Completing Someone – Chapter 28 – Learning
Troy woke to the feeling of an itch. He raised a hand to scratch his nose and found himself being stared at by a younger man in a lab coat. Troy assumed this guy was his doctor.
Finally, the guy spoke. In a very familiar voice he said, "Well Mr. Bolton, what do you hear now? Hmm?"
Troy knew that voice anywhere. That was Jake. He was sure of it, but the man standing before him was clearly not Jake. "I'm sorry?"
Jake smiled, "I've been asking you that question for four months now. I've been hoping to find out what it is that coma patients can hear while they're in a coma."
Troy nodded, "Great."
"I guess I should introduce myself. I seem to know you, but you've never met me."
Troy mumbled to himself, "I don't know that I'd put it that way."
The doctor smiled, "My name is Jacob. I'm a psychologist and an M.D., but don't hold it against me."
Troy nodded, "Great. Thanks for coming by, doc. I feel fine."
Jake smiled, "Good, but that's not why I'm here."
"Then why are you here?"
Jake's grin lit up the room, "To see what you hear."
Troy rolled his eyes, "Look I've been poked and prodded, cut off from the life I thought I was leading, and now you're here to tell me that along with all the fantastic fun I've been having, you are experimenting on me?! Screw you and the horse you rode in on asshole! I'm not anyone's little puppet. I'm a grown man who's pissed off! Leave me the fuck alone!"
Jake smirked. His eyes lit up in a confident fashion. His expression made it appear as if he knew something Troy didn't. In reality, Jake was simply waiting for Troy's next reaction.
"Look if you leave me alone I'll chill out, okay?"
"Oh how quickly they move on to bargaining. So, now that I know you're progressing through the stages of grief, perhaps you can tell me why it is that you believe you can transform into a Werewolf?"
Troy screamed. He had never missed his growl quite the way he was missing it now. If he could just go back into the coma and live out the rest of his life in that dream world, he'd be happy to. This was not his life. He groaned as the doctor continued to stand there and sound like someone he knew so well and yet had never really met. "I don't actually believe I can transform into a Werewolf. This isn't 1986 and I'm not Michael J. Fox."
Jake laughed. It was by far the funniest response he'd gotten in a long time from one of his coma victims. So often they were so traumatized they never woke up or when they did they were just so serious. "Well, it's nice to know you aren't sitting there daydreaming about ripping my throat out."
Troy smirked and rolled his eyes, "Ripping your throat out would be too quick. You bastards have been poking me and screwing with my head since I reluctantly woke up for a perfectly good life that I was enjoying."
Jake nodded, "Really? That's very interesting, Mr. Bolton. If I recall correctly, you said you had just married your mate and were set to die by the hands of angels for the sake of saving all mankind from a war between angels and demons that God refused to intervene in to save humanity himself."
Troy looked out the window. "When you say it, it sounds like an episode of Supernatural."
Jake nodded, "That's because when I say it, Mr. Bolton, there's no feelings connected to it. Just facts."
Troy glared over at the doc, "Facts can be proven. You don't even believe me much less have the ability to prove any of that. I could be screwing with your head for all you know."
Jake nodded quietly, almost resolutely. "That's true, Mr. Bolton, you could be. But, I doubt it. You forget. I was there." He turned and left the room as quietly as a mouse.
It was several moments later that the doctor's words sunk into Troy's conscious mind. You forget. I was there. The words echoed through his thoughts. It took several iterations of the words before his mind caught on. How could that doc say he was there? Troy sat up. He'd been forced to stay there within the hospital. He hadn't so much as gone outside with him mom for a walk. There were drugs constantly being pumped into him. Gabriella was dreaming the same things he'd lived in his coma. And now, "Jake" was telling him he was there and recounting—that was when Jake's words from earlier in the conversation came back to him. The doc knew way more about his life in the coma than he'd ever said aloud. Sure he'd thought about the impending doom and the anguish he'd felt about leaving Gabriella, but he hadn't spoken about it in detail.
Troy got up from his bed. He was still weak. He realized there was no reason why he should still be weak. Except that I've been trapped in a hospital bed for six months. He picked up the metal visitor's chair from the side of the bed. He looked closely at the window in his room. Then with all the anger he could summon, he swung the chair through the window.
The sight was appalling. It was a dingy, dirty alleyway. In fact, it looked quite a bit like some of them he'd seen on cop shows where they show the bloody, messy crime scene before they go off and arrest the bad guys. Troy heard the sounds of traffic flowing. He laughed to himself when no one came running. He heard Jake's voice all over again, "What do you hear, Troy?"
Troy shook his head and started figuring out how to unhook himself from the wires and the machines. It wasn't until his heart monitor, which he'd saved for last, flat lined that he even heard someone come running.
As Troy leapt from the window, he looked around himself. It was a nasty alleyway. There were the tell-tale dumpsters and trash strewn about everywhere. He took in a breath and started toward a pair of jeans he saw lying in a corner. He laughed when they fit. He found a decent shirt sitting beneath them. He spotted a pair of shoes at the entrance to the alley and put those on as well. He wasn't even remotely surprised when everything else fit perfectly too.
