Flux

managed to appear alarmed enough for her to notice.
    “NO, really. It’s nothing to worry about, I just need to understand the readouts that’s all. Probably a calibration error with the machine.”
    Her words did little to alleviate Iain’s fears.
    Rebecca couldn’t wait to get the metal removed from Iain’s body so she could put him through the MRI scanner and get a much better idea of what was happening in his head, and in 3D.
    This brought her onto her next bit of news.
    “You’re healing well, I’d like to get you in for an operation today, to remove your pins and get you well on the road to recovery.”
    This was great news and Iain nodded enthusiastically.
    “I’ve managed to get you booked in for this evening,” she announced. “They’ll come to collect you and take you into theatre sometime this afternoon. I’ve arranged for the physiotherapist to start the day after tomorrow. We’ll soon get you up and about.” With that she disappeared to ponder her results and tend to her other patients.
    The next few hours were long ones, like a child waiting for Christmas, boredom and anticipation ate at him in equal measure until finally the people in green surgical gowns arrived to take him away.
    No time at all was wasted, the surgeons must have had a very busy schedule for almost as soon as Iain arrived in the preparation room, anaesthetic was being injected into one of the tubes which were already attached to the back of his hand.
    “Now, just count backwards from ten for me.”
    “Ten, nine, eight, seven…” Iain swore he saw the figure of the old man, Bert, wasted and hunched, pass behind the anaesthetist, just before unconsciousness rose up to greet him once again.
    When he awoke, Iain was back in his room. It was light outside. His head hurt and he felt groggy. Closing his eyes, he lay still, only his ears working. He imagined that he could hear the sea even though it was hundreds of miles away.
    With no awareness of how long he stayed like that, while the remnants of the anaesthetic worked its way out of his system, the realization that he might now be able to move his limbs and face dawned on him like the rising of the sun.
    His arm did not move easily and hurt when he tried. The wasted muscles that had become so accustomed to lying motionless, protested. It raised an inch before flopping back to his side. Iain looked down, it no longer appeared that the arm belonged to him, it looked so thin, skeletal even. Glancing down to his other side, he found the other arm to be the same. Wondering if his whole appearance had altered since he’d been recuperating, he realised that he hadn’t looked in a mirror since before the accident and became curious as to what demeanour he now possessed.

    It was to be another day of silence, punctuated only by short naps and two, that he knew of, visits from the nurses. They glanced at his charts, checked his blood pressure, filled in the bottom of the form and left. On the second of these visits he wanted to speak; to get one of them to do something about the itching which still plagued him, but trying to open his mouth, his jaw flopped open and a dry rasping sound passed his lips.
    “Shhh, try to rest, there’ll be plenty of time for talking later,” one of them told him.
    He started to despair. Having lain in the hospital bed for long enough he’d had more than enough resting and wanted out. The conversations in his head started to become a constant dialogue between the optimistic and pessimistic sides of his character. One making plans and determined to put in the effort to be out of hospital quickly, the other saying that he’d be there for years, and then only to live the rest of his life as a cripple. The truth he thought, was probably somewhere in between and he found himself becoming the chair in his own internal debate, a third character in his head and the voice of reason.
    A tear manifested itself at the corner of his eye and slowly trickled down his face, into his ear. It tickled. Before long it was joined by many others and the tears flowed uncontrollably onto his pillow leaving damp salty patches. Iain, wracked with sobs, cried himself to sleep.

    She came to him in the middle of the night. Bleary eyed in the fog of sleep and morphine Iain was aware of the figure standing over him, a silhouette in the gloom of the darkened room. Without breathing a single word, the figure un-tucked the bed sheets and gently lifted the bottom of Iain’s