When I woke up again, it was to the sounds of shouting and the piercing peels of sirens. Light flooded my eyes even from behind my closed lids, and I flinched, instinctually shying from it, but found that I couldn't move anything; my eyes shot open and I instantly let out a gurgling, bitten off cry: my contacts moved on my dry corneas, and my eyes stung cruelly as the soft plastic galled the sensitive tissue. The sudden white light blinded me, the noise deafened me.
I shut my eyes again tightly, but that didn't help: in that short second dust had come into my eyes, leaving them burning and miserably painful. At this point I realized that my body was aching with a crippling pain that invaded even my joints, leaving them sore to the point of disorienting. I was terrified, and didn't know what was going on.
I tried to open my mouth to scream, but found that my jaw was securely strapped into place, and my teeth were clenched: it came out as a feral groan. My head was unmovable, and I vaguely became aware of straps at my wrists and ankles, and across my chest and legs: I was strapped to a gurney.
At the moment I didn't care or perhaps didn't realize it, and I began to struggle, bringing to life the effects of yesterday's trials, and pain blossomed like blood from a gunshot wound to the stomach. I moaned and whimpered, fighting the jaw strap, and thrashed as hard as I could. My fear was irrational, but it was all too real. It was confusing.
Where am I! What's going on!
I felt myself begin to move, and I felt somebody grab a hold of my arm and jab something awful into my shoulder.
"Fuck you!" I spat out, in between a cry of sudden pain and surprise, but the jaw strap reduced any words I thought I said to unintelligible mumblings. Almost immediately things began to slow down, and within minutes I was limp and dazed.
My eyes opened somewhat, and I managed to blink my contacts back into place. Though I was staring straight upwards, I knew what had happened, now: The rescue crews were here. I heard the rhythmic thud of a helicopter's rotors and the different sounds began to sort themselves out. I closed my eyes again.
And almost at the same time an indignant rage blossomed within me at having no control over what happened to my own body.
I can walk! I'm fine! I made it the whole way and I don't need this
It was most likely that they had tied me down like this to the gurney, especially my head, in order to keep me from breaking my neck.
"Hey, come on now, just go to sleep, it'll make it easier."
I would have said something scathing and cruel, but I only opened my eyes and stared up icily at the man pushing my gurney. My hold on consciousness was tenuous.
"Hey—this one needs another shot of morphine," the man said, when I only continued to glare at him. He waved to the right.
I'll kill him! I bawled irrationally in my thoughts. My eyes strained as far to the right as I could make them go, and struggled hard to move my head. Eventually my contacts dislodged again and stung my eyes.
I blinked them back into place just as we were passing a pale yellow truck and a woman with a sinister needle ran up to the side of the gurney. My eyes glanced for a moment at the truck behind the woman—and I went rigid. My mind ceased to function.
I have to be hallucinating! I had to have seen that wrong! It was the light!
The symbol on the truck had been two concentric black C's on a background of white, and underneath it read: CAPSULE CORP. We were already too far away to look back, and I suddenly realized that another needle had entered my shoulder.
"Shit, you hit a vein—" said the man who was pushing my gurney as I suddenly felt something warm wash along the side of my arm.
From there, I fell into a dizzy unconsciousness and the world went black.
The next thing I remembered was of something kneading my shoulder, and of feeling claustrophobic. It was much quieter, and my skin felt cool.
"Don't fucking touch me," I growled, without thinking: the words slid from my lips without me really know what poured forth.
Abruptly, the kneading stopped, and my eyes slid open. My vision was fuzzy, and I realized that someone had taken the care to remove my contacts. Someone stood to my left, and was peering down at me. I lifted my head and found it was stiff to move as well as dully painful.
"Why can't I feel my feet?" I muttered, and flexed my hand slightly. I felt bandages around my fingers and up along the length of my limbs. I felt something conspicuously like a needle in the crook of my right arm and I flinched when I saw the tube and the baggie suspended above my head. I hated needles and the feel of one in my arm made my skin crawl.
"That's the pain medication," the nurse said, and I identified it as a man. "How are you feeling otherwise?"
"Like I got run over by a semi."
Where are the other guys?
I was too weak to sit up, and so I was relegated to lying there helplessly, staring at the fluttering blue and white striped roof of a tent, trying hard not to think too much but failing utterly.
I could hear ambient noise, somewhere, but that was so far away it was reduced to a dull murmur.
After a few minutes where I struggled with myself to come to terms with this new development and this cruel sense of disorientation, I set my mind to taking stock of my position to stave off the ensnaring fear that was threatening to take hold.
I lay on a low cot, with my head propped under a stiff pillow that allowed for little movement. There was no sheet covering me, and I could see that I was mostly left intact, except for that I could see my foot was bound with white bandages and the other had gauze attached to it in various places.
My arms were wrapped and appeared almost mummy-like, and as my face twisted with the effort of lifting my head I felt that there were bandages on my face and around my skull, too. A few of my fingers were taped to boards to keep them straight. Underneath the film of my shirt, I could feel bandages encircling and on my torso, as well.
Funny, I thought rather dumbly, frowning, I didn't think I was this bad off.
I let my head fall back and I gasped for air, as a dull stab of pain attacked me. My legs and arms began to tingle like they were asleep, and I started to feel nauseous.
They had not changed my clothes, and, above all, I felt filthy. I had not had a shower since yesterday morning, and the events between then and now had left me torn to pieces. There were still smudges of dirt in between my bandages and minor scrapes were left untouched, and I could even see dried blood in places.
What I could see of my hair was dismal: Stringy, dirt-caked and matted. I imagined my general appearance matched that—I certainly didn't come off smelling like a rose, the way movies would have you believe.
After a few minutes I had exhausted that and reluctantly turned to the question of where I was.
The image of Capsule Corp.'s logo lingered eerily in my mind and I shivered at the thought of it. I didn't want to believe it, I didn't believe it. It was impossible. There was no way this could be real—things like this didn't happen for no good reason and there was no good reason that I knew of.
It's a hoax, it's got to be. But...who would pull off a hoax like this? These injuries aren't fake!
I shivered, and felt goosebumps rise along my skin. I knew what I saw around me wasn't a dream—I'd always had radically lucid dreams before but this was nothing like them.
Still, despite the fact that I knew I had seen the logo clearly, if only for a moment, I didn't want to admit it. I stubbornly insisted to myself that I had only thought I'd seen it and that the logo was, in fact, merely a coincidence that must have looked similar enough to the CC logo for me, in my half-conscious state, to have mistook.
I lay there troubled, and agitated. The needle was itching but I couldn't bring myself to so much as look at it.
It was impossible to say just how long I lay there, because I couldn't move enough to find my watch and no one bothered to answer when I asked.
By the time the sun was setting, the painkillers had mostly worn off, and with them went my lethargy. I supposed that the medicine also dulled my ability to move along with my nerves.
"Get the damned thing out," I groused, and swallowed back an urge to throw up as I felt the needle slide from my skin. The nurse performing the procedure only glanced at me perfunctorily.
A drop of blood trickled down my elbow and fell to the ground; I reeled with a wave of nausea and jerked my arm out of the nurse's grasp.
"I've got to put a band-aid on it," the woman said flatly, holding up a cotton ball doused in rubbing alcohol with pincers and a child's colorful band-aid in the other hand. I grudgingly let her apply it.
I sat there for a moment, my legs over the side of the cot and my upper body curled up. When it had started to get dark they had set up lighting and now the small field hospital was lit with a soft yellow glow. In the distance were rescue workers digging at the rubble of the city. It was shocking; there were a multitude of beds but a small amount of people.
Restless, I staggered to my feet and headed slowly for the edge of the tent, still limping, where the light stopped and the lonely, starlit wilderness of the ruined buildings began. When I made it there, I eased myself down and sat against a pole, staring out at the night.
These people were not Red Cross, they weren't the National Guard, they weren't anything I'd ever seen before. I sighed. There had been television stations prowling the field hospital: They weren't CNN, Fox, or any station I recognized.
An empty loneliness and fear consumed me and I was suddenly aware of the massive expanse around me, separating me from the tangible world and leaving me hanging somewhere in limbo.
It was well past the point for any Candid Camera-type recant, or one of those rigged Sci-Fi shows. Something like this wasn't a joke, and even if it was, it was a cruel and a costly one. No one would waste that kind of effort on someone as menial as me.
So we take a break from group-action for a chapter. Sorry if this was boring, it'll pick up in a bit! Please review!