Chapter 1: Present day

Present day

“John!” The voice seemed distant and muffled to his murky awareness. Was he waking or dreaming?

“Mr. Doe!” It was louder and closer this time. He felt a sharp pain in his right hand, his index finger was being crushed.

“Good!” Where was he? He was suffocating! His body was weighted down somehow, and he couldn’t...

“John! You are in the hospital.” The voice was very clear now, next to his ear. “I need to do a few tests and then we’ll let you sleep again.”

Sleep? Hospital...

“Open your eye John.” It was difficult to do. He saw brightness briefly but nothing else.

“Good. Try again. I’m going to shine a light at you.”

Blinding light stabbed his brain and then was gone.

“Okay John, I need you to squeeze my hands, can you feel my touch?

His hands were being squeezed and poked. He tried to...

“Good. That’s excellent. Now wiggle your toes.”

He felt a sharp scrape on the bottom of his left foot, causing him to flinch.

“Great! Wiggle those toes ... Now the other foot.”

Another irritating scratch made his right foot twitch.

“Excellent! Okay now. You can rest again Mr. Doe.” The voice was rather harsh. “You are getting better.”

Darkness ... oblivion.

When his awareness returned he felt like he was rising up from a heavy sea of quicksand. He struggled to free himself from its restraining, sucking, depths. He first noticed the breeze of a nearby fan as it blew cool air across his face. He was on his back, a blurry light glowed faintly before him. He felt his legs being moved, lifting, bending, straightening and back down, alternating, like he was walking in bed—but he wasn’t ... was he?

A faint beep from somewhere behind him ... above. A closer sound like brief buzzes, from his right side accompanied by a louder musical chime, an ascending musical tone, persistent. He tried to move his head to look, and an alarm sounded from near his feet. What was going on?

“Hey there Mate.” A friendly male voice spoke from nearby. He heard a sound like a chair rolling back and then a hand touched his shoulder. “You are just starting to wake up again after being in a coma for a very long time.” He felt something tug on his arm then the persistent beeping stopped. “My name is Bryan, and I am one of the nurses who has been taking care of you.”

He tried to talk but nothing happened. He felt a cool damp cloth press against his face and wipe gently across his right eye and cheek. “You can’t talk right now because there is a tube in your neck, called a tracheostomy, that is helping you to breath. You are hooked up to a ventilator for the moment but hopefully we can get you off it in another day or so.”

More gentle wiping across his face. What was wrong with his face? He couldn’t feel the touch on his left side. “Try to open your eye for me John, I’ll turn the lights down.” Bryan said as his voice fell away. “Okay. Give it a go.”

He tried to blink and noticed a blurry light. The wet cloth wiped his eye again and he noticed it became brighter.

“We put this ointment in your eye every couple hours after the eye drops.” the nurse explained. “I’m trying to clear it away so that you can see better.” There was another soft wipe across his eye and the room became more focused to him but still cloudy. A blurry figure stood over him and he saw the cloth approach his eye once more before he felt the touch.

“There. Blink a couple times and you should be able to see better.” As he spoke, Bryan’s face became clearer to him. He had long brown hair and a short beard. A stethoscope was draped over his collar, and he wore a dark blue scrub shirt with a lanyard hanging from his neck. The face lit up with a big grin.

“Welcome back buddy!” he quipped merrily. “It’s been a long haul.” He produced a red mini mag flashlight and shined it at the ceiling. “I’m gonna shine this in your right eye for a second to check your pupil, okay?”

The brightness was severe but tolerable for the brief few seconds he had to endure it.

“Great. You’re gonna get really tired of this next part but we gotta do it.” He leaned over the bed and grabbed both his hands. “Squeeze my fingers.” He squeezed. “Good, wiggle your toes.” He wiggled. “All right!” He turned away and tapped on a tablet nearby.

“Okay. John...” he frowned. “We are calling you John because we don’t know who you really are yet. But you have responded well to it. So, my first obvious question to you is,” he looked skeptical “is your name John? Just nod or shake your head.”

He nodded.

“Yes! Two points for the red team!” More tapping on the tablet. “Cool. You are in the ICU at Saint Joes. You have been here for over a month ... It’s Wednesday, September 29^th, 2021, by the way.”

John tried to make some relevance of that information, but his mind was too foggy.

“If you look over by the door there, you will see a white board with the date on it and the names of your doctor and all the staff on this shift who will be working with you.” He walked over and pointed at the board. “I’m Bryan and the Intensivist is Dr Belkin. MA is your medical assistant and RT is your respiratory therapist.”

He stepped back over to the bed. “It’s 2 am and we are in the middle of the night shift.”

He lifted up a clear solid plastic tube and held it in front of John’s face. “This is a yankauer suction catheter and I am going to use it to suction all the spit out of the back of your mouth.

He heard the hissing slurping noise but barely noticed the sensation of being prodded in the back of his mouth.

“Let’s see, other items of interest...” Bryan pondered. “Besides the tracheostomy tube, there is an NG tube going into your stomach. You also have a catheter in your bladder so you may feel like you have to pee really bad.”

Actually, he really did have to piss.

“It’s okay to just relax and let it flow. Your urine is being caught in a bag at the side of your bed.”

He grabbed his hand and moved it back and forth a bit. “We have your wrists tied down to the bed with soft restraints to keep you from pulling things out while you are so heavily medicated.” he said. “As soon as you come off the ventilator the restraints will go away—as long as you promise not to tug or pull at stuff.”

“I’d like to know if you are having any pain right now.” he added and gripped John’s right hand. “If you are, squeeze my hand.”

Pain? He tried to think but couldn’t decide. So, he shrugged.

“Okay fair enough. We want you to be comfortable but not so gorked that you can’t function, ya know?”

He indicated the right side of the bed where John noticed row after row of medical instruments with clear tubing running through them. “We have you on a lot of drugs right now.” He pointed. “We will back them off and DC them when we can. I’ll see about switching the Dilaudid for fentanyl and I’ll keep weaning you down from the propofol.”

None of that made the slightest sense to his addled brain so he just looked back at the ceiling and drifted off.

His dreams were fraught with horrific images of pain, fear, and rage. The images were as disjointed as they were graphic, and they faded from his memory as quickly as they entered his mind. A woman with a terrifying demon face. A huge dark man who shook with mocking laughter. Another dark figure who screamed unintelligibly down at him before raising a huge, booted foot over his face. Sudden sharp pain and a bright flash, followed by blackness.

It was getting difficult to breath. He felt like he had to struggle before air would suddenly fill his lungs. Every so often a loud alarm would sound on his left side. He could not see though because the left side of his face remained bandaged. He coughed and it was like fire in his throat and chest.

“Easy does it.” A gentle female voice said from the foot of his bed. “You are doing okay John. Great in fact.” A blonde face appeared above him, standing on his right side. “I’m Sarah. I’m a respiratory therapist and we are trying to wean you from the ventilator so that you can breathe on your own. Are you in pain?”

He nodded vigorously as the sharp pain in his face made itself apparent. His legs were moving again and this time he noted the weird robot attachments that were making him walk in place on his back.

“I’ll go get Jodi your nurse.”

Another woman in scrubs appeared but he drifted off before he knew it.

He was awake when they removed the ventilator from his tracheostomy and replaced it with a misting blue hose. They had him sitting up high and he was able to notice more detail around him. His feet and legs were free of the robotic torture devices at the moment, and he felt more alert than ever before.

It was a busy morning for him. Doctors came and went along with nurses, CNAs, and therapists. He was wheeled out of his room to another part of the hospital where they transferred him onto a hard board and scanned him from his head to his feet. The nurses kept congratulating him on his progress and mentioned all the ways he was improving. No more pressors (whatever those were), volume expanders, prophylaxis, crystalloids, antibiotics, pain meds, etc.

He was made to get up in a chair several times a day and even helped to stand and ambulate for very brief sessions. The doctors assured him that his brain was intact and that he was neurologically sound. Apparently he suffered a massive TBI or traumatic brain injury. It was fortuitous that his skull was essentially shattered as it allowed his brain to swell and not herniate(?). His most memorable and pleasant experience to date was having the foley catheter removed from his penis so that he could urinate on his own. Simple pleasures, he mused.

He awoke again to find several strangers gathered about him in his room. He was back in his bed, and he looked at their faces trying to recognize any of them. None of them were hospital staff, he was certain, as they were all wearing dark suits. An uneasy feeling arouse in the pit of his stomach.

“Mr. Doe.” the tallest of them said as he moved closer to the bed. He had unruly red hair, shot with gray, a solid gray goatee and dark bushy eyebrows that curved sharply over a pair of penetrating brown eyes. John got the distinct impression that this man rarely, if ever smiled. “My name is Dr. Everett J Malcolm.” He made no effort to shake his hand or even gesture in greeting.

John swallowed and nodded his head nervously. He still had the trach tube, but they had replaced it with a smaller one that allowed him to speak if he had his Passy-Muir valve in place. He did not at the moment so remained silent.

“I represent a medical research consortium that is widely involved in some of the most forward thinking and state-of-the-art medical and biochemical breakthroughs in modern times.” He was matter of fact and almost dismissive in his tone. “We have been observing your progress and have, in fact contributed to it over the past 7 weeks.”

He shrugged his arms eliciting a frown from the man. “We wish to speak with you about your ongoing rehab and therapy and discuss a few ‘other’ options for you to consider. In order to do that, we must insist that you first sign a few forms pertaining to protected health information as well as our standard non-disclosure agreement.”

John reached for his dry erase board and marker and, with a shaky hand wrote: What is this about?

Dr Malcolm glanced at the board and considered his words. “Perhaps it would be best to discuss your present circumstances and what led up to them, before we consider any options going forward.” He gestured to one of the people in the room, a woman with severely short hair and an equally dour expression. She was the only member wearing a white lab coat and she stepped forward producing a tablet.

She stood on the opposite side of his bed (his left) and began speaking in a monotone voice. “Mr. Doe, you have been hospitalized for nearly 2 months.” She raised a hand pausing his sudden urge to write. “First off, we don’t know the exact circumstances of your injuries—only that you were found by passersby and were thought to be dead from what appeared to be a severe beating.” She tapped on her tablet and turned it so that he could see the admission pictures from whatever ER he was at. He had to turn his face further to his left so that he could see them clearly. They were beyond gruesome.