Max slowly woke up. Not fully, partially.
'What is the obstruction in my mouth? Why can I not breathe by myself? Why are my eyes closed? Why can't I move? I hear sounds, and considering I am about 80% deaf, I just can't make them out. Why is my left arm feeling very heavy? Hello. Guys? Help! Someone Help!' he tries without luck, to speak or move, , until succumbing to darkness yet again.
*
Again, he slowly wakes up. This time, he is more aware of his body.
'What is going on? Where am I? Lord, help me please! I don't know what is happening!' Max pleads in his head, using his inner voice, praying.
"Calm down my child," he hears and Max immediately knew it was the Lord. "Know I am with you always. Even when you were lost, even when your wife died and joined me in Heaven. I was with you and her during that time. I was with you on the beach, right next to you, healing you. So now calm down, my child. It is time for you to start anew. A new path in your life. And I have planned this, all of this. So, my child, wake up. Your new journey begins now, full of blessings, and yes, trials. Nothing is easy in life. But if you
look for them, the blessings, you shall see them, thus embrace them."
Max pauses. He forces his mind to calm down. Then he recalls the words from the Lord.
Using them, as inspiration and strength, he mentally grasps a hand. He feels it is the Lord.
Then using his mind, he sends out signals, commands, to different parts of his body, to see what is responding right now, and what is not, to regain control.
To his ears he strains to try to hear what sounds, if there are any, are around him, and he ever so slightly hears a faint beep, beep, beep, and a whisper. No two whispers, a man and a woman. He couldn't make out what they were saying, but he hears them.
'Ok, so that seems to be working, let's try the next part,' he mentally thinks to himself.
So, onwards to his mouth. Can he move it – no seems to be restricted. Something hard was in his mouth, semi stretching it and making it rather uncomfortable. He can't really move his tongue either. Oh, the tongue is definitely dry too and needs to be wet, but how?
Let's try something else. He tries to swallow. Nope, can't swallow, the same thing in his mouth is running down his throat
'Oh! it is a ventilation tube – I must be needing it to breathe! Means I must be in a hospital! Ok, let's see if we can wake this old body.' Max says to himself.
Onwards, he tries to access different parts of his body.
His eyes are heavy, but stubbornly slowly opening.
'Oh crap that is bright!' and he slams them shut, after the harsh bright light burnt into his eyes,
'Oh the pain. Ok, let's leave them close for now'.
He tries to move his fingers and after a bit, finds his right hand is responding. His left hand…
'Oh crap that hurts! The pain!' – a sharp stabbing pain runs from his left hand up his arm to his body as if someone was slowly cutting him open, with his whole left arm now throbbing.
'Ok, the left arm is out of bounds. Must have broken it or something, onwards our awakening journey.'
Max attempts to check his chest, then his stomach. No pain, no restrictions there, on towards his hips,
"MMMMMmmmmmm," Max unaware physically groans as he ignites more pain.
'Urg Oh crap that is sore, Oh hell, Urg!' Max screams internally in his mind.
Suddenly a hand touches his right forearm, and a male voice, close to his right ear, says: "Max, don't move, take it slow. Your body has taken a major punishment. I will give you some pain meds to help you with the pain. Max, can you open your eyes for me please?"
Max tries again to open his eyes, squinting at the extremely bright light and tries to lift his right hand to shield his eyes, only to have the hand on his arm, hold it down.
"Wait a sec Max, let me turn down the lights," said the voice.
"Ok now try again," the male voice encourages, after a moment.
This time, Max tries to open his eyes again. Max has already been 'burnt' twice, expecting it to hurt again, only to discover the harsh brightness was gone. But his vision was blurry. Max blinks, trying to clear his vision. He slowly starts to see this male bearded man, hovering over him on the right with eyes smiling at him, as his mouth was hidden with a mask.
"Hi," he said. "Welcome back. We have been waiting for you for a long time."
'Long time!' Max thought. 'What does he mean by that! Just a few minutes ago I was on the … ' and everything rushed back into him, all the memories of the loss, of the struggles, of the situation on the beach.
'Oh my God, What happened to those girls, are they ok?'
His daughter!
'Oh shit – is she ok, has someone informed my mother-in-law where I am. Oh no, what are they thinking? about him. Oh Lord!'
Max starts to cry, tears weeping from his eyes.
"Max, are you crying because you are in pain?" asks the doctor.
Max could only just make these words of conversation out, due to his limited hearing, and the mask blocking Max's chance of lip reading. Max tries to shake his head, but only gets a tiny movement as his head is restrained.
"Good, we are now getting somewhere. Your head and neck are restrained. I will explain later. Are you in pain?" the doc asks yet again.
But Max could only make out: "Good … getting somewhere … Head … neck … strained …. I will … later … you … pain."
Frustrated, Max shuts his eyes and tries to move his lips, but they are restrained. He suspects they are taped down to hold the tube in place –
'Urg.'
Max opens his eyes again and looks around. He ignores the doctor, who was speaking to him. Max sees a nurse. to the side. He tries his best to get the nurse to come to him, with his eyes and while making almost unsuccessful grunting noises, all while trying to point his right hand finger at her.
The doctor finally realized this, as Max was now ignoring him, and called the nurse over. A beautiful brown hair pixie cut head style nurse comes to Max's left and lightly lays her hand on his left shoulder.
"Hi," she says with a smile.
Max hears the Doctor's voice, his tones, and speaks to her. She nods and then turns to face Max, and says: "The Doctor wants me to try to speak to you. Will you communicate with me?" The sweet delicate voice washes over him, and Max understands every word especially as he can 'read' her lips.
"So?" she asks again.
Max blinks once.
"Oh, so we are going to try to use your eyes for yes and no, correct?"
One blink.
"Yes, is one blink, correct?"
One blink.
"Give me a 'no' blink please."
Blink, blink.
"And, maybe."
Long blink
"Ok, now that we have some way of communicating. Oh, you can understand me fine, right?"
Long blink
"Why the long blink, are you struggling to hear me?"
Blink
"Wait. Are you deaf?" she asks in alarm.
Blink, blink, blink, blink – Max went wild with blinking. She got the gold star, he thought. Stupid Doctor.
She laughs: "OK, OK, calm down, now I know why you wanted me and not the doctor."
She semi looked up to the doctor and said. Max, reading her lips, caught most of the conversation. "Max is deaf or is severely hearing impaired. He needs to read lips to understand what you're saying."
Max blinks again, once.
The nurse laughs as she catches Max's blink.
The Doctor reaches and pulls down his mask, exposing his mouth. "Max I am sorry, I didn't know."
Max blinks back to the doctor.
"So, let's try again" asks the doctor slowly, with his mouth exposed. "Are you in pain?"
Max thinks for a bit, then blinks one eye, then the other, then again, the first eye in rotation.
"Ok. So you are somewhat in pain. Can we try determining where you are in pain? If I mention an area, can you tell me yes or no. But if you can't feel anything, or are unsure, blink three times, okay?"
Max blinks once to the Doctor, then winks to the nurse. She chokes on a chuckle and grins.
The Doctor clears his throat and starts: "Ok, your head?"
Max gives a slow blink, hoping the doctor will understand he has a headache and is not in actual pain, just a moderated throbbing headache.
"OK, I assume there is either no pain in or on your head area, but you are hinting you may have a headache or dull pain from something."
Blink.
"Headache?"
Blink.
"Mild"
Two blinks.
"Moderated?"
Blink.
"Dull pain?"
Two blinks.
"Ok, we will give you some medication for that." He answers, then directs to the nurse. "Please give him 1-milligram paracetamol for the headache when you give the meds shortly when we are done with our diagnostics".
Max suddenly blinks rapidly, and it catches their attention. Only to cause the both of them to look at him in worry.
"Are you allergic to paracetamol?" Asks the doctor.
Two blinks.
"Then what? Is 1-milligram not enough?"
Two blinks.
"2-milligrams?"
One blink.
"You know that is a high dose for paracetamol unless your headache is really sore."
One blink.
"Ok, 2-milligrams paracetamol for now and an allowance of 1 milligram every 6 hours, unless he pleads for more and the signs show he needs it. Then call me so we can do a CT scan in case of head injury."
The nurse nods and Max tries to send thanks through his eyes with a look and slow blink.
"Either you thank me or you're trying to flirt. The latter is not going to work, Max. I am married."
Max's eyes shoots WIDE open and swings from side to side as if saying 'NO'.
The nurse, on the other hand, could hold back her laugh. The abolished doctor at first glares at her then, too starts to laugh. Max, restricted as he was, his eyes were 'laughing' too.
"Ok guys let's carry on. Max, your neck, sore or not?"
Two blinks.
And slowly they work down his body to discover Max cannot determine his stomach area for pain or not, his left hip is in real pain, his left arm from the elbow to his wrist is in pain, but the fingers and hand isn't really in pain, just causes pain in his arm. Both his left he was unable to tell them they were numb with tingling but tried to give a rolling eyes movement to the question.
"So Max. We have determined, you can feel pain in the left arm, left hip area and you are trying to say you are unsure of your legs and stomach. Other than the headache, we know based on x-rays and CT scan, you have sustained a fracture of the radial and ulnar bone near your elbow in your left arm. You also have a shattered ulna head. For the time being, we have restrained your bones for the time being, with a fixator to allow them to heal and will further repair the damage to the ulnar head with a replacement later. As for your hip, one of the bullets went through your upper left pelvis, and broke it into pieces and we had to put it back together with pins and rods. The second bullet entered your front stomach, fractured the side of your L4 vertebra and we had to fuse that section of the spine with an internal brace. We will later revisit this, to see what we can do to future repair or replace the vertebra, but for the time being we are wanting to monitor the spinal cord and feelings to your lower parts of the body. We suspect you are not feeling much downwards due to inflammation and swelling on the spinal cord and nerves in that area. When we can, I would like you to have an MRI to take a closer look at that area, but for now let's get you stronger and more awake first. The third bullet went through your right lower portion of the kidney. We had to remove that damaged portion.. Max, do you understand what I said to you?"
Max was in shock. He understood about 90% of what was said. So he just blinked once. Tears started to seep out his eyes and he closed them. He needed too. He closed them to shut out the world, to be alone once more.
A soft hand touched his cheek, causing him to open his eyes. Max saw it was the nurse looking at him concernedly.
"Don't worry Max. We will get through this. One day at a time. I will bring your pain meds shortly and you will go back to sleep for a bit. When you wake up, we can try to talk again. I will be right back with your meds."
Max blinked once back to the nurse and she left. The doctor had already moved away to the chart at the foot of the bed to make notes.
Suddenly, Max lifted his right hand and waved, to which the doctor looked up and came and inquired: "What is wrong Max?".
Max pointed to the ventilation tube in his mouth. "You want it out, OK. Let's try to take it out. But if you need it back, I will have to leave it in for at least a week or two."
The Doctor called the nurse back for assistance.
After a bit of tugging and fiddling, the doctor said: "OK Max, take a deep breath and hold it. As I pull this out, I want you to expel the breath out at the same time. Don't fight it, just breathe out. Ready, breathe in, and ... now out."
And the horrible long alien feeling slowly exited his airways out his mouth, making him want to choke and vomit. But Max fought this and continued to breathe out, till this thing was out. And it was gone. After coughing a bit, the nurse told him not to try to speak yet but to sip on some water. To let his throat heal from the tube.
"I will be right here in the room, just going to get your meds, you rest now, don't speak yet, ok?" Max blinked once.
Max forgot his neck and head were still restrained and hadn't asked why. But at least he can breathe better and freely. His mouth tasted like sand, but was starting to become normal again. Max decided to close his eyes for a bit, and forced his body to relax and rest.
A moment later he felt a tug on his right arm, and realized the nurse was inserting the meds into his IV line which was embedded on top of his hand. Cool feelings washed through the veins as she slowly squeezed the meds in, and soon dreamland enticed him once again.