After waking up in the Carmine's own private medical suite at their home, David understood from his two nurses that he was about to go through a whirlwind of tests and questioning during his first day back awake.
But before he could be carted off for tests, he got to spend a little time with Karine. When she had seen him walk out from his medical treatment room, she had walked up and gave him a tight hug. David enjoyed it immensely. He had even hugged back after a moment of hesitation.
Backing away from David after the hug was over, Karine proceeded to ask David, "What do you remember from the party?"
"Not much," David responded under the watchful gases of all the Carmine employees in the room. He continued, "I remember having an issue at the gate and riding around with some couple on a golf cart. After that, all I can vaguely remember is walking around the party. What happened to me? I really don't remember much and what I do remember is fuzzy."
Of course, this was all a lie.
David remembered everything very clearly. He just felt that telling the truth would cause trouble if he mentioned that he remembered getting his arm ripped off by another person. Especially since he could practically feel the eyes of everyone in the room waiting for his story. It was like everyone was waiting for him to say the truth so that a pressure would be relieved....that is everyone except Karine.
This hunch was confirmed when Karine relayed to him the public story about falling off a bluff and hurting himself. Unlike the others, she actually seemed to have a relieved smile on her face when telling David how he got injured. They had made up an entire story to cover up what had happened and Karine seemed happy about it. David just accepted the story as told while nodding and adding in a few "I kind of remember something like that" comments.
After David and the Carmine group were done exchanging lies, Karine had mentioned that his parents had come to visit him. After a few goodbyes to Karine and the guards, David had excused himself to call his mom and dad to tell them that he was okay and not to worry. His mom wanted him to leave the city and come home right away. David apologized to his mom and told her that he would try to make a visit in the next month or two. He really needed to get readjusted first. His mom also kept raving about how sweet David's 'girlfriend' was to her when she came to visit. After a few minutes, David realized that she must be talking about Karine and sighed at his mom's assumption. He would have to thank Karine for being nice to his mom. Maybe treat her to dinner?
During the next few days, David developed a schedule of physical therapy, chatting with Karine when she visited, and pretty much just sitting around doing nothing.
In his conversations with Karine, another startling fact came out. David had asked Karine why she was screaming when he woke up. He even apologized for sitting up in the bed and scaring her. She dismissed his apology and told him that she had just been startled awake from a bad dream. He had asked what kind of dream but she wouldn't elaborate and even blushed a bit. It was really odd. For some reason, David had a feeling he was in the dream with Karine. He didn't have any proof and he doubted he would get any answer from her if he pressed the issue.
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From the detailed health tests, David honestly felt like if anything else was wrong with him physically, then it would have been found already. Just about every type of test was run to check his health when he was in a coma.
His general condition seemed fine except for a lack of strength in his right arm. He was in great condition per all the doctors and nurses. Because he was laid up for so long and had damage to his arm, the doctors had suggested some physical therapy to get David's arm back into shape. David continued to stay in the medical suite while going through the therapy.
He would go to the house's gym twice a day to workout with a trainer. Karine had even come down to the gym one time to work out with David. Of course, seeing the beautiful woman in skin tight workout clothes made David an absentminded fool the entire training session. David's lack of focus was so bad that both Karine and the trainer had recommended David revisit a doctor to check on the health of David's brain.
Other than general health, David's other concerns when finding out how long he was unconscious was the status of his stuff and the expenses related to the healthcare and missed work. To David's astonishment, everything that could have been affected by his 4 month absence was taken care of by the Carmine family including the medical care bill. His rent and other bills were paid so that he still had an apartment and cell phone. Even his employer had promised that his job was available when he decided to come back to work. Not like that they would fire him while the Carmine's project was still ongoing.
Karine had acted like the arrangements her family made were no big deal.
However, the Carmine Corporation must have thought it was a big deal. Late one evening, the company sent a lawyer over to visit David and chat about signing a hold harmless release. Basically the release said that the Carmine family would cover all the expenses out of concern for a business associate who had an accident on their property. David would not be responsible for any expenses related to the accident. He just had to sign a paper saying that the Carmine's were not at fault for his accident and he wouldn't pursue any legal action against the in the future. Even though he knew it was just a part of the cover story, David had signed the release since they actually took really good care of him through the event. The lawyer seemed to be surprised at his quick agreement. David had responded saying that it wasn't their fault that he "fell and hurt himself."
Besides the physical training and a few medical tests, David had a good bit of time to just sit by himself, collect his thoughts and relax. He also had time to process the entire experience. He had a ton of questions that needed to be answered.
Why did his dream reflect reality so accurately? What was this Other world and did magic really exist? How were the Carmine's involved in this Other world? What happened in that weird dream with Karine? It seemed like it wasn't his nightmare but her's, how could that happen?
Of all the questions, he was currently sitting in bed trying to make sense of one issue that had showed up around the second day he was awake. How did he know what everyone was doing in the next room over when he was sitting here closed up in his own room? It was like he could feel the presence of everything within an area twenty feet around him. It was an awesome feeling. He could not make out the conversations of the nurses in the other room But he had a general idea of where they were standing. If he focused really hard, he could sense a lot of the fine details of everything within a certain distance. However, when he focused too hard he would start to get really tired. He seemed to have a limit to how much he could use his new ability. Most of the time it was just a lingering feeling that other things were present around him.
Of course, he didn't tell anyone about his new ability. One thing he had learned when running around in the dream world for months, never reveal all the cards in your hand. Some things are best kept back for a time of need.
Regardless, his new favorite thing to pass the time while doing his day to day activities was anticipating when nurses would enter his room. It seemed like they were always trying to catch him naked for some reason. He would get the sensation that someone was coming, would immediately cover up, and be waiting for the nurses with a smile.
Time went on and soon, the current physical therapy was planning to wrap up in two days. After waking up, David had been at the Carmine's for a total of two weeks. He had put on a few pounds so he didn't look as scrawny and his arm had about seventy five percent of its original strength. He was about to leave to get back to his normal life. Once he finished the physical therapy, then David would also be clear to go back to work. He had been meeting with Karine everyday to get brought up to date on the project.
With construction on the exhibit about to start, it would be perfect for David to work himself back into the design firm as a construction project manager. He figured he needed to get back to some normalcy in order to help him better sort out the situation. He just hoped that work would still feel normal after all he had been through recently.