Flux

oblivion of unconsciousness, Iain received few visitors. In fact there were only two, Dave and Gary, the very same lifelong friends whom he’d been on his way to share an evening with when he’d had the misfortune of wrestling with a bus. Typical young men, full of the vigour of youth and seemingly unflappable, even they were moved to see their broken drinking buddy lying in his comatose state; empty of life and bruised, wires and tubes keeping him alive, his chest slowly rising and falling to the rhythm of the ventilator which continually pumped air into his lungs.
    After sitting in silence for some considerable time, Gary was the first to speak;
    “Apparently talking to them helps,” he said.
    “Talking to who?”
    “People in comas.”
    “Oh. Hope you’re not going to be a vegetable,” said Dave, turning his gaze towards Iain.
    “You’re the fucking vegetable, that’s not what he wants to hear y’ knob.”
    “Probably can’t hear us anyway,” grumbled Dave.
    “You don’t know that, apparently he might.”
    They both looked uneasy, shuffling in their seats before turning their eyes back towards their stricken friend.
    “Ignore him; you know he’s a fuckwit. You’re going to be just fine, I know it.” Gary always was the eternal optimist.
    “Music, I’ll give him the music,” piped up Dave, reaching down to his pocket and retrieving his iPod. “Hope this works, I’m going to miss my tunes,” he said while threading the earphone cord around various wires and plugging the ends into Iain’s ears. He pressed shuffle and glanced at the display. If Iain could hear anything, then Black Sabbath’s Fairies Wear Boots would be a good start on the road to recovery he thought.
    Fumbling around and trying extremely hard not to pull on any of the pipes or knock anything over, he balanced the iPod on the small bedside table, next to the obligatory jug of water which Iain would not be using any time soon. There it stayed, on random shuffle for a full ten minutes until the battery ran dead. Dave had forgotten the charger.
    The rest of the visit was spent in an uneasy silence. The room itself was quiet, punctuated only the beeps of various monitors and the occasional groan from the elderly lady in the bed opposite. Both young men gazed around the room, trying to guess what all the machines did and wondering what misfortune had visited the few other patients, watching the clock until finally the bell rang and visiting time was over.
    “Hope you’re better soon,” said Dave quietly as they got up to leave.
    “Yep, you will be,” chipped in Gary before waving at the nurse behind the desk and slowly shuffling into the corridor outside.
    “Fucking hell, what a state!” he sighed when sure of being out of earshot.
    Dave had tears forming in his eyes and couldn’t respond. To speak would more than likely be too much for him to handle, causing an emotional overload which would have left him sobbing on the cold, tiled floor.

    His friends had long since departed when the equipment used to monitor Iain’s vital signs went haywire. Bleeps and alarms sounded as, still fast asleep, he sat bolt upright in bed, clawing at his face to rip away the mask which was supplying oxygen to his bruised brain. Eyes wide open, tubes, wires and goodness knows what other equipment were now being pulled out of him, spraying blood across the ward. The nurse behind the desk pushed the alarm and rushed to his aid. Within a few seconds more staff came rushing into the room, attempting to restrain their now very animated patient and lie him back down. Iain was having some kind of seizure, not really surprising after the trauma suffered but this seemed more controlled than the usual spasms the doctors were used to dealing with.
    Eyes rolled back into the sockets, unseeing, he slowly turned his head to look directly at the young doctor closest to him. His hand shot out with pin-point accuracy to grab her throat. The impact knocked the breath from her; breath which couldn’t be replenished through the vice-like grip.
    And then, through the mesh of metal which should have made speech impossible, he spoke in a deep guttural voice, which didn’t sound as if it should come from the broken man on the bed. “Get your fucking hands off him you slut. He’s mine!”
    Others rushed to her aid, prising Iain’s fingers from around her neck one by one.
    Then, as suddenly as the episode had started, he abruptly lay back down; peacefully