CHAPTER TWO

"...What...what happened to me?"

Philip's first moments of returning consciousness came with a bewildering tone. It was hard for him to cope with his current state, let alone reflect on his memory. "Where am I?" It was still a black stage for Philip's vision, or lack thereof. He was blind, so he must make up for it with his other senses. He reached up his arm with his curious fingers. A plastic tube, thin and professional, was prodding into his elbow. The tones and smells of the room were at last coming to Philip with familiarity. He was in a hospital, an American hospital.

"You are back in Oklahoma," said a nurse, "Is there anybody you would like us to call?"

"Don't call my parents."

"Okay."

"Is this a military hospital?"

"No. This is Saint Anthony's in Oklahoma City. You have been honorably discharged. Whatever you did over there must've been courageous. They brought you here a couple of days ago and since then we've conducted every test we've got on you to see what's wrong."

"Have they found anything?"

"Not yet, Corporal, but we're doing everything we can." Says a new voice entering the room, "I'm Dotor Fitzsimmons, I'm working with the rest of the hospital to figure out what you've got."

"Are you with the-"

"Yes, I'm a military scientist. I have been with you since you were found in the caves."

"So, what do I got?"

"We haven't been able to diagnose your particular...ehum...ailment, yet."

"The plant..."

"What?"

"The Plant. Did you find that plant? Did you find it? Is it still real?" The BP monitor started sounding off frantically.

"Plant. What plant?" Dr. Fitzsimmons tried to get one last crossover in before he plunged back into unconsciousness. Philip's BP rate got worse, and his body started convulsing as the nurse interrupted, rushing to Philip's aid.

"Corporal Dresden needs his rest. You two can talk in the morning." The nurse concluded while pinning Philip on the bed, lifeless, as if. "You should feel lucky you know. They haven't told us much, but of what they did...you're lucky to still be alive. Not only that, but your grandfather is here in the hospital living out his last days. He has stopped eating, a tell-tale sign that the end is near. You will be able to see him before he passes. Now sleep corporal, you need your energy."

He stopped trying to keep his face above the surface and drowned his wallow in the black abyss.

Philip fell back into his other darkness. He still felt alive, awake. Lucid. And the fact that he was asleep was slowly...fading....away.

He's walking in the dark. The dark he should be getting used to. He is not afraid to walk without seeing. He triumphantly marches through the night. Suddenly, he is walking on a field. A field he can see. Is he no longer blind? Not right now. The cascading infantry of grass rolls underneath a black sky. All of which under an eccentric horizon. He feels somewhat askew, but all his indicators read truth and sincerity. And so, he walks on in this strange grass below a shadowed sky. Slowly, the moon rises from the horizon. It takes up his entire view. Massive, illuminating, it compels the darkness into hiding. Philip stands in the lunar light. It feels good. A feeling he has not experienced in what seems like a lifetime. He is relieved. Relief, what, for heavens sake, has he gone through? For what? If he can only remember. Philip looks deep into the moon. It has now become too close to be real. It looks as though if he jumps with all his might he can land on the moon's platform. Philip closes his eyes, bends his knees, and launches his feet into the air. He is propelling forward across the dim space. He opens his eyes, and the moon is nowhere to be found. He begins to come down from his arc. Plummeting into nothingness, his relief turns to panic.

Ah

the moon,

where you have gone

but below my feet where I cannot see.

Alas, he lands in lunar comfort. There! 'What I can accomplish if I just trust in the dark of my own mind.' His first successful feat, since...what? His promotion to corporal. Too long has he been a victim rather than a victor. 'But to trust in the darkness?' In this dark world...of quantum imagination, where only the absent rules, he could be king. Philip sits on the moon and stares at his world. The bright light supporting the back of his shoulders. He wants this feeling to last forever. His realm of eternal solitude making the grade. A murky shadow world on the viewing deck.

Fizzling away, another blackness comes alive. The dark force of blind nature awakens Philip. Once again, the fumes and sounds of the hospital come back. He can practically see it in his head. One room, one other person. His nurse sounds like a sweetheart.

"How are you feeling, Philip?" the infuriated voice invaded his re-entrance. A voice that was familiar, but not the nurse's. "Philip, they told me you could hear...they told me, you were back..." She let out a gentle whimper and quickly pulled it back in. Her footsteps moved towards the door.

"I...I am here." Staggered Philip.

"They told me you were tortured, that you are blind...that..."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"JUST TELL ME! Please, just say it."

"...unless they can find out what's wrong with you...you're going to die."

"I'm already dead."

"Why would you say that? What is wrong with you?...I mean...Why can't you just be happy? What more do you have to go through before you can see your life for what it is?" the woman clamored up as she purged out one more tired question. A question she had been holding onto for a very long time, "Why did you leave me?"

"...see..."

"What?"

"You want me to...see my life for what it is...ALL I CAN SEE IS BLACK, SARAH! MY LIFE...IS HELL!"

The monitors in the room started going off. The woman stepped back. Nurses rushed in and stabilized him. His hear rates returned to a mild condition, The nurses left, all but the one Philip had met before. She approached the woman, Sarah.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Are you family?"

"I'm his wife."

Philip woke up the next day. It was becoming increasingly easier for him. But it was still difficult to tell in all this darkness, whether he was really awake or still in his dreamland.

"Good morning Philip, it is eight o'clock in the morning, on Friday, October 20th. You are sitting in a hospital room on the fourth floor, at Saint Anthony's, here in the great Oklahoma City..." The Kind Doctor exhaled as he flipped open his chart and continued, "Your file says this is your place of birth. I am a local too. My name is Arthur Randolph, I am your attending physician. How are you feeling?"

"What is wrong with me?"

"We don't have all the answers yet. Your wounds from Afghanistan have all healed. But your blood, well your blood is infected with some unknown toxin and your body is slowly rejecting it. Soon your immune system will fail and eventually the toxins will shut down your vital organs."

"What about a blood transplant?"

"We have thought about that already. It would most likely kill you. These ailments you have been exhibiting show every symptom found in patients going through withdrawal from major narcotics. The only difference is your symptoms are amplified. They are more ramped and seem to be permanent."

"Are you saying there's no hope for me?"

"As of right now, my medical opinion is no. But my personal beliefs always leave room for hope."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"No, I was just-"

"I jumped on top of a grenade for my troops, thinking it would kill me. I thought that would be the worst suffering I would ever have to go through. I thought that would be the end of it. I couldn't have been more wrong. I was tortured for what seemed like twenty years after that. And every time I was at the brink of death, they brought me back with that godforsaken plant. Until they gouged my eyes out, and my rescue finally arrived just in time to keep them from healing my face. They saved me...I was...saved. Ha! Doesn't that make you laugh doctor?...saved. Now I'm stuck in this darkness," He mumbles to himself like a lunatic, "...wretched curse..."

"Are you saying that they used a plant on you to heal your wounds?"

"You think I'm crazy. I would think I'm crazy too after hearing the words I just said out loud."

"I don't think you're crazy. I think you have been through a lot. But mostly, I think this plant has a direct correlation with what's wrong with you. It could be the mystery toxin that we've been searching for. What else can you tell me about it?"

"Not much from what I can remember. It looked like any other plant. Wait, the interrogator...told me that it had blue veins. Blue veins, and it sparkled under the light. The leafs were glossy, they felt almost of wax. And the sensation, the feeling of being healed by the plant. It was...amazing. It burned...furiously, but it was a good burn. A soothing burn. There were days where i craved it. That's when I realized that my humanity was lost. I was an animal, a slave to their convictions. I was okay with it, with them torturing me, Doc. I was sick. I was obedient. Just as long as they fed me more of that cure afterwards."

"I understand. There are definitely some psycho-hallucenagenic factors here that we were not considering before. That must've taken a lot to open up to me, thank you for being honest. This information is going to help me save your life."

"There is nothing worth saving." His meager tone lingered on,"...just let me go."

"Your wife was in here yesterday, you left her to go into the army...what for?"

"I'm done opening up, Doc." He snapped his mouth shut and imagined giving this pretentious doctor a cold stare. For the moment it did him good to remember the feeling of sight. But then his self-loathing turned the celebration into mockery. And he became sick of everything altogether.

"Then I shall go get some more inconclusive results. Till next time..."

"Wait! Doctor...where is my grandfather?"

"He's on the top floor, geriatrics, Room 713. I can arrange for a visit."

"That won't be necessary. I have nothing to say to him that can't wait until later. Ha."

"As you wish, Corporal."

"Don't call me that."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Dresden." The doctor paused to say something else but decided not to and walked out of the room. The tight air settled, and Philip returned to his unconscious fields.

He woke up again to a beautiful sunset. The sweltering light pierced through the window. A window that was now on the other side of the room. Philip felt the heat on his face. He knew it was there. It all made sense. How did it make any sense? Where was he? It made sense that he was a jerk to his doctor. And his doctor's retribution was disobeying a direct order (something a good soldier would never do). Philip was in his grandfather's room, it had to be.

"You there grandpop?"

"Yeah, I'm here, boy."

"I can't see anymore."

"Your doctor told me. He also told me you didn't want to see me."

'That prick' he thought. "That's not what I meant."

"What did you mean, Philip?"

"We're dying grand-pop, I was trying to bring acceptance to our situation. We would most certainly have met each other in heaven."

"Heaven, Philip? I never knew you as the religious type."

"Well, I always had your example to follow grandpop. Sure, I don't know much about Jesus and the bible. But I have faith. And they say, 'faith alone can get you to the afterlife.'"

"Who says that?"

"I don't know, but it sounds right."

"Ha!"

"Are you afraid to die grandpop?"

"I have made my peace with this life."

"How? I need to know."

"Did I ever tell you that we are of Cherokee descent?"

"No. I thought I was just German and English."

"Your father's family is German, but your mother is both English and Cherokee. My parents were from the Cherokee nation. And my wife, your grandmother was from an English family who came from Massachusetts to Oklahoma."

"I didn't know all that."

"It is almost the Harvest Moon."

"The what?"

"October, our ancestors celebrated the Harvest Moon. They would not eat for seven days in preparation for the ceremony."

"Is that why you're not eating? Because you're getting in touch with your roots. This is your peace? I should never have been brought up here."

"You should be giving thanks to all the forces that have helped us live."

"Five days of fasting and all of a sudden you're a medicine man? NURSE! This is ridiculous."

"Your cynicism will not save you in the end, grandson."

"I'm not looking for salvation."

"No, you're looking for condemnation, and you're not going to find it here."

The nurse came in and wheeled Philip out of room 713.

"Good-bye, grandson."

Philip was brought to his room and soon fell asleep. He struggled to keep track of time like this. He had no will over his days and nights when all he saw was darkness. Who knew how many hours had passed. When suddenly he was startled awake by a sharp pain daggering into his chest. He screamed in torment. An action he was used to. The nurse ran in and sounded the alarm.

"My hnph- My chest!" cried Philip.

Doctor Randolph rushed in. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"It's his heart, he's going into cardiac arrest."

"Get me the paddles and then start CPR," Doctor Randolph turned his head towards the door, "AND PAGE DOCTOR FITSZIMONS TO HURRY! WE NEED TO DO THE PROCEDURE NOW!" The defibrillator paddles were placed in Dr. Randolph's hands. "CLEAR!"

Caught in a current.

Brief. Shock. Light can be where

Syringe felt surrender.