"Mr. Rainey…."
Mort would've screamed, but he found his throat to be in excruciating pain; it felt as if someone rubbed down on it with exceedingly rough sandpaper. He turned his head to the person calling his name. He couldn't identify the person—his glasses, he realized, were no longer on his face—nor could he identify where he was. It smelled of disinfectant and plastic, and it was also filled with beeping and ticking sounds.
"Who the hell are you," was all Mort could muster. His voice was so quiet he could barely be heard over the beeping.
The woman standing on the other end of the hospital room crossed her arms. "My name is Michaela Bernard. I was the one who found you unconscious. The doctors said if I had found you any later, you would have died of either hypothermia or starvation. Naturally…I felt obligated to stay. I hope you don't mind…."
Mort frowned numbly at Michaela Bernard. "May I…have my glasses…please?"
Michaela nodded and stepped forward, grabbing the spectacles off of the end table and handing them to Mort, who reached out with a shaky hand and slid them on his face.
The young woman he saw standing before him bugged him—nonetheless she was very pretty. She had long, wavy reddish-brown hair that looked as silky as it probably felt; her hair brought out the intense green of her eyes, which, in turn, enhanced the coffee-and-cream shade of her flawless skin. Her hair was in a high ponytail, and two layers of hair hung freely, framing her face.
To Mort, this was a strange occurrence. Her presence annoyed the shit out of him, yet he found he couldn't stop looking at her.
"Your throat is probably sore," Michaela told him. "That's because the doctor mentioned you'd been vomiting a lot throughout your entire coma-ridden year…."
Mort was suddenly very alert at this news. "A year?" he rasped. "I was out for a year?"
Michaela nodded. "Again, I apologize for invading your privacy…it's just that…no one else came to visit you…and I felt compelled to since I'm the one that found you laying in the snow in your garden."
It was as if Michaela had said the magic words. Memories of what had happened came rushing back to Mort as if they were a giant school of salmon swimming upstream in a burst of abrupt speed. The recollection ended with a gruesome visual of two rotting corpses gazing up at him with lifeless eyes.
Mort whipped over to the other side of the bed and retched into a metal trash bin that was conveniently sitting beside the hospital bed. "Shit," he sobbed, covering his reddening face with his blankets.
Michaela wasn't disgusted, nor was she embarrassed. In fact, she disappeared into the small bathroom and came back out with a cool, wet washcloth.
Mort had rested his head on the pillow again, and his glasses had fallen onto the floor. "I'm sorry," he whispered, wiping the tears away from his eyes. He was half talking to Miss Bernard, half talking to the picture in his mind of the two deceased people.
"Don't worry about it," Michaela said quietly, dabbing the washcloth on his forehead hesitantly. He silently took the washcloth and held it to his forehead, taking deep breaths to calm himself down.
There was an awkward silence in which Michaela picked up the glasses off the floor and set them on the bedside table again. "I guess I'll be going now that you're awake."
Mort looked at her. "You…can stay."
Michaela gazed at him seriously and nodded once.
...Yeah. If you like this story and want me to continue...review? Oh, and also check out my fanfiction for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It's called Yet Love is Sweeter. Yeah...just...yeah.