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Something wasn’t right.
He felt detached from his own body, or like he had no body and his spirit alone floated in a sea of unending dark. Blackness engulfed everything. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. He knew, somewhere in a jumbled mind and in all this dark that this wasn’t good, and that he wasn’t really there or anywhere. He wasn’t anything. It was the strangest thing, to exist and not exist at the same time. To know it and yet not know anything at all, and know also that it didn’t make sense. He couldn’t get his brain to work properly. There was one thing he was dead certain of, though, and that was that he was not okay. The sensation of being suffocated was very real, though he was pretty sure the darkness couldn’t actually be pressing on his chest, squeezing oxygen from him. Dark had no physical form, was not a tangible being.
But then, he wasn’t even sure he was a tangible being.
In the expansive nothing he was caught in, far off in the distance, he heard the deep rumble of thunder. Instinctively, he wanted to move away from it, but he wasn’t anywhere, had nowhere to go. The sound couldn’t be real. He shrank from it anyway, fell deeper into the darkness and drifted. It wasn’t real, no, yet he couldn’t get away from it and swore that the rumblings sounded like voices. He shook and gathered himself closer together. Darkness pulled him to it. He went, had no choice.
eEe!
He ran and ran but got nowhere. The path he was on was not suitable for a leisurely run for sport or exercise, blocked by brambles and branches and dark shadows. He had to run, though, and it slowly dawned on him that he was fleeing from something. He did not know what, but it was large and looming and bad. Flashes of scenery and a strange soundtrack began to filter through the dark. Dream. Dreaming. This wasn’t real, he wasn’t really standing in an unending expanse of trees, except he was so he ran anyway. He had to be dreaming. He saw his truck, a ghost image, heard the tinkle of shattered glass. Sharp pain in his head felt so very real. Orange and yellow faces laughed at him, ghoulish. A skull, empty sockets black as pitch. Harsh breathing and curses, his own voice and a stranger’s.
No. No, no. He couldn’t let whatever chased him get him. He looked back, away from that skull, tripped, fell and landed somehow on his back. Darkness all around again, except directly above was an indistinct shape, a bright spot. He blinked and tried to scrabble backward from the thing he assumed was trying to get him. He couldn’t move. Two long beams of light came down and clasped his shoulders, as real as anything, except it was not possible. Wake up.
“Mmmph mmmmmph.” The light shape made horrible, thunderous noises that seemed familiar and foreign. “Mmmmm.”
As the awful mumbling sounds grew in volume, the light spot thrust itself close to his face, face, it was a face. Panicked, he once again saw yellow, glowing, toothy smiles. They weren’t real, but they were real and his head spun in confusion. He recoiled, still had no way to escape. The darkness lured him back, even while the cold press against his shoulders increased as if something was attempting to pull him up and out. At the last moment, an overwhelming urge to go with it came too late. The darkness was all he knew.
eEe!
He lay on a raft, on his back, in the middle of a calm lake. He stared up at a blue, blue sky, like the ones he’d been blanketed by growing up. Smogless blue, bright and clear and beautiful. He would have felt content to stay there forever, lulled by the slight breeze and the rocking motion of gentle waves, except he knew that this was not where he was supposed to be. It should feel peaceful, serene, but instead it felt … empty. Not quite real.
He lifted a hand and squinted at it. It seemed solid enough, but he didn’t think it was. He felt odd, couldn’t pinpoint why except it was almost as if he were stuck between two worlds. He raised his head, aware that it took some effort to do so, and peered at the vast expanses of water around him, dark and deep and cold. The water was ominous, a threat, and the contentment he’d managed vanished in between one heartbeat and the next.
One heartbeat.
Above, flitting as if from cloud to cloud, birds circled. They were large, hawks maybe, with great wingspans that cast shadows over him and piercing cries in a rhythm too steady to be ordinary for them. For him, the sound was a part of him, beat as surely as his heart. One of the birds swooped close to him, air gusting across his face and the brush of feathers too, he thought. He jerked, made the raft tilt precariously and all of a sudden he was terrified of the depths surrounding him. He tried to settle down, but the wind picked up, gusted around him. The raft began to pitch wildly and he rolled to his stomach and clung to it, terrified.
“Oooonneeeee,” the wind howled.
No, it wasn’t the wind. He gasped, blinked rapidly at the sting of water and wind pressing the air from his lungs. He could not let go, did not want to slip into the dark water, the dark that was at the same time familiar and comforting as it was unknown and scary.
“Ooonnneeee,” came the wind, not wind, again.
Through the unexpected storm he looked, desperate to locate the shore and there. There it was, so distant. Trees lined a rocky, ragged beach filled with fallen logs stripped of bark and color, driftwood of various shapes and sizes. Among them stood a figure, alternately waving its arms frantically and cupping its hands around its mouth. Not it, a man. A shape he knew as well as his own, but then he didn’t know if he was real. If he wasn’t, then the man calling and beckoning couldn’t be. He didn’t know what to think or do, for a moment that seemed to last longer than possible. Since any laws of nature he thought he knew didn’t seem to exist here, time might as well be anomalous also. He strained to see more than an outline, understand who it was there.
“Oooonnneeee!” the man called.
Then he knew. He knew he was not supposed to be out there in the middle of all the inky black water, tossed in an impossible storm. He was supposed to be on that shore, with that man. He tried so hard to make it happen, except every time he let go to paddle he slid back toward the darkness. Helpless, he tried to keep his eyes on the man and make the elements obey his desires.
It didn’t work. His fingers scrabbled against sodden wood, tore back his fingernails and left them bloody and wrecked. He was miles and miles away from the beach, and he couldn’t fight the suction of water as it lapped at his feet, then his knees and hips and it was too great a force to overcome. As he succumbed to it, all he could think about was finding that man, needing him.
eEe!
His muscles felt overworked and wrung out, but more than that was a deep, unrelenting ache in his head. He was afraid to move, wasn’t sure if he even could. He lay still for a long while, took stock of individual pains in a collective of misery so crushing it was almost an impossible task. Head, throbbing, that was a given. Beyond that, there was a dull, deep pain on his right side and itchy pressure on the fingers of his right hand. His face felt lopsided and wrong and he began to put the pieces together. He started to fret, blood rushing like a tidal wave in his ear, and somewhere near his head came the wail of a siren. No, not that, but very much like it.
“John, please. Please, you have to come back now,” someone whispered through the rush in his ears. “It’s been five days and I don’t know if I…”
Another sensation came, a profound burst of warmth in his chest at the familiar tone and a similarly large burst of alarm at the fear lacing it. He could almost put a face to that voice, but his memory was foggy and his thoughts nebulous. It was the pain and something else lurking beneath that also, but he didn’t know what. Still, the draw of that voice, of those words tugged his sluggish mind and he struggled to hold onto it, let it guide him. He must be John. He … he wasn’t positive, but that voice he was sure of.
“That’s it. I know you’re in there. I know it.”
A faint tingling hit his left arm, an odd feeling he couldn’t place. He scrunched his eyes shut tighter. He was almost sure he was here, solid, that this was real, but there was an underlying doubt pinging in his aching head. He opened his eyes a crack, the brightness of the room striking his retinas, as if physically. He moaned and slammed his eyes shut again.
“Hey, hey. It’s okay. You’re in Rampart,” the voice said. “I’m going to shut the shades so it’s not so bright in here. I’ll … I’ll be right back.”
That strange tingling in his left arm got a little stronger for a brief second, then vanished. He shivered. He didn’t know what Rampart meant. He didn’t know anything but pain and confusion. Something … something wasn’t … he … he couldn’t think.
“There, that should be better. Why don’t you try to open your eye again? I’ll stick to this side so you can see me, huh?”
Eye? He felt a touch to his right forearm, callused but gentle fingers. He opened his eyes again, and the light wasn’t so harsh anymore. His disorientation only grew, his vision blurred and off kilter. It took him a long while to figure out he was seeing out of one eye only, and some time after that to connect that fact with the words spoken by this person he didn’t quite recognize but knew nonetheless. His eye didn’t like the dim light either and filled with tears, added to the haziness.
“John,” the man said as his hand first squeezed his hand tight on John’s forearm. Then he lifted it and lay it tenderly on the side of his face, thumb tracing a circle against his cheekbone. “I’ve been so worried.”
“I dun … woo …” His mouth wouldn’t work properly. Half of his face felt unattached, numb and filled with raw pain at the same time. His heart hurt now too, beat faster as panic set in. “Whu…?”
The hand jerked from his face, and he was glad but he missed it immediately. He didn’t know why he felt either way. He heard the scrape of metal against tile, a softly muttered curse and perhaps a sob. His head spun, darkness teased at the edge of his compromised vision.
“Just stay awake for me, baby,” the man said. “I’m going to get someone in here to take a look at you.”
A quick kiss was pressed against the corner of his good eye. Instantly that called to mind a vision of a far-off shape of a man on a beach and a flash of two men’s limbs intertwined as if they were made to fit together, and that feeling in his heart was so good and right it was just shy of agony. He tried to make sense of it. Tried to stay awake as additional voices swarmed on him, and hands gentle but different and not good prodded at him as if searching for something. He couldn’t. It was too much. The more he tried to understand, the darker the fringes of his vision got, until everything winked out.
eEe!
He wanted to shift closer, was too weak to do more than shift one of his legs. One leg was all he could move, he realized. He wasn’t sure if he should be worried. He felt a little strange, truthfully, as if half of his body had gone numb.
“Johnny?” Roy whispered, expectant and wrecked.
He wanted to answer. He did. Instead, though, he got stuck in a loop as his brain tried to wake up. He knew he had been injured. He didn’t know why or how. He knew, past experience speaking, that if it had been bad with a capital B, this was not the first time he had roused. He was sure, the sheer volume of his body hurting told him, that it had been pretty bad. The why was there, at the tip of his brain, but he couldn’t get to it. He frowned at the vague remnant of a memory, voices speaking to and about him. Words floated through gradually, confusing and a little scary. Limited motor control. Speech issues. Brain function. If he remembered, then that was a good sign. It had to be. He tried not to focus on the words and what they meant.
Roy let out a shaky breath.
There was the sound of vinyl squeaking, a slight rustle of clothes and the pressure on Johnny’s arm shifted until he could no longer feel it. He shifted instantly, needed to regain that contact. He was alarmed at how the slightest of movements sharpened the pain, in his head and right side especially. If it was this bad now, it must have been… He opened his eyes, left one stuck at half-mast. His eyes felt gritty and everything looked cloudy. He still knew exactly the moment Roy noticed, knew without having clarity the expression on his lover’s face was complex.
“Johnny,” Roy breathed and leaned close.
The nearer proximity helped Johnny see Roy, the dark circles under his eyes, the days of stubble on his face, the naked hope burning in his expression. He wanted to pull Roy into a hug, but he was becoming more aware of his body’s limitations, and what glimmers of diagnosis he could process. He couldn’t hug. He couldn’t do much.
“Ruh, ruh … Ro,” Johnny said, frustrated when it wouldn’t come out. It was so difficult and so important. He took a quick breath. “Roy.”
Roy’s smile was instantaneous, beautiful. Johnny tried to smile back, but couldn’t.
“Hey, there you are.” Roy reached out and cupped his hand on the right side of Johnny’s face, leaned even closer to look deep in his eyes. His relief was palpable. “You’re really back with me now.”
Johnny tilted his face into Roy’s touch.
“Wha …” Johnny grimaced. It shouldn’t be so exhausting forming words, and he just could not make them come easily, or intelligibly. “Whu day?”
Roy’s smile faltered. He stared at the bed sheet for a moment. He stood, never removing his hand from Johnny’s face. His smile came back, but it was tainted with something terrible and sad. He glanced toward the door before he leaned and kissed Johnny on the forehead, then lips.
“It’s November seventh,” Roy said against his mouth, then pulled back. “And you’ve had us all worried for a week.”
“Sohry,” Johnny said. He … November seventh. That was, that was, “Buh … you … buhday.”
Johnny gave a frustrated growl.
“Yes, it is my birthday.” Roy’s smile broadened. “And I know you’re confused and you hurt. You were injured very badly, and you can already tell there are going to be some hurdles to overcome. You suffered a major head trauma, but you’re tracking and it’s good. It’s gonna be okay. You’ve probably got a million questions. We’ll tackle it all, together. I promise. Okay?”
“Kay.” That sounded great. Later. Johnny felt himself already fading. He blinked at Roy, a sudden thought hitting him. “I … nuh prehsunt.”
Roy laughed, a sweet sound. Johnny didn’t know what had happened to him, had no memory of it and wasn’t sure he wanted to right now based on the way Roy looked. All he knew was Roy was there and that meant he was going to be all right, with time and love. He had both.
“Are you kidding, Junior?” Roy said. “You’ve just given me the best present and the only thing I wanted this year.”
Johnny drifted to a healing sleep, with Roy’s touch on his face and in his heart.