Chapter 5

The room was sterile, somber. The sound of the air flowing through the vents and the steady rhythmic pulse of the machine tracking his heartbeat were the only constant sounds. Occasionally the sound of the door opening and closing would mar the quiet ambiance of the room. Then, there was also the infrequent sigh and scrape of the lone chair in the room when the occupant's mother would shift her position.

David's mother did not stay all day, but she did come in nearly every day and would read to him for hours at a time. She did this for two reasons. One was because she believed it would help him recover faster, the other was because she couldn't take the unnatural quiet of the room.

The stories she'd been reading were not your typical fare for a young adult of 14, but David was fairly atypical. He loved the older stories, the myths, legends, and tall tales that many his age ignored and really avoided. So, it would come as no surprise that Brenda brought such stories as Gulliver's Travels, Moby-Dick, or even One Thousand and One Nights, which she'd just finished reading the final chapter of the night before. He seemed to have responded at one point, but it was short lived; nothing more came of it. She'd read him about ten chapters at a time. He'd been in coma for nearly half a year now and his 15th birthday was coming up fast. She prayed that he would recover in time for that, but she knew better than to get her hopes up.

David had been in a confrontation with a known group of bullies just before Winter Break. One on one he would have been fine. He'd been going to a local Dojo and was learning Aikido. He'd just passed his Sankyu test, which put him about half way to Shodan (first degree black belt). What it did for him, though, was to give him more confidence and the ability to defend himself to a reasonable extent; he had a long time ahead of him before he'd be able to do much more.

The bullies had caught up with him after school the last Friday of school before the break. They'd been upset with him over his interference during an assault on Meri, one of his fellow Freshmen. They'd cornered her in a fairly secluded area and had been verbally and physically assaulting her; this took the form of grabbing her breasts and crotch through her clothes while calling her degrading things like whore, cunt, slut, and more. They didn't believe anyone would dare attempt to stop them, such were their reputations. They didn't know David, though, or that he walked this way on Fridays, which is how he came across the assault in progress.

Things might not have been so bad, for David, except that the girl immediately called 911 to report the assault and managed to get video showing all three of her aggressors. This lead to them being expelled from school and a host of other repercussions for them. They were so pissed off at David for his part in it all that they did not even think about the possible trouble attacking him would lead to. All three of the boys were now in county jail, each serving a three year sentence for their attacks on David. They all blamed David for their misfortune and had taken it out on him.