NUMB by Judy Colella (tools of titans ebook txt) 📕

The woman agreed, picked up a hospital-issue cell phone, and requested an orderly’s assistance. “I’ll have him show you the various places here you’ll need to know about.”

“Places?” That photo on the wall has flowers the same shade as…NO! STOP! No flowers. Nothing. Nothing is in my head. No memories. No thoughts.

“Well, the Recreation Room, the Library, the Dispensary where you have to go every day for your meds, things like that.”

He blinked, stared, and said nothing in reply – he couldn’t. As she reached the end of her sentence, he was gone.

When the orderly left him, Jett had no idea where he was, no recollection about getting there, or how or when he’d changed clothes. He was in a room, but where? A room, unpleasant yet welcome because of that. He sat on the bed, reached over and switched off the light, then stared out through glass that wasn’t normal. He couldn’t see what was outside, nor did he care to know.

Well. Would you like to play a number puzzle? No? All right. How about a song, then? Ooh, no, sorry. What to do, what to do. Must do something. Something physical and intense so thinking is impossible. Hmm. Sit-ups? No. Too routine and boring, too easy to drift into mind-pictures. Jogging in place. That could…no. Stupid. What’s that mean? Am I stupid? Am I idiotic? What a nice idea! Ha-ha! Yes! I’ll be idiotic for a while! La-la-la…What an unattractive lamp! It’s too big for the room, and the color is gross. Well, then! I won’t use it. Nope. I’ll refuse to turn it on for the rest of the night – that’ll show ‘em!

What to do, what to do. Need to move, do something. Can’t keep sitting here, no, have to move. Shut up! Stop it! No, no, no, not thinking! NOT THINKING, THANK YOU!

Ha. There’s what I need to do! Jett got up and went to the thick exposed pipe running up the wall in one corner. He made a fist and punched it. Hard. Again. Again. The other fist. Over and over. Then he slammed into it with one shoulder. Kicked it. Ran into it with the other shoulder. Staggered backward, raised his head and screamed.

Darkness…

…Shards of light. Eyelids splitting open. Pain. Both hands were broken. He wouldn’t have known – or cared – except he’d heard someone say it. Somewhere. When? Who knew when? Didn’t matter. Painful, though. He raised one and stared with innocent curiosity at the cast covering all but the tips of his fingers. The other one was also housed in plaster.

Something was dislocated, too, he’d heard. And another something broken. He wondered what was for about a tenth of a second, then chose to stop wondering. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. The view was telling him he was on his back, but he didn’t bother to consider why, or where he’d awoken. Turning his head, he noticed a thin, clear, plastic hose coming from…his arm? Oh. It was connected to something overhead.

That’s why the pain isn’t worse, you see.

But I want it to be worse. That would be glorious. Nothing to occupy my mind except to deal with pain.

Smiling, he sat up, slid off the bed, noticing something heavy was covering his right foot. Hard to walk, but possible. After moving far enough from the IV pouch where it was connected to the head of the bed so that the hose was extended as far as it could go, Jett yanked his arm in the opposite direction. The needle was torn from his vein, and he was immediately overwhelmed with a wave of agony that began at his hands and right foot, swept inward toward each other, and met at his shoulders. Unable to breathe, he fell to the floor where he offered himself to this new god, begging for more physical misery, welcoming it.

Until he could find another way to distract himself from hard reality, this would have to do.

At some point, although he couldn’t have said what point, someone entered whatever space he was in, said some strong four-letter words, and got him back onto the bed.

“What the hell happened?”

What the hell happened? When? Who is this person? Do I know him? I don’t want to be on this bed.

“Here you go. You could’ve ruptured an artery, guy.”

Please don’t put that crap back into my…aaahh. How nice…it feels…NO! He began thrashing around, trying once more to dislodge the IV.

“Shit! Ouch! Quit…son of a…” The man stopped trying to communicate and spent the rest of his energy strapping Jett to the bed. “You do realize you’re paying us to keep you alive, yes? So knock it off! Don’t you dare try something like this again!”

Fine. Hit me, then. I won’t mind. And why would I pay you to keep me alive? Who are you? Who am…nope. Not going there. Don’t want to – ouch – know. Sleepy, dammit…what’d you just do? Give me a shot? Why? What wuz…in’t….aw, no dreams…no d….

…….

“Why do you look so sad, Jett?”

“You know why.”

“Maybe you need to tell me. Consider it therapy.” She took one of his hands and kissed it, then laid it against her heart. “I love you, Jett.”

“Please, ‘Tarah. Don’t.”

They were standing on a hill that might have been in Tuscany, or maybe – maybe it was that place near his parents’ house. He couldn’t tell; he had never been good at identifying the odd places his dreams took him.

At this moment, though, his dream had brought Atarah back to him, and he wanted to run.

“What’s wrong, my love?” She reached out and brushed her fingers across his mouth.

“How can you ask that? You – you’re – you’re dead, ‘Tarah. Dead.”

“Am I? Search your heart, beloved. Wouldn’t you have sensed me departing this earth when it happened? You didn’t? Then maybe it didn’t happen.” She circled him with her arms, resting her head on his shoulder.

“That hurts.”

“What does?”

“I, um, I injured myself.”

She pulled back enough to look up into his eyes. “Why would you do something like that, Jett?”

“To keep myself from thinking about you. About how you’re dead.” Wow, that really sounds stupid.

“Am I? You could be wrong about that. Everyone could be wrong about that. About me being shark bait.” She grinned, displaying a mouthful of shark-like teeth. “May I have a nibble, sweet Jett?”

With horror, he flung her away and turned, planning to run as far as he could from the nightmare chuckling behind him. Only he couldn’t. In a classic bad-dream moment, he found his feet anchored to the ground. Looking down quickly, he saw ankle-weights had somehow been attached, both of them bearing a tag that told him they were a thousand pounds each.

“One ear. Let me bite off one ear. You may keep the other, and one day, I’ll chisel you a new one from green marble.”

“Stop it! For the love of God, stop it! Leave me alone!”

“You have my permission to use a nasty word, Jett. You’re such a goody-goody all the time, it’ll be cathartic to give in to the call of profanity. And while you’re screaming the F-bomb, I’ll help myself to your ear, okay?”

Unable to take it, he bellowed his rage and broke free of the weights, only to find himself plummeting downward with no recollection of there having been a place to fall into. The speed of his body’s descent into this inexplicable abyss sang like a monsoon in his ears. He could only hope that he’d hit the bottom hard enough to die instantly.

Instead, he woke up. Daylight now coming in the window. He was still on the bed, still in restraints, a face that was distantly familiar staring down at him.

“That must’ve been some nightmare, buddy. You nearly broke the straps! Anyway, I’ll take them off if you promise not to pull another stunt like the one you tried two days ago that put you in strap-down in the first place.”

Did that make sense? What did he say? I’ve been asleep for two days? What? Why? No. Don’t want to know. No thinking, okay?

So he yelled instead. No words, just the satisfying feel of his throat going raw. He kept at it for as long as he could, which wasn’t all that long. A needle-prick in his arm.

Lights out.

“…true. Don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone as torn up about losing someone as this guy. I mean, he really did go off the deep-end about it.”

“Can’t blame him, though. They’d come back from their honeymoon, what, three weeks before the accident? And have you ever seen her?”

“Who hasn’t? I mean, no disrespect intended, but daaaanggg! Would certainly never turn down a shot at that body! And those – ow! Damn it!”

“Looks like there’s still someone in there, bro.”

“Shut up. The son of a bitch nearly crushed my finger!”

Laughter. “Imagine what he could have done if he was awake, unrestrained, and didn’t have those casts. Have you forgotten who he is?”

“Shit. No.” Shuffle, rustle, sigh.

“We done?”

“Yeah. The sedative is obviously wearing off, though. May I please increase his dosage?”

“Uh, no. Can’t – too much morphine in his system right now, remember?”More shuffle, rustle, sigh. A clunk – something being closed, perhaps. “Okay. Let’s go. Freakin’ – I better have this checked. It really hurts.”

Footsteps retreating. Door shutting. Solitary confinement re-established.

Morphine? Is that why I can’t open my eyes? Whatever. Now what? I feel so strange. Wonder what else they’ve done to me? Am I still –

“There you go, sweetie.”

“Mom?” He stared at her, horribly confused until he realized he was dreaming again. Must have dozed off – crap.

“Well? Are you going to take this, or do you expect me to stand here holding it for the rest of the day?” She raised both hands. In them was a large trophy shaped like a boxing glove.

“Wait – I won this when I was twelve!”

“And since you still are, I fail to see the significance of your observation.” She put her head to one side, her features finally folding into a deep scowl. “Oh, for the love of God, Jett! Take this and put it back on the shelf! It weighs a ton!”

“Oh.” He grabbed it, noticing as he did that his hands were not only free of the casts, they were smaller somehow. What – hold on. What had she said? That he was still twelve? How? Oh, right! I’m having a dream here. May as well go with it. “Er, sorry, Mom.” He turned around and saw in front of him the huge trophy-display shelf next to his desk. Why had he removed this one?

“By the way, Mrs. Clemson next door asked if you could help her with the toilet paper. Honestly – why do kids do that? Don’t they know that aside from looking silly, the stuff can actually kill the tree if it isn’t all removed?”

“I doubt they do. It’s not like they teach us stuff like that in school.” Why did they t-p her tree…I remember that happening on Halloween when I – right. I was twelve! Aha! So what am I doing back here? “Anyway, sure. I’ll help. I don’t think she’ll be able to climb that tree.” Then again, this is a dream…

“Thanks, hon. By the way, before he left, your coach recommended you try out for the track team in the spring. He says you’re very fast.”

Right. This was when I started thinking about field sports. Which led, of course, to my being involved in track and field in college, which led to the Olympics…Atarah. Shit. I want to wake up, now.

“Why? Is thinking of me that unpleasant, Jett?”

Oh, God. “No. Why would you even ask that? What’s unpleasant is remembering that you’re dead! Leave me alone! You aren’t real!”

He was no longer in his house, but standing in the bleachers of his old High School, overlooking the oval track where he’d first been observed by the University’s athletic