"Yes, you always dream unless you are a complete vegetable, but even then you probably can still dream, it's just hard to detect on an EEG. Many coma patients remember their dreams… it's almost eerie to hear them talk about it. Some dream of their past, some dream about the afterlife....crazy isn't it?"

-SadToday22, Yahoo! Answers

I woke to a steady beeping, each beep about three seconds apart. My eyes felt as though they had been glued shut and it took an eternity to open them. I blinked up at a white ceiling and slid into a sitting position with a groan. My head felt like it had been struck with a hammer. White walls surrounded me all sides. Bedside tables with drooping flowers closed off my bed. I was in a single-patient hospital room, all alone. Feeling confident, I drew my legs close and swung them over the side of the bed, prepared to carry my own weight. I slowly slid out of the bed, hesitantly checking to see if my legs would hold me. I stood, swaying.

There were three brown plastic chairs sitting beneath a blinded window. The sun was bright. Door hinges squeaked. I spun.

"Mr. Masters!" A nurse in standard green scrubs let folded sheets drop from her arms. "You're awake!"

I blinked at her blearily. "What happened?"

"You must sit down," she ordered, crossing the room. She pushed me down onto the bed.

"I want to get up," I said.

"Your brain needs blood—you shouldn't stand so fast after being in bed for two months," she said.

"Two months?" I echoed blandly.

"Tell me if this hurts," she said, peeling some gauze from my scalp.

I winced and repeated, "Two months?"

"That's right. Do you remember how you hit your head?"

I only looked up at her, a blank expression on my face.

"A young boy—bless his heart—called in about nine weeks ago saying that you had suffered a massive head wound," she said with a warm smile. "They found you in your living room. You must have fallen."

My mind was processing her words at a very slow rate.

"A man of your age shouldn't be living alone," she continued. "We don't want something like this to happen again."

"I'm not that old," I said, my mind reeling in rebuttal. I really wasn't that old.

"You do look very young for being in your seventies," the woman commented, throwing the dirty gauze away. "You've aged very well."

My eyes boggled. "Seventies?" I said. "I'm forty-three!"

Her eyebrows furrowed and she bent down at the foot of my bed to pick up my charts. "Your history indicates that you haven't been to a hospital in a very long time. The last hospital on your records was demolished five years ago by flooding. I guess they lost your charts," she said. "So we contacted the boy who had you brought to the hospital if he knew how old you were." She blinked. "He sounded pretty confident."

"You took that daft boy's word?" I asked.

"We have no other method of determining your age," she said.

I shook my head weakly. "I must be getting home."

"What? Oh, no, Mr. Masters," she said. "You really should stay and finish your treatment."

I stood, stopping her protests with a swift hand motion. "I'll be fine."

She shook her head vehemently. "Really, I—"

"I have to be getting home," I said, cutting her off. I brushed awkwardly past her to find my clothes neatly folded on a counter. I grabbed them and disappeared into the bathroom.

--

Tightening my tie, I marched down the hallway, greeting nurses and doctors alike with a sharp nod.

"Masters, checking out," I said to the front desk receptionist.

She typed my name with swift fingers into the computer. Scrunching her eyes, she said, "Masters? It says here that you're not supposed to check out until you've been treated by the doctor."

I sighed. "And when does the doctor arrive?"

She looked at me. "Dr. Terrance isn't on call until tomorrow."

"I'm afraid I'll have to take a rain check, my dear," I said and turned and walked away before she could say anything more.

I burst through the double doors and rounded the corner of the hospital into the back alley. There, in a flash of black light, I powered up my ghost half. I felt power and static charge course through my body with a refreshing tingle, but it did not last long. I swayed and, catching myself on the brick exterior of the hospital with a grasping hand, the two rings encircled me once more, leaving me with only my human half. I was still woozy from medication and a splitting headache was pounding on my skull.

I grunted in pain and grabbed my head in one hand to steady it on my shoulders. With my other, I reached for my cell phone.

"George?" I said, my voice weak.

"Mr. Masters?" he answered.

"I'm at the hospital"—I winced as my own voice worsened my headache—"please, come pick me up as soon as you can."

"Yes, sir," he said. "Right away, sir."

--

"I didn't think you'd be out of the hospital so soon, sir."

George helped me into the back seat, making sure I didn't fall. "I didn't, either, George," I said through clenched teeth.

He said nothing, but closed the door after I had pulled my legs inside the limousine.

"Can you," I asked after he had rounded the car and entered it from the driver's seat, "possibly tell me what happened?"

I saw him glance at me from the rear view mirror. "What happened, sir?"

"I don't remember much…," I said.

He nodded. "Well, I believe you were watching your nephew while his parents were at work," he said. "I think you tripped and hit your head on the coffee table."

I closed my eyes and tried to remember it. All I could picture were flashes of green and red, a particularly expensive Persian rug, and one of my favorite vases lying shattered on the floor. "In the living room?"

"I believe so," George said. "I hope you don't mind—I called the maid to come in early. There was blood, you see."

I gingerly felt around my scalp for the bump I knew was sitting like a ludicrous hat upon my head. "Blood? Oh, George, I cannot thank you enough."

We sat in silence until we pulled into the familiar driveway. My home looked the same as ever on the outside. The grass was freshly mown, the bushes just trimmed. "Home sweet home," I said, passing George a fifty. He took it with a bowed head and a "thank you" and drove away with the abrasive sound of wheels on asphalt.

I opened the door with the keys in my pocket and stood in the doorway, breathing in the familiar scent of my home: freshly baked bread and sugar.

Of course, I rarely cooked, but I always had baskets delivered every week from the local Amity Park bakery. I found ten baskets full of sugary treats and Danishes lined one after the other on the kitchen counter and sighed. The old baskets looked stale and I would never be able to eat all the still-fresh ones.

I sighed. I didn't know what was compelling me, but I had the strangest urge to deliver them to the Fentons. I knew they would need them more than I; though I'm sure they always had food on the table, they weren't exactly well enough off to support the indulgences I was able to.

And a small part of me wanted to see Daniel's face when he realized I was out of the hospital. It was, I assumed, his fault I had been there in the first place. Since I had already sent George away, I realized I would have to drive myself there. In several minutes, I had picked out my least favorite SUV for the job; it wouldn't matter to me if that bumbling oaf Jack Fenton smashed it to smithereens, like I knew he would. I sat down, trying to recall how to use it. I had only driven it once; when I had taken it out for a test drive the day I bought it. Eventually, I had the motor purring underneath me and the gas pedal giving way to my foot.

Midway to the Fenton's house, my vision grew blurry. I squinted against my headache, but that only made it worse. I was dizzy and I didn't know if I remembered the way to the Fenton Works. The edges of buildings became distorted. I passed intersection after intersection, scanning road signs and searching for that obnoxious neon sign.

I ended up rear ending a small, blue, Honda stopped at the intersection of Specter and Seventh. The airbag deployed. My head ricocheted off of it back into the headrest and I bit back a cry of pain. I panicked when the owner of the blue car opened their door and stepped out. Despite the screaming protest my head gave me, I phased, invisible out of my seatbelt and, grabbing both baskets in the trunk and the license plate off of the car, found steady ground on the sidewalk. Discreetly becoming visible again several feet away, I watched the owner of the Honda tap on the tinted window of my car and peer inside. When she received no response, she tapped harder and pulled out her cell phone.

I left her and my car there. I had suddenly remembered that Maddie's house was only a few blocks away, on Specter and Thirteenth. I strolled uneasily down the street, fighting my nausea. By the time I made it to their door, everything was blurring again. When I rang their bell, I had tunnel vision. I dropped the baskets and stumbled around on the welcome mat. Danishes and candy rolled around my feet. The door opened.

I could barely hear his voice. Daniel's innocent blue eyes gazed up at me, wide with surprise.

"Vlad?" I saw him say.

Then his mouth opened into a wide arc. He was yelling.

It hit me all at once. I could hear noises again, and his scream pounded against my skull with a terrible force.

Maddie was there in an instant. At first she looked surprised, but then she helped me inside and had her children pick up the Danishes I had dropped. They scooped them up and dropped them unceremoniously into the baskets, destroying the perfect, organized order they had been sitting in.

"Why aren't you in the hospital?" Maddie's voice was horrified and raspy.

"I'm fine," I said. My teeth were clenched again. "I assure you. I just wanted to drop off the baskets."

She looked me over, her purple eyes scrunched with worry in a way that I thought I had found attractive. "You look terrible, Vlad!"

I frowned, unable to look away from the creases that marred the outer corners of her eyes. "Thank you, my dear," I said sarcastically, my words slurring a little because I was so exhausted. I hoped I didn't sound drunk.

"You need to take some pain relievers," she said, standing up to leave me. "I'll go make tea."

I nodded, closing my eyes.

"You've come back to haunt me, haven't you?"

I cracked one eye and slowly opened the other. Daniel stood several feet away, shaking slightly.

"I didn't mean for it to happen, Vlad," he said quietly. "I didn't—didn't know what to do…."

I let him ramble on.

"I visited you almost every day," he said, desperation creeping into his voice. "I tried. I did everything. Sometimes I even talked to you. But you just kept sleeping."

I knew he had probably driven himself crazy, thinking he could have put me in a coma for the rest of my life. I knew, no matter how much he hated me, he would never have wished a massive head wound on me. Though I felt a smug sense of triumph at the apology, searching his face, I found it to be inadequate.

He was only a child; he wasn't worth my time. I couldn't remember any specific dreams from the hospital, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something had happened while I was asleep. I had changed. I was a different man. Daniel's face was young and fresh, mine lined and stern. We were different, him and I, and I suddenly I had the strangest feeling that we belonged that way. We belonged to opposite sides.

I no longer cared about him.

A/N: Continued for You're-Not-So-Big. More introspectiveness. Review?