Battalion Life

Spencer was surprised that he didn't wake to a fog of drugs or pain. While grateful to not feel either, his mind was still hazy with exhaustion, confusion, and panic. Something was wrong, he wasn't where he should be. Hell, he wasn't sure where he was or how he got there.

As he blinked his eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness, Spencer ran through a mental list of what he knew at the moment, an exercise that had helped to calm him down on more than one occasion. From the antiseptic smell and sterile white, well, sterile white everything he could reasonably assume that he was in a hospital of some kind. That was half of an answer, what hospital was still a mystery and there was nothing within his limited view to give an answer. Still, he took that as a good sign and the panic ebbed incrementally.

From previous experience, he knew that the exhaustion and lack of pain likely meant that he was coming out of general anesthesia, possibly with some sort of epidural block depending on the type of surgery. Without any pain, it was hard to tell where or what kind of surgery it had been. It also didn't explain why he had needed surgery in the first place. He wanted to focus on those questions, figure out the answers, but his body wasn't cooperating. The post-surgery haze coupled with the panic he was feeling had muddled his thought process. Spencer's thoughts were so chaotic that he didn't even notice his eyelids becoming heavier, darkness slowly dropping down on him. Mere moments after his eyes opened, sleep had claimed him once again.

BT

The next time Spencer opened his eyes, it wasn't to the harsh sterility and panic from before. He woke to the muted lights of a patient room, complete with a soft pillow beneath his head and far fewer machines surrounding his bed. It was far more comfortable than the previous location, despite the aching pain he felt highlighting every inch of his body. The pain was clear indication that whatever epidural block he had was almost completely worn off.

Curiosity winning over everything, even the threat of additional pain, he decided that sitting up would be a nice change, perhaps even answering the questions still swirling in his head. He groped at the remote until he could lift it high enough to see it. The stars bursting behind his eyes as he slowly moved had him missing the numbness that he felt when he first came out of the anesthesia. For the most part, the pain was dull, a background to the sharp stabs of feeling that sparked across him from the slight adjustments he was attempting.

The pain was flushing the haze from his mind, leaving it open to the questions that had been floating around his mind. Gently fingering the bed controls, he pressed the button to raise the bed to a position that was incrementally closer to sitting. As the bed was slowly moving, he could feel pulling and stretching in his back and legs as they were angled into a position against their will. Unable to handle the sensation and fearing that he might pull stitches, Spencer stopped the bed and tried to breathe through the pain erupting in his lower body. When he did so, he looked down to see what was causing the pain, expecting to see bandages covering a surgical site at a minimum. What he saw was definite evidence of surgery, just not the kind he expected.

Without prompting his mind supplied the exact name of the surgery he must have endured: Sinister Transfemoral Amputation. There was no mistaking that surgery for any other, his left leg was gone from just above the knee down.

"Huh, I guess I don't need to worry about arthritis in my knee like the doctor predicted," he thought to himself. He leaned back against the pillow again thinking about the dire warnings his doctor in DC had given him in the months and years since he had been shot in the knee. As he stared at his legs, contemplating the relief he felt about not having to deal with arthritis, the absurdity of his thoughts coupled with the irrefutable evidence before him, hit with an almost physical blow. Reality finally started to sink in. "My leg is gone," he whispered as his heart started to beat a bit faster. "My leg is gone. It's gone, gone...no...this can't be happening. This is some sort of fucked up nightmare," his whispered words were starting to become more frantic and less coherent as the panic settled. "Fuck, fuck, fuck..." he was chanting softly as he pushed back against his pillow, muscles tightening in a 'fight or flight' response, but with no way to flee his own body. His eyes were screwed shut and his hands were gripping and releasing the sheet and blanket, trying futilely to gain traction against an intangible adversary. He could feel his heart racing, his breathing was starting to become uneven and shallow, sounding jagged and harsh to his own ears, being all but drowned out by the pounding blood that was racing through his body. "Fuck, fuck, fuck..." It had stopped being a chant and had become a plea, a question whose answer he already knew.

The panic was increasing and he was starting to get light-headed, unable to stop himself, his breathing was becoming more and more uneven, curses and pleas dripping from his lips in whispered agony, there were spots dancing behind his eyelids as he was involuntarily starving himself of oxygen. He was so lost in the panic that he didn't hear or see the nurses that had entered the room. The first immediately started pushing a sedative into his IV line while the second went to the other side of the bed to lower his head slightly and whisper soothing words. She brushed his hair from his forehead and kept telling him to relax, to breathe. As the sedative reached his bloodstream, he started to calm. His heart was still pounding but it was slowing down. His breathing was still harsh but was evening out. The blood that was pounding in his ears was becoming quiet and he could hear his own weak voice whispering, begging, "Please, please, please, no. No, no, no, fuck, no. Please..." His muscles, taut and corded in the panic attack, were relaxing incrementally as the medicine took control. His voice trailed off, lost to the drugs coursing through his system.

"Oh dear, we didn't think you would wake up for another hour at least," the soft, soothing voice said. The hand kept stroking his forehead, grounding him gently from floating away completely with the medicine. "You weren't supposed to be alone when you woke up. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

Those words were repeated over and over again as Spencer gave in and fell asleep, tears still streaming down his face and falling silently on the pillow below.