Weary Traveler

A piercing beam of white light squeezed through the tear-crusted slits of Mitch’s eyelids. The luminescence burned through his retinas and filled his brain with a dizzy, stomach-churning heaviness that weighed down his torso and limbs against the soft bed coddling his body.

His eardrums rang like a metal drum smacked by a steel pipe, spreading undulations of strange, sonic echoes radiating outwards from his body, casting waves in the ethereal fabric of the Universe that warped his soul.

The flaps of his eyelids cracked open, aching eyes adjusted to the light of the frigid room, blowing gusts of sterile, recycled air from vents built into the tops of chalk white walls. An elevated tray table lay next to the bed on the left. A small, plastic nightstand with slender metal legs rested below. On the right, an enormous machine with a monitor displaying Mitch’s steady vital signs, casting out beeps and hums and buzzes like a synthesizer.

He looked down the length of his body. Tiny cables wrapped around his left-hand fingers; an IV jabbed the tender flesh of his left forearm; sticky electrodes stuck across his shaved scalp, pulled at the prickly bristles and skin.

His thirsty throat ached. He gulped the swollen lump lodged in his windpipe and then choked on a fit of coughs, turned his head, coughed into his shoulder. The sudden movement jolted his equilibrium, whipped the room in a tight vortex of swirling color as if it was constructed from mystical dust.

A second lump pressed against the back of Mitch’s throat. He turned his head, coughed again… again… again… transformed into a horrible symphony that consumed his whole body, seized it in one wild convulsion.

He looked out from behind watery eyes, discovered a glass of water resting on the nightstand. He reached for it, stretched and stretched, nearly pinched the glass, but his arm stopped, held back by a titanium cufflink secured around his right wrist and tied to a chain that wrapped around the bottom of the bed.

He flexed his fingers, stretched them out until they tickled the glass of cold water, but the beads of condensation slipped from underneath his wriggly fingers and tipped the glass over onto the nightstand. Water cascaded onto the white, tile floor.

The fit had taken control over the muscles of his exhausted body, rattled through his thumping brain, seeking escape from the medical prison he awakened within.

He reached up and pinched the wires hanging off of his scalp, yanked the electrodes off of his head. A screeching siren filled the room, overtaking the coughs spewing from his mouth.

A pitter patter of quick-moving feet tapping across tile echoed through the hallway outside the room, stopped in front of the door, and then burst through. Mitch looked from behind sockets of tears at a wide-eyed Hispanic woman standing in the doorway.

“Ay, dos mío!” she screamed, covering her mouth with her hands.

Mitch pointed a weak index finger at the tipped glass of water spilling across the nightstand and dripping its final dribbles onto the floor.

“Water,” Mitch mouthed, scratchy voice too weak to be audible.

She leapt across the room and scooped up the glass of water, placed it under Mitch’s lips and tipped the remaining sip down his throat. Then she launched off of the mattress to the wall at the foot of the bed, placed the glass underneath a nozzle and pressed a round button, sprinted back with a full glass of water and poured it down Mitch’s throat, taming the coughing possession that had taken over his body.

The hot tears squeezed from Mitch’s eyes enough for him to make out the woman’s features. She was young, maybe late thirties. She wore a white gown with the word, ROTECH, stitched in black thread on a gray patch above her right breast. María, sewn in red letters over her heart. Her dark brown hair was pulled back into a bun at the back of her head, tucked beneath a nurse’s cap. Her bright brown eyes stared deep into Mitch’s own, latched onto his soul.

“Gracias, María,” Mitch mumbled in a hoarse voice.

“Está bien, Señor Henderson?” she asked, patting his chest. She turned and pressed a button on the generator next to the bed, silenced the alarm.

“Uhh... sí, bien.”

“Un momento, por favor.”

María peeled herself off of the edge of the bed and shuffled up to a panel next to the door she had come through, tapped a few buttons on the touch screen, and then pressed a spot beneath her earlobe.

“Hola,” she said, “Señor Henderson is awake now… Muy bien, adiós.”

She touched the top of the panel and slid down, closed the application and shuffled up to the monitor beside Mitch’s head.

“Who was that?” Mitch asked.

No answer. María had her back turned towards Mitch while she adjusted knobs and dials on the monitor.

“Umm… donde? Who? Donde was that, María?”

“Rest, Señor Henderson, por favor,” María said, turning around. She tapped the covers over his foot. “Everything be okay.”

She turned and marched out the door.

“Why am I in chains?” Mitch said in a crackling voice. A sterile chemical mixed with the taste of cold metal crept across Mitch’s tongue, crawled down the back of his throat. Darkness descended from his eyelids and drowned his body in a heavy, dreamless slumber.

*****

“Are you awake, Mitch Henderson?” a voice asked, as if the sound exploded from the center of his mind.

Mitch gasped. His eyelids shot open, stared into the piercing glare of Vincent hovering over the bed.

“There he is,” Vincent said.

Mitch recoiled, pulled against the chain.

“Now, now, don’t worry,” Vincent said, “it’s only me.”

“Vincent, why am I in a hospital?”

“You had an accident. You collapsed last month in the RID when the board was on its annual tour. Do you remember the tour?”

“What do you mean last month?”

“You’ve been in a coma.”

Mitch broke the stare, looked off into the empty distance like he was trapped in a daydream.

“For how long?”

“Just under six weeks. Doctors said you might not come back. You must have an incredible will to live,” Vincent said. A smile spread across his face, highlighting the chiseled wrinkles around his mouth and forehead.

“Why the fuck am I chained?”

Vincent’s eyebrows twitched into a scowl for an instant, climbed back into their normal position as if he fought against the urge to lash out at Mitch for his vulgar disrespect.

“I understand that you may be confused and maybe even upset…” Vincent said, lifting the covers and unlocking the restraint around Mitch’s wrist, “but it was a necessary precaution. You see… while you were in the coma, your body convulsed. Your legs would kick forward as if they were trying to walk. Your arms would stretch out and swing. Your hands tried to grab hold of things that weren’t there. It’s like your mind was alive and well in some other place, living out an entire life of its own while your comatose body lay here.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Rotech’s doctors are conducting brain scans as we speak,” Vincent said, pointing towards the remaining electrodes sticking to Mitch’s scalp. “They tell me that you have an abnormal mind. One they have never encountered before.”

“I need to get back to work,” Mitch said, sitting up.

“No need to rush,” Vincent said, patting Mitch’s thigh. “Your place on the board is secure. Take some time to heal yourself. Spend time with your family. We need you fit for the Corpo Convention in a few months to unveil your tech. Our scientists and technicians made much progress while you were gone.”

“You want me to present at the convention?”

“Of course. It’s only fair, being that you saved the tech from the Crawlers and rescued it from Jefe, don’t you think? This could be the dawn of a new era for humanity. Crawler tech in Rotech’s possession could change the world as we know it.”

Mitch turned his head, squared it with Vincent’s, looked deep into his boss’s obsidian eyes.

“What do you mean, change the world?”

“Rest now. When the time comes you will see for yourself,” Vincent said. He turned his hand over and checked the crystal band on his wrist. “I must leave you, I have a board meeting to attend. Not to worry, we will fill you in with everything you missed. I will have María bring you your possessions and arrange for a Helo to pick you up and take you to a destination of your choice. How does that sound?”

“Fine,” Mitch said, stoically. “Thank you, Vincent.”

“Terrific, I will see you soon,” Vincent said. He turned and marched out of the room, the clap, clap of his dress shoes smacked against the tile floor, trailed off into the distance, awakening the sound of mechanical beeps, buzzes, and whirs from the various machines in the room.

Mitch swung his legs over the side of the bed. The sudden movement threw flashes of sparking light across his vision. He flexed his jaw, popped his ears so that fluid squeezed out of his earlobes and dripped down his neck. Then stretched his legs and rolled his ankles, sprinkled the room with a chorus of cracks from his sore bones before placing his bare feet on the cold tile. He slowly added pressure onto each foot until tremors shook his legs.

“Señor Henderson, cuidado, cuidado,” María said from the doorway.

Mitch looked up, watched María scramble across the room. She placed a clear, plastic box on the bed before slipping her left arm around Mitch’s back, guiding him onto the bed. Then she pulled up a chair, sat down.

Mitch glanced at the contents of the container, it was filled with the clothes and items he was carrying when he collapsed in the RID.

“Gracias, María,” Mitch said.

“De nada, Señor Henderson.”

“Did you take care of me the entire time?”

“Sí.”

“Mucho gracias,” Mitch said, pressing his palms together and dipping into a frail bow. “María? Did anyone come to visit me while I was in the coma?”

“Oh, sí, Señor Henderson. Mucho.”

“May I ask you who they were?”

“Señor Walker, of course. And the rest of the executive board, and... the skinny doctor with...” María said, making circles with hands around her eyes.

“Dr. Deckard?”

“Sí! Dr. Deckard. Very nice man. He bring me tech-toys for my son.”

“What’s your son’s name?”

“Su nombre es Carlos, mi corazón,” María said, clutching her heart.

“How old is Carlos?”

“Siete. Carlos is seven.”

“That’s very sweet, I am sure you take great care of him like you took care of me,” Mitch said, pausing to admire María’s eyes swirling with love for her son. “María… may I ask you what the executive board was doing in here?”

“They were looking after you, Señor Henderson.”

“Did they talk about me?”

“Sí.”

“And what were they saying?”

María froze, remained silent, fiddled with her fingers on her lap.

“Señor Henderson, I no want to get in trouble.”

“It’s alright María, I’m on the board, too. You can trust me. It will be our secret.”

She gulped, nodded slowly.

“The first weeks, they no say much. Dr. Deckard take your vital signs and write them down. He run tests on your brain-”

“What kind of tests?”

“The fMRI. He say your brain es muy abnormal,” she said with a thick accent.

“Abnormal?” Mitch asked, confirming the word. “How so?”

“They say that your brain activity showed that you were awake in separate reality, living a different life while you were in coma. Dr. Deckard say he never seen anything like it before.”

“How is that possible?”

“Dr. Deckard say that... a spooky force is acting at a vast distance across space and time,” María said in the doctor’s nasally voice.

Mitch chuckled.

“That’s pretty good. Did he say what the force was?”

“No, Señor Henderson. He wanted to do más studies on your neural network to see how they could use it for other things at Rotech.”

“Did they say anything else?”

María looked straight ahead, stared at a blank spot on the wall without blinking.

“It’s okay, María. You can say it, it won’t hurt my feelings.”

“Last week, the other six members of the board all come in here and talk about whether to pull plug.”

“Pull plug?”

“To remove life support. They say it’s mucho expensive and bad reputation for Rotech to keep a cripple as board member.”

Mitch found the spot on the wall María was staring at and joined in the effort to burn a hole through the building.

“Interesting... all members wanted to pull the plug?”

“Oh, no. Señor Walker say they need you for presentation of Crawler tech at the convention. Pero, the other five members say no más life support.”

Mitch balled his hands into fists, clamped his lips tight, ground his teeth so hard that they creaked like a set of antique stairs in an abandoned building.

“All five, huh?” Mitch said, clucking his tongue. “Es no bueno.”

“Sí, Señor Henderson. No bueno.”

“Gracias for telling me, María. Don’t worry, this conversation is between you and me,” Mitch said, rising from his seat on the bed. His weak legs began to shake until María steadied him with an arm around his back.

“Let me get you a wheelchair, Señor Henderson.”

“No, no, I’m walking out of here. Just need to get moving.”

“Muy bien,” María said, walking towards the door. “I let you change into your clothes and then I help you to your Helo.”

She backed out of the doorframe and closed the door behind her, leaving Mitch alone in the cold hospital room. Thoughts of vengeance swirling within his abnormal mind.