Tales from the rails

From Worse to Bad to Okay

"Beep..., Beep..., Beep...." A monitor stood tall in the dark room. A curtain divided the room. A mother waited in a chair outside the room. "Oh lord... what happened to my boy?" She asked herself, her face in her shaking hands as she tried to hold back tears. "WHOOOOOHOOHOO!" Dan yelled happily flying down the mainline during the middle of the night. The Kipper was on time. The trucks were on the go Pleasentville Station, filled with fish. None of them had faces, so Dan could be more free and talk to his crew more. "Hold on old boy, calm down." DD said, trying to look on down the line. "Oh, let up." Delilah said as the train forged on. The signal shown green, and Dan rounded a bend. "AHHHHH!" He screamed as he saw a brake van ahead of him. "LOOK OUT!" He whistled. The freight train was filled with empty crates. Dan, DD, and Delilah flew into the air, DD flew out of the cab. His last act was putting a shield around the engine and his girlfriend. His head landed hard on a rock and the world went black. "Oh no!" Dan said, he had landed softly on the ground. The trucks bent and broke, fish flew everywhere. Delilah, when the shield faded, raced over to DD. She screamed for him to wake up, but he didn't. She shook him around, but he wouldn't wake up. She even slapped him across the face, but he didn't wake up. She immediately got her phone out and called 9-1-1. The operator soon sent police and an ambulance to the scene, they looked for the engine, but none was to be found. Delilah recounted the events, leaving out the shield part, and the police took the reports. They did the same with Dan, and got basically the same story. "I wonder why the signal was green." Said an inspector as he looked at the notes from both stories. The Breakdown Gang arrived, Dexter with some cranes and flatbeds to take the broken vans away. He got to work picking up the scrap as the ambulance sped away with Dan's crew. "Mrs. O'Mare?" Asked a doctor. She took her head out of her hands and looked up. "Tell me Doc, is my son going to live?!" She asked panicked. "Woah, woah. Calm down. He's going to live, that's not the problem." He started. "He hit his head pretty hard, so we can't tell for certain, but he's certainly going to have some memory issues. We can schedule appointments with a therapist to get him help with regaining his memories, but that in it of itself is probably going to take years. "Oh god!" She said as she looked back into her hands and wept. "Now if you'll excuse me, you and I should be the first faces he sees." "What do you mean?" Asked his mom. "I mean he's awake. Now then if-!" DD's mom shot past the doctor and into the room. "Oh, DD! My son!" She said as she looked at her boy, he was sitting up and looking around, puzzled. "Where am I?" He asked. "Oh, hey mom!" DD smiled warmly at his mother, the doctor followed her into the room. "DD, how are you feeling? What hurts? What can I do to help? Do you remember me?" She asked, questions flying left and right. "I... I don't know. But don't worry." He said, his expression disappearing. "DD, what do you remember?" She asked. "I... uh... I can't...!" DD suddenly looked panicked, his started shaking. "Mrs. O'Mare! Please sit down and let me ask him questions so I can see what is wrong with him!" Said the doctor, DD was scared suddenly. The doctor calmed him down. "DD, I want you to know that I am someone who can help you, you just have to answer some questions for me. Okay?" DD nodded. "It seems that you remember your name and your mother, who else can you remember?" The doctor asked. DD thought for a moment. "My dad. My grandparents. My brother Seth and my Sister Lacey. Oh, and my dog, Ghost." He said. "Anyone else?" Asked the Doctor. "No. Not really. Is that bad?" Asked DD. "That doesn't matter right now. What school do you go to?" "I don't know." "Okay, what's 12 x 11?" "Uh... 132." "Okay, good. I got what I need. Feel free to press that button to call a nurse, they'll get you whatever you need." The doctor then sat in a chair in the room, he signed into a laptop, he pulled it out of the bag he had sling around his head and signed in. He wrote some notes before he spun around to face DD's mother. "Okay, to put it simply, your son can remember specific people that have been in his life for a long time, and has all his intelligence, but he can't remember specific names or events." "What can we do?" Asked DD mom, worried. "Well, bring in his friends, teachers, whatever you can think of that might kick his memory back into function." Said the doctor. "Think like photos or videos with him in them that will help him remember. Otherwise he'll just be like this. Though something ought to bring the DD you know back." Said the doctor. "Right now, I would suggest that you get those people and let him rest." The doctor stood up and so did DD's mom, the two left at 4:30 in the morning, DD's mom getting DD's dad's car. The two sped off to find those people and videos that would help their son.