Chapter 3

"Shit!" I gasped. Then "Fuck!" Then I'm not sure because I was babbling and a complete wreck. My sister was awake! After six months in a coma what they said might happen had happened!

And she had opened her eyes to find her brother beating off, staring at her naked body.

I almost passed out. Things got very dim, and I got dizzy. I leaned drunkenly to my right and, because my right hand was still locked firmly around my penis, I couldn't put it down to stop myself as I tipped past the balancing point. I crashed to the floor, which released the paralysis. My shoulder hurt where I'd landed on it, but that was the least of my worries.

I jumped up, babbling apologies, and telling her she was awake and basically freaking out.

In response she opened her mouth and croaked. She licked her lips and tried again, but it still came out as a croaking sound that wasn't at all like her voice. She lifted her right hand, and then let it drop again.

"Water!" I screamed, realizing she hadn't had a drink in half a year, and that her throat must be like sandpaper.

I realized I was hobbled by my shorts and, my face flaming, I reached for them and pulled them up.

"Don't go anywhere!" I yelled.

I took off like a shot to the kitchen. I got a glass and shoved it under the tap. I only filled it half full, which is good, because I'd have spilled half of a full glass on my way back. She had her arms up again, and was feeling around where her feeding tube went into her arm.

"Water!" I said, a little more calmly. "Let me help you."

I put a hand under her neck and lifted. There must have been some adrenaline at work, because she felt as light as a feather as she sat up. She leaned my way almost immediately and her right hand tried to come back and catch her, but it was too late. I moved the hand on her neck and she leaned her shoulder into it. Then she started to go backwards again and I spilled some of the water in the glass on her as I brought that hand into play. I pressed the glass against the front of her right shoulder and my left hand on her back and got her stabilized. Her hands came up and pulled weakly at the glass.

Once I was sure she wasn't going to fall over immediately, I let her pull my hand to her face, and helped her tip the glass up carefully. She helped too much and I saw water pour into her mouth. She coughed, and water went everywhere, but her grip on my hand got firmer, if anything, and she took more water into her mouth. I heard her swallow. Her grip got even stronger and tried to tip the glass up higher.

"Take it easy," I warned. "You'll choke. Little sips."

Being Heather, she ignored me, gulping and fighting me until the glass was empty. She let out a gust of air after having held her breath for some time. Her face turned to look at me. Her eyes were so green. I'd never noticed how bright green they were. They looked empty somehow. I was suddenly aware that there had been some talk about possible brain damage. I felt something grip my heart and squeeze tightly.

"Heather?" I asked, hopefully.

She blinked and suddenly those eyes communicated that there was all kinds of intelligence behind them.

"I'm going to lay you back down now," I said.

"Okay."

Just like that she spoke. It was only one word, but it made it obvious she wasn't brain damaged. At least not totally.

I let her down. I just naturally tried to straighten her hair and one of her hands came up and batted at mine feebly.

"What are you doing?" she asked, sounding irritated. Her voice had a raspy tone to it, but she still sounded irritated.

"Nothing," I said. The enormity of the situation hit me. "Shit! I have to call Mom. I have to call Dad."

"No!" Her voice was suddenly a lot more firm. She cleared her throat.

"You don't understand," I said. "You were in an accident. You were in a coma. You just woke up! This is great!"

"I know that," she said, sounding tired. She closed her eyes. "I know what you did."

Shit. I suddenly wished she was back in a coma. That only lasted a couple of seconds, though. "Sorry," I mumbled. I meant about my thoughts. I'd been telling her my thoughts so much I guess I thought she could hear them or something.

"Oh, you're forgiven," she said, her eyes still closed. "I'm hungry."

"I don't know if I can give you anything to eat or not," I said doubtfully. "Let me call Mom and tell her and she'll tell me what to do."

"No!" Her voice was much more firm now. Her eyes opened and she rolled her head to look at me. "We have some things to talk about first."

That sounded kind of ominous. Actually, at that point, anything other than "Who am I? And who are you?" would have probably sounded ominous.

"At least get me some more to drink," she said.

I was back with half a glass of apple juice within a minute. She had rolled over on one elbow, and her shoulder and head were off the pillow, but she was still weaving.

"I can't believe how weak I feel," she complained. "All I did was lie here and think and sleep. You'd think I'd be really rested, but I feel so tired."

She sat up better, though, and she took the glass from me, pushing my hand away. She started to lean and I touched her shoulder.

"Don't touch me," she said. I jerked my hand back. She looked at me with those green eyes again. "I want to try it myself." She actually sounded like she was explaining her earlier comment. I stepped back. I realized she was still stark naked. Surely she noticed that. I reached for her clean PJs, which were on the corner of the computer desk where I'd abandoned them while I read her an incest story and beat off.

"Here's your clean PJs," I said weakly, holding them out.

She had the glass up to her lips, but she was sipping this time. She seemed to savor every sip. She let go of the glass with her left hand and pointed at her feet. She took the glass from her lips just long enough to say "Put them down there."

Confused, I placed the folded garment on the corner of the bed by her feet. I watched her sip the juice. She licked her lips several times.

"This is freaking me out," I said, feeling like if I didn't move, or call somebody or do something I was going to explode into pieces.

"You think you're freaked out," she said. She took another long sip and swallowed. "You have no idea."

"I guess you're right," I said, feeling calmer for some reason. "How do you feel?" I realized that was a pretty stupid question to ask somebody who just woke up from a six month long coma. "Sorry, I guess that's kind of a stupid question."

She finished the juice in a gulp, swallowed, smacked her lips, and rubbed her stomach while handing me the glass.

"No it's not. You're not stupid. I have called you stupid lots of times, but I was wrong."

My jaw dropped. I couldn't help asking, "Are you sure you're okay?"

"I think so," she said carefully. "It's just now sinking in, I think. I tried so hard to find my way out, but I couldn't, and I wasn't sure all this wasn't just another dream." She reached out and took my hand. She brought it to her lips and kissed the finger nearest them. "Can you feel that?" she asked.

"Yeah," I croaked. Suddenly it was my throat that was dry.

"Me too," she said. She looked up at my face. "I'm back, Bobby. You helped me find my way out."

It took a while, but eventually she was able to explain it to me. I think she was explaining it to herself too, in a way. She kept touching herself, and touching me, like she wanted to be sure it wasn't a dream.

She couldn't remember when she woke up. That was her words for when she became aware of things in the coma. She knew she'd been in an accident, but couldn't remember any of the details. She learned about all that from people talking to her after she woke up. She knew she was conscious, and she knew there was another way to be that was more awake than she was, but she couldn't figure out how to get there. Several times while she was describing this she reached and pointed. She'd felt like there were multiple places she could be, but she was stuck in only one of them because she couldn't remember how to move to any of the others.

It turned out that she could hear people talking to her, but she couldn't see them. She said her eyes were open in her mind, but all she could see was a gray kind of mist all around her. When somebody talked to her it made the mist sparkle. She could remember what people looked like, if she knew them. She just couldn't see them. She didn't know her physical eyes were actually closed.

When she woke up she was aware of her body, but it didn't seem real or substantial to her. She said it was as if her body was a shadow that she knew was there, but couldn't use. When I asked her if it frustrated her to be stuck there, she thought about that for a few seconds.

"Not really," she said. "Not all the time. It's hard to explain. I wanted to get to the other place, where Mom and Dad's voices were, but it was too hard. And when I tried, and it didn't work, I just started thinking about things again. I did a lot of thinking. But it wasn't boring, because I was able to think about every facet of anything I decided to concentrate on. It was like having no distractions at all, which was kind of nice. But if Mom started talking to me, that was okay too, because I liked that too. I kind of liked everything. It didn't seem like there was any time where I was."

"It would have frustrated me," I said. "I mean to have to lie there and not be able to do something."

Her head swiveled toward me. "That's what it was like when you started talking to me," she said. "It wasn't like that with Mom and Dad. But when you started talking about sex ... I wanted to get to where you were."

"Probably to kill me," I said, embarrassed.

"At first, yes. But I couldn't get there. So I thought about things. And you talked to me so much more than anybody else did, and I could hear how embarrassed and confused you were and I wanted to help you, but I couldn't."

"Help me?"

"Yeah," she said. "I knew you were horny, and I wanted to help you."

I stared at her. I cocked my head. "Where is my sister really?" I asked.

She smiled for the first time since she opened her eyes.

"I'm your sister," she said. "I don't think I'm the same sister you had before the accident, but that's because I've had so much time to think about things. It really makes a difference when you can just think as long as you need to about a problem."

"Like what?" I asked, fascinated by this girl who looked so much like my sister, but didn't act very much like her at all.

"Like how upset you were when you wanted to open my PJs and look at my breasts," she said.

"You remember that?"

"I remember everything you said or did for the last ... I don't know how long it was," she finished, sounding a little upset. "How long was I in the coma?"

"Six months," I said.

Her eyes widened. "You're shitting me!" she said.

"No, really," I said. "And I started taking care of you three days ago when Mom had to go to Aunt Betty's-"

"Because she went into labor," Heather finished for me. "I remember her telling me that, but it was just another memory. Your memories are different. I remember them better. You made me want to come to you really bad. I honestly think that's why I kept trying so hard instead of just relaxing again."

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