5. Waking Up
Months passed. Three months to be exact. Solomon and Arthur had no more information about the teen after their conversation with the nurse and police. They still didn't know where he had been transferred to or if he had even survived the injuries.
The teen had been transferred to a small partially subsidised hospital in a little-known city of Shabeck. At the time, it was the only facility willing to take a John Doe from another country that would likely be unable to afford their treatment. And the only hospital who had a free operating theatre that wouldn't disadvantage paying patients. Sure, they do have exceptions for financially struggling people, but they weren't too keen on someone like the boy.
The boy had pulled through the many operations to repair his injuries and had been in a coma for the past three months. He still had a tube down his throat and many tubes and wires around his body, monitoring him and keeping him alive.
The teen twitched slightly as he started to wake up. A frown formed on his face when he heard a strange beeping beside him and a whooshing that he couldn't explain. 'What the hell is that?' the teen thought as he slowly opened his eyes. A bright light flooded his senses, forcing him to close his eyes once again. After a few moments, the boy tried again.
Once he finally managed to open his eyes, he looked around the bland white room. 'What the hell is all this?' the boy thought as his eyes finally located the whooshing machine and the beeping. 'And what the hell is in my throat?'
"You're awake," someone commented as she walked into the room, causing the teen to turn to look at her. "I'm Amanda, you're nurse."
The teen tilted his head slightly at her before he turned to see what was wrong with his body. He was having trouble seeing through the tube though.
"Hold on, Bub. I'll get the Doctor," Amanda said with a smile, getting the machine to do another set of obs before she left the room.
25-year-old Amanda is average height with lightly tanned skin; a heart shaped face; a button nose; gentle green eyes; thin lips overlined with bright red lipstick; well-developed muscles; b-cup breasts; an hourglass body shape; and long blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail.
She is wearing simple black scrubs and black leather shoes. A white nurses watch is clipped over her left breast, partially obstructing the name of the hospital. Over her right breast is her name tag and her ID hangs from her right hip, her surname covered on both with an aggressive sticker. Two pens were tucked into the pocket on her left shoulder.
The teen couldn't help but flinch slightly as the cuff tightened to a painful point on his left arm, glaring at the offending white cuff that was causing his pain. His body felt stiff and sore. He certainly didn't need that thing on top of it all.
A few minutes later, the nurse returned with a smile and a computer. "He'll be here shortly. He's just with another patient," Amanda said with a smile, placing the obs into the computer with a comment that he had just woken up.
Shortly ended up being half an hour. "Sorry that I took so long," the doctor said with a smile as he and three other people entered the room. "He's still awake?"
"He drifts in and out," the nurse answered, seeing the teen's eyes flicker open again at the sound of their voices. The tapping on her keyboard seemed to put him to sleep but the cuff inflating or someone talking snapped him back away every time.
"Alright, let's have a look," the doctor muttered, walking over to the boy. He did an assessment on the boy and looked at the report the equipment was giving him, deciding the boy was fit enough to remove the ventilator. "We're just going to pull this tube out, alright?" the doctor said with a smile to the boy, seeing him look at him blankly.
They had been slowly weaning the oxygen off the boy over the past few weeks and were planning to remove the tube within the next week anyway. This was just a little push to actually remove the tube from his throat.
The teen couldn't help but lick his dry lips once the tube was removed from his throat. He took the chance to look down and see what had happened to his body. He found a cast on his left forearm, and they had placed his right arm in a sling over his chest. He could see the blanket sticking up on his left calf/foot due to another cast as well. They had dressed him in a simple white surgical gown since that gown was open at the back.
"Those casts will be able to come off soon. The fractures are almost heeled," the doctor said, seeing where the boy was looking. "How do you feel?"
"He's Egyptian. I don't know if he can speak English," the nurse pointed out as she looked at the screen.
"Well, I don't speak Egyptian," the doctor responded with a frown, seeing the boy look between the two of them.
"I know," the nurse responded, bringing her computer over to the boy with a picture board written in Egyptian and English on it.
The boy stared blankly at the boy, seeing images that he wasn't familiar with. Some looked similar to what he remembered, but some he had no idea what they were referring to. He couldn't read a word of what was written on the board. The teen couldn't help but swallow, flinching at his sore throat.
"That'll get better," the nurse said with a slight smile. "Perhaps we should get a translator."
"We can try," the doctor muttered. "We'll come back in a bit."
The teen frowned as he watched the group of doctors scurry out of the room, an eyebrow raising as he turned back to the woman. 'What the hell are they wearing? What is going on?'
The nurse gave him a soft smile, not really sure how to communicate with him. He didn't seem to recognise the words on the board. Maybe she should try another one until they can get a translator in.
For two days, the hospital staff tried to communicate with the teen, but he didn't understand any of them. Even their Egyptian translator didn't help. The translator tried talking to him verbally and tried writing to talk to him. But both resulted in a blank stare. It became obvious quite quickly that he didn't speak Egyptian. Not this dialect anyway.
He was starting to pick up the picture card though. He could now tell them how much pain he was in by using a picture chart or when he needed the pan by pointing at the toilet. They had removed the catheter earlier that day, so he was using the bathroom again for the first time in ages.
They had also removed all the casts from his body since the bones had heeled enough not to need the support. Once that was done, the doctors arranged for him to be stepped down into rehab so that he could get his movement back.
The teen frowned as he was transferred onto another bed in another bland room. This time he had a roommate though. There was only the two of them in the room and the nurses who were receiving handover.
The roommate raised an eyebrow at the boy when he saw the teen giving him a confused frown and a tilt of his head. "What?" the tanned teen asked.
The boy is a 5'2' man with caramel tanned skin; high cheekbones; a button nose; sharp, violet eyes; thick lips; well-developed muscles; and tricoloured hair shot around his head in five large spikes forming a star. The base is black, and the tips match his eyes, three blonde lightning bolt strikes shoot up into his hair while blonde lightning streaks frames his face. Three on the right and two to the left of his forehead.
The teen is dressed in purple shorts and a purple t-shirt.
"He won't understand you. We're having trouble identifying his language," the nurse said, looking over at the boy. The nurses needed to know so she might as well make sure he knew as well.
"A-A-Atemu," the pale teen stuttered, rubbing his throat.
All of them in the room snapped their heads to him. "You know my name?" the tanned boy, Atemu, asked with a frown.
The pale boy frowned. "What is this place? Where are we?" the boy asked in a foreign language that sounded somewhat familiar to Atemu. The pronunciation was different though.
The nurse frowned. "That's the first time I've heard him speak."
"Interesting… Um… Anything else we should know?" the new nurse asked, making the original nurse blink and nod.
Atemu stayed quiet as the nurses went back to their handover, frowning as the pale teen kept looking at him with a confused, guarded expression.
Once the nurses had left and the new ones had completed a set of obs and left, Atemu climbed out of bed. He used his crutches to hobble over to the pale teen, a cast on his right leg. He also had bandages around his torso and a large, uncovered cut from his left eye down his jaw and down his throat until his collarbone.
"What the hell happened to you?" the teen asked with a frown as Atemu hobbled over to him with great difficulty.
Atemu half collapsed against the teen's bed, pulling himself onto the edge of the bed. The teen moved over to allow the tanned man onto his bed, his expression kinda cold and guarded. "What's your name?" Atemu asked. "You already know I'm Atemu."
The teen tilted his head and placed his hand against his chest. "Yami," the teen responded cautiously. He wasn't sure if that's what the man wanted, but he could guess since he had introduced himself.
Atemu smiled. "Nice to meet you, Yami."
Yami tilted his head with a frown, looking at the deep cut across the tanned man's face and neck. "What happened?" Yami asked, gesturing to the scar.
"What happened?" Atemu repeated with a slight frown. "I got into an accident." Yami sighed and scratched his head in frustration, not knowing what he had said. "How old are you?" Atemu asked in ancient Egyptian. Or what he thought was Ancient Egyptian.
Yami looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "How old am I?" Yami asked in actual ancient Egyptian. Atemu was close, but his pronunciation was wrong. "Seventeen seasons."
Atemu frowned. "Hmmm… I think I need to work on my ancient Egyptian," Atemu muttered, rubbing his head before an idea hit him. "Hang on!"
Yami watched as Atemu got off the bed and hobbled over to his bed, returning with a laptop bag. Atemu returned to his position on the bed and pulled the table over to place his laptop down.
Atemu hummed softly as he opened the internet and pulled up a list of hieroglyphics. "Point to the one you want, and we'll create a word," Atemu instructed, gesturing at the symbols. "Or you can write them down here," Atemu added, pulling a notepad and pen out of his bag.
Yami frowned and accepted the notebook. He wasn't too fluent in hieroglyphs, but he could give it a go. He was always better in speaking Egyptian than writing it. 'I know! Maybe I can instruct him to bring up Meritan,' Yami thought, writing down the symbols required to indicate his language.
Atemu watched curiously, furrowing his eyebrows as he tried to guess what the other boy was writing.