Page 42 of Bred

Lyra

It feels like I’ve been asleep a really, really long time. It was a good sleep, a deep sleep, the kind of sleep you wake up from and feel completely refreshed.

I open my eyes and find myself looking into a young face. It takes me about one second to realize I’m in a hospital. Weird. Well, there’s only one thing for it. I let out a long, bloodcurdling, harpy-style shriek that comes from the very core of me and frightens the hell out of the poor nurse who happened to be messing with the bag of juice keeping me alive.

“Arrrrgh!” The poor nurse stumbles back, white as a sheet, and leaves the room as fast as her legs will take her.

I try to sit up, but I’m weak. It feels as though my body hasn’t, well, bodied in a while.

A doctor comes rushing in seconds later. She looks like a nice lady. She comes to my side and says loudly and slowly, “You’re. In. The. Hospital.”

I look at her, and just as loudly and slowly I reply, “I. Know.”

“Oh, good,” she smiles.

“Why am I here?”

“You’ve been in a coma. For quite a while. We didn’t detect any brain activity. To be honest, we weren’t expecting you to wake up at all.” She gives a nervous laugh.

“Ha ha, yes, coma for life,” I say with a forced smile. “Well, I feel fine. I should get going. I’m probably late for work.”

“Stay there,” the doctor says. “I know you seem to be feeling better, but you have been severely injured. We’ll run some tests, and I know there are people who want to talk to you.”

“Really? Why?”

“Your memory is almost certainly affected,” she says. “That could make it unsafe for you.” She’s talking to me in that calm, slow voice people use to talk to irrational children. It’s driving me mad. I feel fine. I mean, a bit sleepy and maybe my limbs are heavy, but other than that, it feels like any other morning.

“I remember everything. I’m fine.”

“Do you remember why you’re in the hospital?”

“Of course, I...”

“No more questions, Doctor.” A man in a dark suit comes charging into the room as if national secrets are at stake. “I need to talk to this patient. There is a standing order that I be informed first if she wakes up.”

“There’s also a standing order that I assess the health of my patients before turning them over for interrogation,” the doctor snaps back. Hell, yeah. I like this woman. She has nerve. She’s about half the size of Mr. Inform Me First, and she manages to stare just as hard at him as he does at her, until I’m not sure who is winning this hospital showdown, but I’m living for it.

“She looks fine to me,” he says.

“If that was the basis for medical assessments you could replace me with a stuffed animal,” the doctor replies. “You can come and talk to her soon. For now, out.”

He huffs and makes a threat or two, but in the end he does as he is told and he leaves the room.

“Nice work, Doc.”

“You just came out of a coma. The last thing you need is to be interrogated by some military spook,” she says.

“I just came out of a coma?”

“You did,” she confirms. “I mentioned that a moment ago?”

“Oh, right, of course,” I say, embarrassed at having forgotten. “I thought you said I had come out of a comma, like, I was in some terrible grammatical accident...” I trail off. “What happened to me?”

“That’s the question he probably wants to ask. We don’t know. You were found outside the hospital in an unconscious state.”

The door bursts open and the man comes charging back in. It’s the hair, I think; he has a buzzed flat top, which probably makes him think he can do anything he wants to.

“Your shuttle detonated in orbit over a year ago. You shouldn’t be alive,” he says, providing much needed exposition at a critical time.

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