic left a bad taste in my mouth, although I suppose that could have been the pork and beans.

My dream had kept time with reality, apparently, since it had been forty days since I slipped into the coma. I didn't mention this aloud, since I had the feeling nobody was willing to talk about the vivid dreams I had while I was on the verge of being unplugged and left to die, and also because there was another, more pressing issue to worry about.

The semester was over for the community college I went to in the next town over, leaving me in the awkward position of failing out of the classes I had been practically acing. The college had been understanding, and had offered to allow me to retake the classes I had failed out of again without impacting the frail scholarship I had been riding to pay for classes.

All I had to do was retake the fucking classes.

It was infuriating. My jaw clenched at the thought of enduring another round of the same classes, just to cover the last month of material, and a horrible thought slipped into my mind.

If only Brian hadn't hit that damn deer and messed everything up.

My mind rebelled at the thought and I visibly deflated, my anger gone. Of course it wasn't his fault – I told him as much. Even if he had seen the deer, what could he have done? We were going nearly sixty miles-per-hour, with rock walls on either side of the road. No. There wasn't anything he could have done differently.

I left the dinner table abruptly, dumping my dishes in the sink and heading out of the kitchen. I had to be alone to think – to be away from so many looks of sympathy and understanding. No one said anything as I headed down the hallway, and for that I was thankful.

My room was completely trashed as I pushed open the wooden door and stepped inside the dark and gloomy room. My bed was unmade and piles of clean clothes were starting to resemble a nest at the foot of it. The various receipts and papers that tended to accumulate were still sitting where I left them.

It was as if I never left at all.

Suddenly, I was hit with a wave of exhaustion, and all I wanted to do was go to bed. Following my instincts, I trudged over to the haphazard pile of blankets and pillows and plopped down. I didn't even have time to take my socks off or pull the covers over me before I was nodding off and drifting into a much needed rest.

I woke with a start, jolted out of sleep and faced with the pitch black of my room at night. My head and back were slick with sweat and I sat up, propping my arms under me as I tried to slow my heartbeat. I had been dreaming of the Cullens.

It wasn't as fluid or lucid as my month-long siesta; it was more like my usual dreams. Hazy and distorted. Already, I could feel myself starting to forget the details, but I could recall Tanya's face and I held onto it.

We were walking somewhere – or maybe we were sitting down together. I shook my head; I couldn't remember. Her face was bright and she was smiling; I think I was as well. She said something that was incoherent; it was just garbled words that somehow made sense during the dream. I had blinked, and woke up.

No nightmares, no calling out for her to come back; just she and I talking together.

I groaned and shifted on the bed, hitting the button on my alarm clock to illuminate the display. 3:45AM. I fell back against my sheets, closing my eyes and trying to force my way back to sleep. But of course, it never came to me.

I groaned again and pulled myself out of bed, nearly collapsing as my decrepit muscles struggled to keep me upright. I opened my bedroom door and shuffled down the hall to the kitchen, which was traversable only because of the dim night light that was always on near the coffee pot at night. I didn't want coffee, but my throat was sore and I suddenly realized I was thirsty.

Quietly, so I wouldn't wake up my parents or my brother, I scooped a few ice cubes out of the freezer and dropped them into a small glass tumbler before pouring water into it from the built-in faucet on the refrigerator. I downed the glass quickly in one gulp, nearly panting as I felt the refreshing coolness of it slide into my stomach.

The floorboards squeaking alerted me to another presence, and I turned to face the short silhouette of my mother. She walked into the kitchen and leaned forward, as if squinting in the dark.

"Davis," she whispered. "Is that you?"

"Yeah," I sighed. "Couldn't sleep."

Mom walked over to the stove and flipped on the overhead light, since it was dull in comparison to the larger, kitchen light. The harshness of it, as opposed to the darkness I had been sitting in still hurt my eyes, though, and I turned my head while I adjusted to the new level of luminescence.

"I was coming to check on you," she mumbled, her eyes still full of sleep as she swayed slightly. She went over to the counter beside me and started up the coffee machine.

I nodded in response, not sure what else to say. It was very typical of her to check on Brian or myself when we were sick or if she was worried about us. She would usually leave the porch lights on if we went out to a late film showing, waking up to make sure one of us had turned it off after we arrived safely home.

It must have been terrifying to wake up at this time and see them still on back in November. I wondered, idly, if it had been a police officer to inform her of the accident – or did they only do that with deaths? I couldn't imagine – didn't want to imagine – her face when she got the news that both of her children were in a serious wreck.

"Are you OK, Davis," Mom asked. "You look…" she cut off, but I could easily substitute the words 'horrible,' 'tired,' or the classic 'bad.'

I shrugged my shoulders, not really paying attention. My mind was busy trying to recall my stay with the family of vampires and I couldn't bother to try to turn it away from the line of thought. The fantasy of it was comforting to me, like a perpetual daydream I couldn't switch off.

"Get some sleep," she said, gently clasping my arm as she moved past me to head back to bed. "Or at least try." I could hear the smile trying to come through in her voice, but I was unable to respond.

I was frozen in place, staring at the long shadows drawn by the overhead light with my eyes wide. I could feel my body subtly moving with each beat of my heart and my lungs burned from lack of oxygen – I was holding my breath. My mouth was dry, even though I had downed several glassfuls of water.

All these things were on the back burner; the rest of my wide-awake mind was focused on the tiniest blip in the air as my mom touched my arm.

A frail, distant pulse. A frayed wire reconnecting.

End notes: It's a little shorter than usual, but it just felt right to end it there.

I'm finished with my semester now, so I'll have waaay more free time to write this and hopefully update Unstoppable Force as well. I really want to get this one finished, though. We are so close, now.