He’s lost in it, this duality.
It stretches on.
He’s vaguely aware of the world moving around him, of other people coming and going, but it’s like the first days, when it was all seen through the milky haze. He can pick out bits and pieces, words like shock and catatonia and what if he slips back? What if he—
He’s moderately aware when they come to bathe him. When they come to work his stick-thin limbs. When they change the bag of piss. When they clean him after he’s shit himself. They tell him he needs to fight, that he’ll walk again if he just fights, that he needs to come out of it. They inject him with things that make him feel like he’s on fire. That make him sleep. That make the nightmares so vivid that it’s Sean who tackles him through the glass onto the balcony, that it’s Sean who has a knife. In the worst of the dreams, he wrestles the knife from Sean’s hands and says, “You shouldn’t have done that, bucko,” and he sounds so much like Greg’s father that he can barely keep from screaming. He stabs Sean a lot in those dreams, filled with this great anger, that it’s all his fault, that their daughter wouldn’t have died if he’d just taken better care of himself.
It continues.
He’s Greg when he thinks, I had a dog. His name was Max. He was a great dog. I had him in college. He got hit by a car and they had to put him to sleep.
He’s Mike when he thinks, He looked so good, stretched out in my bed. The way he tasted. The way his skin smelled like coffee and cigarettes. Right-o, daddio.
He’s Greg when he thinks, I first fucked a woman when I was nineteen years old. I first fucked a man when I was twenty years old.
He’s Mike when he thinks, The sun always had a peculiar way of hitting the store in the mornings. The light would reflect through the windows and the entire store would be bathed in gold, and it was always warm, it always felt so warm.
He’s Greg when he thinks, This is a dream.
He’s Mike when he thinks, This has to be a dream.
DR. HESTER comes back.
He brings a woman. She’s severe. Her hair is pulled back tightly, and she’s wearing a lab coat over a no-nonsense skirt and blouse. She’s in low heels and has red lipstick smeared across her frown.
Mike and Greg stare at the ceiling.
“It’s like it was before,” Mike hears the woman say. “When his eyes were open.”
“It’s not, though, Julienne. You’ve seen the EEG. It’s different. He’s in a resting state. It’s not catatonia. There’s an alpha rhythm.”
“Shock, then.”
“I don’t know. It could be. Or the beta-blockers are circulating out of his system and he’s being bombarded by both sides.”
“Which could be leading to the shock. Malcolm, I agreed to this because you said there was no chance they could wake.”
“There are always chances. You know this. But they’re miniscule enough as not to matter.”
“How do you explain him?”
“Science. There are variables to everything. Something about the cryogenic suspension. Something about his brain waves. Something about the trauma. I don’t know. But the fact remains, none of the others have exhibited the same signs he has. He’s always been different.”
A bright light shines in his eyes. He doesn’t even squint.
“We didn’t plan for this?” the woman says, leaning back away from Mike and Greg. “You didn’t plan for this.”
“How could we? He fit the criteria. He was comatose. You know that as well as I do. He was just like the others. Everything about him was just like the others.”
“Except for the last year.”
“Don’t you put that on—”
“This is a clusterfuck, Malcolm.”
“It’s not—”
He drifts.