Wings

II

He stirred a few times in the next two days and one night he spent in the hospital, coming close but never quite breaching the surface to retake consciousness. His nurses spoke in hushed whispers and his doctors consulted each other in a grim manner, wary of waking him from his drug-induced slumber for fear of putting him in pain, yet unwilling to perform any sort of procedure without his cognizant consent. He wore a bracelet that read "John Doe" and laid, unmoving, in a white hospital bed in a bare room.

John Doe abruptly awoke in the night to the sound of inhuman screaming filling his ears. His mouth felt dry, almost as if it were stuffed with cotton, and when he opened it to cry out in anguish, no noise escaped. His dark chocolate eyes flew open, not recognizing a thing in the dim, "night-time" hospital lighting. He jolted into a sitting position in a panic, but black quickly encroached his vision and he fell backwards, into his creaky bed.

A nurse walking down the hallway seemed to have spotted movement from his room. She poked her head into his room curiously to investigate.

"Hello?"

He peeled open his eyes, which felt as if they were covered in a crusty substance, and briefly examined her soft face. Despite his head feeling as if a sledgehammer were pounding the back of it, he managed to crack a thin smile. Her eyes widened in what he presumed to be excitement, and a bright smile seemed to light up her features as she took two steps out of the room, darting around the corner.

I hope she's getting a doctor. I really hope she's getting a doctor...

His eyelids were falling shut again when a short, stout, and balding man bustled into the room, dragged by the cuff of his lab coat by the same nurse. She gestured toward him and he managed to keep one eyelid from falling, awkwardly peering at the medical staff through his left eye.

"Well?" The doctor looked down at the nurse. "Have you given him anything to drink, Gemma?"

Her eyes may as well have popped out of her head in shock. She dashed out of the room again, and the doctor chuckled, moving to stand just to the left of his bed.

"Now, since I doubt you can talk yet, I'm going to ask a few yes or no questions. Blink once for no, twice for yes. Understand?"

The man blinked once, by mere coincidence, but the doctor seemed to misconstrue this as an affirmative answer.

"Okay. Fir—"

He was cut off by the nurse barreling through the door, a tray ladened with a pitcher of water and a plastic cup in her arms. She fixed a sort of rack for the tray next to his bed and poured one cup full of water before handing it over to the man, who was still watching them out of one eye with the utmost curiosity. He grabbed it hastily in shaking hands and gulped it down thirstily, dropping the empty cup on the floor. The doctor sighed and bent over to pick it up, and the man finally read his nametag.

"Dr. Thomas Coup," it read.

The man coughed, airy choking noises filling the room. After a moment, he rasped, "Doctor... Coup?"

The doctor looked up at the crippled man in surprise, delight spreading across his face. "Ah, so you can talk?"

The man blinked in confusion. This time, his words were almost a shout. He took a deep breath and wheezed, "I can't hear anything!"

The doctor's expression turned solemn, and he took a step back. He exited the room, and the man gawked after him looking baffled. The nurse offered him more water and he swallowed approximately half of the pitcher before the doctor scuttled back into the room, a sly grin playing his face and a clipboard clutched in his grasp. He scribbled something on the top page before revealing what he had written to the man.