(recommendation: read this section with 'Broken' by Evenesence playing quietly in the background)
Eight.
He awoke in that room. He was kneeling in the middle of the floor as everything spun and tipped around him. Arms wrapped around his stomach trying to keep from heaving, he rocked back and forth. 'I want to go home.'
He screamed into the room, "Why are you doing this to me? I don't want to be here anymore!" He thrust himself to his feet, angry despair moving him through the nausea and gut-twisting pain. He couldn't stand upright but he gripped the cot with both hands and swung it like a baseball bat at the walls, the door, finally at the mirror. It shattered, the remnants of the cot protruding into a small room on the other side.
His adrenaline spent, Clark fell, curled on the cold tiled floor. He kept his eyes squeezed shut, blocking out his surroundings.
Men in white uniforms poured into the room through the doorway and climbed over the cot from the opposite room. A man in a long white coat weeded his way through the orderlies. He knelt beside the now whimpering boy.
"Clark," he called gently. "Clark, it's Dr Kimball." He placed a hand on Clark's arm. The boy curled tighter. "You're having another episode, Clark. I am going to give you an injection to calm you." Dr Kimball pulled a full syringe from his pocket, motioning to the orderlies to restrain the boy.
One orderly per arm and leg pulled gently but forcefully against his taunt limbs, uncurling him. At the exposed position, Clark's eye shot open, rolling to focus on the syringe full of greenish liquid.
Panic moved him. "No!" his voice bit into the room loud and sharp. His right arm slipped from the shocked orderly's grasp, batting the syringe to shatter against the wall.
Dr Kimball fell backward onto his butt. "Hold him," he snapped at the orderlies.
Clark pleaded with the doctor, "I want to go home."
"Now, Clark, you know I can't allow that. You are very sick." He paused watching the words sink through the boy's confusion.
Clark furrowed his brow at the doctor. Renewed anger surged through his body. He jerked against the orderlies holding him. "Liar!" he screamed, a vicious snarl playing on his face. "You work for the Luthors! They brought me here to learn my secret!"
"What secret, Clark? Tell me your secret."
Clark stilled. The only noise in the room was orderlies and techs cleaning the glass and remaining pieces of the cot. Whispered, "I am the boy who fell from the stars..."
"What do you mean, Clark?"
Stubborn silence.
"You are just a boy, Clark, not some…superman. Meteor rock does not effect you. And your parents . are . dead."
Clark listened intently as the doctor laid it out for him. 'No…I am Clark Kent…the boy that fell from the stars…I can run faster than a speeding bullet…I can see through walls…I can bench press the tractor…'
"You're lying. My mom and dad are not dead. I still need them." His voice broke. Was his super-existence a psychotic delusion? "I can bench press the tractor," he said softly. His voice steadily rose as he repeated his mantra until he was screaming. "I can bench press the tractor!"
Dr Kimball swabbed the crook of Clark's arm with an alcohol pad. With determined precision, he had the fluid in Clark's bloodstream. He watched as the boy's movements weakened, he shouts faded, his head lolled, his vision glazed, but the mantra continued under his breath, "I can bench press the tractor."