A/N: Holy cow!  I've busted the 50-review mark!  Well, my ego has just gone up several notches.  Seriously, folks, I never even imagined AR could go this far.  I owe you folks everything thus far, and if it were possible, I'd throw a big party.  But since that's not the case, then you'll just have to be content with this overwhelming praise in return for all your support.

Sorry for my temporary absence- I was called to go on an unexpected trip to Florida that could not be avoided.  Hey, I got to go parasailing, so it wasn't a total waste of time.  Plus, I got to "bond" with my family.  In the words of Bill Engvall: "There's a difference between being bonded with and being stuck with."  Oh well.  'Twas fun.

Question and Answer time!  Yay!

Ophiel: Maybe…maybe not.  I could very well kill off Kira and continue from Elwood or Rook's POV.  But we like Kira, ne?  I won't kill her off…yet.  Muahahaha.

Kylemacuk1234:  *laughs* Good suggestion.  You know, I just might.

Slim Dim:  Hon, play the game.  You shall get no direct answers from me.  *grin*

Disclaimer for a slight scene stealing from Evangelion.  Name what episode I used the scene from and you get a cookie.

That done, let's get right to the goods, shall we?  Warning: Some major spoilers for SH2…hope you don't mind.  Sorry for the shakiness of this chapter…I'm getting a whole shebang full of ideas for the remainder of the story, so filler chapters are getting hard to write.  I promise the next chapter will be better!  Honest!  ^_^;;;

Cheers,
~Rumer  ("In 1903 the Wright Brothers invented the airplane, because in 1902 they drove across country with their families.")

Autopsy Report: Chapter 11

I hate being unconscious.  It's not fun at all.  All time passes, and no time passes.  You're just suspended in an endless now.  You just close your eyes- blink even- and time has flown to several hours after the blink.  If that made any sense, I must have been more screwed-up than even I thought possible.  And that was saying something.

I tried to focus my mind on what had happened.  Usually when you try to focus on anything in a dream, you wake up.  There's a difference between sleep and unconsciousness.  When you sleep, there's always the option to wake up at any time.  Unconsciousness is a middle ground between death and sleep.  There are less boundaries, and you can focus.  In this case, I focused on how in the hell I got to be unconscious in the first place.  Oh yeah, something big hit me.  Car, truck, backhoe, hell, it could have been an elephant for all I knew.  I decided to rule that out.  Elephants just weren't common in Brahms.  The closest zoo was in Harborville, and that was a whopping three hours away.  No, I didn't get out much.  I decided that a truck hit me and left it at that.  It was easier than trying to figure out how an elephant made the three-hour trip just to squash me.  I guess some animals as well as people had way too much time on their hands.  Paws.  Hooves.  Whatever.

Just when I was lapsing back into the unmarked flow of time, I started to get flickers of something.  Almost like a sped-up videotape, but not quite.  Just flashes, flickers.  A blond man surrounded by fog.  He was shooting something big with a small handgun.  A flash of a black-haired, intense-looking woman.  A flash of an obese, dirty-looking man.  A little blonde girl.  Two women, superimposed.  They looked almost the same, but not quite.  One had blonde hair with red highlights, one had light brown.  The facial features were the same, as well as build.  I felt a scream.  I didn't hear it, but I heard the vibration your bones get when someone screams really loud.  A male scream after the female.  The blond man and the brunette woman in a room, the brunette lying in a bed.  She looked sickly and weak.  The blond took a pillow and made to smother her.  Panicked, I tried to tell him to stop.  The image froze, then changed.  A large person spattered with blood, dragging a gigantic knife.  It wore some sort of helmet…I tried to focus, but nothing happened.  The scene changed.  The black-haired girl climbing a staircase filled with flame.  The obese man putting a gun to his head, then putting it down.

"Fat…skinny…ugly…pretty…it doesn't matter once you're dead!  And a corpse can't laugh."

"NO!"

My eyes snapped open.  I caught a glimpse of pristine whiteness before I was overwhelmed by dizziness and lay back down.  Taking several deep breaths, I stared at the ceiling, trying to calm the nausea.  Slowly, the queasiness dimmed and vanished, and I tried to make sense of where I was.  The room was all blurry, most likely because my contacts had been removed.  Swell.  I really didn't want to know how they did that.  It made me uncomfortable just thinking about it, so I sat up slowly.  Maybe a bit of height would help my vision some.  Leaning against the headboard (or whatever one would call a series of bars that served as a headboard), I squinted and tried to focus.  The room came into clearer focus, and I could tell that this was the typical make of a long-term hospital room.

Long-term?

I shook my head and continued to study the area.  The window was letting in a dim glare of light.  It was either early morning or twilight, I wasn't sure.  Whatever the case, the little light let in reflected off something on the opposite side of the room.  Gingerly, I swung my feet over the side of the bed and onto the floor.  The tile felt cold, icy even.  I suppressed a shiver, stood up, and went to see what it was.  Before I had gone two steps, a sharp jolt of pain in my lower arm made me wince.  An IV needle was stuck in my arm.  I hated IV's.  Gritting my teeth, I pulled it out and let the sliver of metal fall.  A tiny drop of blood formed where it had punctured my skin, and I gently wiped it away on the hem of my blasted hospital gown.  Yes, they apparently managed to get me into another glorified shower curtain.  Bully for them.  I turned and walked towards the source of the reflection.  The light had been reflecting off a pair of glasses.  How considerate.  I picked them up and immediately noted several cracks and chips in the lenses, as well as a severe twisting of the wires.  No matter, at least I would be able to see.  I put on the glasses and blinked.  It was like seeing through a prism, only not as colorful.  I blinked several more times and I could semi-see.  Yay.  Oh well, it was better than the alternative: wandering around an unfamiliar place with God knows who or what about.

Now that I could see, I noticed some flowers and cards near the bed.  For the second time in the month, people had enough decency to get me flowers.  No matter how many people I pissed off, they always came around to give me their floral concerns.  How sweet.  Or not.  They were all wilted and dry, as though someone just forgot to care for the lilies.  To me, that was sacrilege.  the cards had collected a fine layer of dust.  A very fine layer; I'd have to ask the cleaning staff about that later.

Dust.  Wilted flowers.  Huh.  I scratched my head.  I thought I'd been really hurt.  The last thing I'd remembered was feeling horrible pain in my bowels, legs, and ribs.  I rubbed all the previous pain centers nervously.  No pain came.  Any bandages I might have had were gone.  I felt no wound, nothing.  Just several slight mounds of what I supposed was scar tissue.

Oh my.

I made a mental note to kill the person who turned off my alarm clock.

Despite the butterflies and snakes fluttering around my stomach, I had the gall to realize that I had to go to the bathroom, and there was no bathroom in the tomb they dared to call my room.  So I made my way down the hall, walking normally if not a bit lopsided.  I happened to glance into the different hospital rooms as I passed them, and in one I glimpsed a calendar.  I read the month.

My jaw dropped.

According to the calendar, it was November.  The last I'd heard, it was June.  I backed out of the room, almost tripping over my own feet, and raced down the hall.  Somehow I found the bathroom, though I don't really remember doing it.  I sped to the toilet and emptied my stomach as well as my bowels, wondering what in the hell was going on.  I sat and buried my face in my hands.  There was no way it could be November.  That would mean that five months had passed.  And that was downright bullshit.  I slowly got to my feet and went to the sink. I sighed, letting the cold water run over my bony fingers.  Wait.  Bony fingers?  I took my hands from the flow and examined them.  They looked longer and definitely thinner.  I thought that was odd until I looked at myself in the mirror.  My hair was shorter, in a more male-looking style, and my face was thinner.  My cheekbones stood out a lot more than they used to, and my eyes had somehow curved up a little.  I looked at my body.  Yup, that was thinner too.  Funny thing was, I was thinking of losing some weight before.  I laughed to myself before turning off the faucet, drying my hands, and leaving the tiny bathroom.  I turned to go back to my room before realizing that I didn't know where my room was.  Silly me.  So I headed to what I thought was the main hall.  That should lead me to someone who knew what the hell was going on.

I must have passed a dozen dark rooms before finding one with the light on.  I looked at the etching on the door- Director's Office.  I knocked twice and went in.  Dr. Jaina Proudmoore was hunched over a laptop, fingers tapping away on its small keyboard.  I cleared my throat.  She looked up, and I saw the color drain from her already pale face.  Heh, I still had that effect on people.

"Dr…Dr. Devereaux…" she stammered, "what are you doing up?"

I shrugged.  "I woke up and wanted to find someone who could tell me why I had been asleep for FIVE MONTHS."  I emphasized 'five months' strongly.  I let my hands curl into fists.  Dr. Proudmoore was clearly astonished.  "What's wrong, Jaina?  You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I…I think I have…" She reached for the phone.  Dialing a few numbers, she spoke very quietly and very rapidly, like most doctors did when they had a crucial update they didn't want to tell the patient.  Nope, Dr. Proudmoore hadn't changed one bit.  Before I could expand on my questions, I suddenly became very lightheaded, and fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes.  I was unconscious before I hit the floor.  Graceful little minx, aren't I?

***

I came to presumably in the morning.  Early morning, because the light was a bit brighter than the last time I'd been up.  The room was the same, except for a very grave looking Elwood Lecter staring me in the face.  Talk about a wake-up call.

"You're awake."  He didn't sound too happy about it.

I groaned.  "It's you."  I tried to sound just as enthusiastic as he.

Elwood sighed.  "Shit, Kira, do you know how much you've scared us?"

"I wouldn't, Elwood.  I haven't been around for a while."

Elwood took a deep breath.  Whatever he was about to say wasn't gonna be too good, I could tell.  "Kira, you've been in a coma for five months.  The diagnosis from Dr. Proudmoore was that you'd never come out of it.  Jesus, you were hit by an ambulance!  Those aren't exactly the smallest vehicles to come by!"

I blinked for a moment and began to laugh.  I appreciated the irony.  Heh, leave it to me to get hit by an ambulance.  At least it wasn't an elephant.

"It's not funny.  And it's your own damn fault, too.  Backing out into traffic like that!  You're the dumbest badass I've ever come across, you know that?"

"All too well," I replied slowly.  "So I was hit by an ambulance.  What then?"

"You went to the hospital.  Shattered sternum, the whole left side of your chest was crushed, your left femur was shattered, as was your right knee, and your left arm seemed beyond repair.  You should have died on the spot."

"Sorry to disappoint you."

"I didn't say that.  And anyway, it's a miracle you've healed.  An absolute miracle."

"Well, that's me all over, isn't it?  Well, besides my miraculous recovery, what else has gone on in the land of the living?"

"For starters, Sheriff Drake has been relieved of his command."

"Thank God."

"Second, Dr. Ling from Alchemilla Hospital committed suicide not long after your accident."

That made me cough.  Secretary woman, dead?  The idea seemed too weird to grasp.

""Third, little Rook has been brought on full time.  He's all yours when you get started again."

I blinked.  "When I get started again?  Elwood, don't I need some recovery time or physical therapy or something?"

"That's what you've been doing for the past five months.  You don't need physical therapy.  Another miracle."  He stood to go.  "Your clothes are on the counter, as are a new set of contacts and a watch.  Your old one was shattered.  I'll expect you back to work in a week."

I sat up and buried my face in my hands.  "Okay, okay.  You got it."  I heaved a sigh.

Elwood looked at me for a moment, and a tinge of red appeared in his cheeks.  Elwood, blushing?  Naw.

"Don't show up looking like that, Dr. Devereaux."  He turned on his heel and left.

I blinked.  What did he mean by that?  I looked perfectly fine, thank you very much.  Suddenly I felt a slight draft.  I looked down out of curiosity and immediately figured out why Elwood had been blushing.

This renewed the reason why I hated hospital gowns.  Apparently when I sat up, the front became undone, or already was undone (hospital perverts!), and when the sheet fell away, Elwood had the reason to blush.  Needless to say, I would have become eligible for arrest under indecent exposure.  My cheeks burned.  Good LORD!  Had I been reduced to THIS after five months?!

"I'LL KILL YOU, ELWOOD!  ARGH!"  I screamed in fury.

I suppose that wasn't a good thing to do, because that scream drew the attention of several hospital attendants.  I had to threaten their lives about a thousand times with a scalpel before I could get them to leave.  Where the hell was my Ruger when I needed it?

***

A week later, I was back on my merry way through life.  Whoopee.  Out of one hospital and into another.  What a life I lead.  But I wasn't complaining; now I was staff.  Then I was client.  There IS a difference.  Rook was certainly glad to see me back.  The first thing I did was congratulate him on his graduation and his decision to come over full time.  The second thing I did was tell him that he was now on my staff- permanently.  The look on his face was absolutely priceless.

I was filing the last of my missed paperwork when a knock sounded on my office door.  Ah, visitors.  Always welcome.

"Enter."

Dr. Lecter stood on the threshold.  "Dr. Devereaux, do you remember my telling you that Alchemilla hospital was in need of a director?"

I nodded.  "I do indeed.  What about it?  If you ask me to do it, I'll have two words for you, and they'll rhyme and with 'duck scoff'."

Dr. Lecter laughed.  "Not in the least.  I wanted you to meet the new director."  He motioned to a woman standing slightly behind him.  She stepped forward, smiled and extended her hand in greeting.  I took it.

"I'm Dr. Mary Sunderland," she said in a cheerful voice.  "Pleased to meet you."

"Likewise," I stammered.  Usually I wasn't that edgy or paranoid when I meet new people, but I had exceptions.  Like now.

Dr. Mary Sunderland was the brown-haired superimposed woman from my dream.

Two accurate dreams thus far.  Luck?  No.  Fate?  Hell no. 

Harbinger of doom?

Maybe.

~~~

Reviews=More chapters!  Now we're getting into SH2…we're halfway there!  Keep it going, guys!