dave

"Please, sir, relax, let me explain."

The man in the white coat seemed to think he would be able to calm my nerves with words. I needed him to understand that I simply needed a dose of my medicines, and perhaps a good vics salve. I simply had a case of the common cold, likely caught while I travelled home from Old Peoria (Home of my father). The train had been a dreadful mess of snotty children and their doting mothers.

"Sir, I'm not sure how to tell you this. The bed you rest in today is quite different from the one you may remember resting in, in what you may consider to be yesterday."

Excuse me? This man is a preposterous old fool, an absolute turkey of a gentleman taking advantage of a restrained and apparently drugged man. I still couldn't muster a word, although I was starting to notice a marked change in surroundings.

"Let me first of all say, you are an extraordinarily lucky young man. You were one of only three people to receive this treatment, and of those three, it seems you are the only one to have 'pulled through'."

Just give me my salve. And why is he being so sarcastic?

"Next, I need to tell you that you have been asleep for the past 65 years."

Apparently, my common cold had turned into something substantially more concerning. Apparently I had developed a rare form of tuberculosis. So apparently rare that it was the first strain to have developed in a liver before moving to the lungs. Like a tropical storm marinating in a warm gulf the TB had quietly picked up steam, by the time it hit my lungs it was a hurricane. I had been kept alive on digitalis purperea, which, strangely enough, had been discovered by my great-great uncle, John Ferriar, nearly 200 years before. It slowed my heart rate, while strengthening the contractions, thereby allowing my lungs to perform at a less than adequate rate without tragic consequences. The rest was to be explained when I had the strength to speak.

So now I had come to realize that while I had lain in this bed - growing nearly enough hair to span the Gulf of Peoria - my love had passed on, my village had turned into a vast sea, and the great white north, a relative unknown in my day, had become the new frontier.

The dying young man stirs, slowly opens his eyes, a bead of sweat rests in the creases of his forehead. He sees lights, little else, he hears nothing. Vibrations can be felt through the wheels on his bed as people move around him. The vibrations bring awareness to his body, the awareness wipes the fog from his eyes. The light is now fading into shapes. He gazes glassy-eyed upon a glass of water resting on a cabinet across the room. A startled nurse now stands over him, she speaks hurriedly, he hears nothing, only senses her panic. The nurse notices his eyes, they seem almost darker now, a deep shade of indigo, drained of life and light. As his cognizance strengthens he attempts to speak, his voice is as useful as his ears, the sound he makes cannot be understood. He is a newborn child. The fruitless effort of speaking frightens him and his chest begins to tighten, he notices suddenly his heart beating in his ears and hands, the tension grows stronger, his anxiety takes him, the room begins to move, he slips back into sleep.