"I'm going to ask you a few questions," the doctor said gently, and I heard the faint rustle of his coat followed by the soft scrape of a chair being pulled closer to my bed, the sound sharper than it should have been in the darkness. "Just answer what you can. There's no pressure."
I nodded automatically.
"Do you know your name?"
I hesitated, then answered with the only one that felt instinctive. "Mira."
"Good," he murmured, and there was something in the tone—approval, perhaps relief—that suggested the answer carried weight beyond basic orientation. "And do you know where you are?"
I hesitated, not because I lacked an answer, but because I needed to assemble it from what remained available to me. I focused on the steady electronic rhythm nearby, the low hum of machinery, the sterile sharpness of the air as I breathed in, and the pull of something taped to my skin that kept me tethered to the bed. My body felt heavy, restrained by unseen lines and pressure, every movement deliberate.
"A hospital," I said slowly.
Another pause.
"Good," he repeated, quieter this time.
There was the soft tapping of keys, or perhaps a stylus against glass. The faint, controlled rhythm of someone taking notes.
"Do you know what day it is?"
I searched my mind. Nothing came up—no calendar, no season, no memory of sunlight or weather.
All I found was blank space.
I began to shake my head out of instinct, then forced myself to speak instead, aware that silence could be misread.
"No," I said quietly, the admission steadier than I felt.
"That's all right," he said. "That's not uncommon."
There was a pause, the soft sound of him making notes.
"Can you tell me if you're experiencing any pain right now?"
I took a moment before answering, not because I was unsure, but because the sensation felt strange and layered, as though it belonged to someone else's body.
There was pressure behind my eyes, a dull ache along my ribs, a persistent throbbing at the back of my head, yet none of it felt sharp or immediate. It felt removed, filtered through distance.
"Yes," I said after a moment. "But it feels… distant."
"Any dizziness?"
"Yes," I answered, aware of the subtle sway beneath the stillness, as though the bed itself were floating rather than anchored.
"Nausea?"
I paused again, testing the feeling carefully, drawing a slow breath to see if it triggered anything sharper beneath the haze. My stomach remained unsettled but not unstable.
"No."
"Any ringing in your ears?"
"Yes," I said quietly. "A little."
"Can you move your fingers for me?" he asked.
I concentrated on the request, sending the command deliberately, and the effort felt delayed, as though my thoughts had to cross a greater distance before reaching my hand. After a moment, I felt the faint drag of fabric against my skin and the subtle shift of my fingers against the sheet.
"I think so," I said, uncertain whether the movement had been visible or only perceptible to me.
"Good. Toes?"
I drew in another steady breath and directed the same effort downward, willing the signal through heaviness that did not belong there.
"Yes," I answered after a moment. "They feel… heavy."
"That's okay," he said, unhurried. "Do you feel any numbness? Tingling?"
"My hands," I said after a moment. "And my feet. A little."
Another pause. More notes.
"Do you remember what happened before you arrived here?"
The question tightened something inside my chest.
"Yes," I said, and even as I answered, I felt the weight of it pressing upward, images trying to surface through the haze—trees, cold air, the metallic scent of blood—but I kept them contained.
He hesitated before the next question, just long enough for me to notice.
"And your vision," he added, carefully this time, as though stepping onto fragile ground. "Can you describe what you're seeing?"
The question made my chest tighten.
Not because I didn't understand it.
Because I did.
"I—" My throat closed around the sound. I swallowed, my tongue suddenly too thick, my mouth too dry. "It's dark."
There was the faintest shift in the air, like he had leaned forward slightly.
"How dark?" he asked gently, and I could hear the care in his voice, the way he shaped the question as if hoping the answer might leave room for adjustment.
"Completely," I replied, the word steady even as my throat tightened. "I thought the lights were off."
I waited for him to correct me.
For him to say, Yes, they are. We'll turn them on.
He didn't.
They weren't.
The realization didn't strike like lightning. It didn't crash into me. It seeped in, slow and quiet, like cold creeping into bone. It threaded itself through every blink that brought nothing, every desperate attempt to force my eyes to make sense of the space around me.
I blinked again.
Harder.
Then faster, like I could outrun whatever this was if I tried hard enough.
My fingers curled weakly against the sheets as something in my chest began to compress, a pressure that wasn't pain but felt just as sharp.
"I can't see," I whispered.
The words felt unreal as they left my mouth, fragile and hollow.
My breathing had gone shallow without me noticing, each inhale smaller than the last, as though my body was bracing for something my mind still refused to accept.
"I can't see," I repeated, softer now.
I heard the doctor exhale quietly.
"That's consistent with what we expected," he said after a moment.
"You sustained significant trauma. Right now, your blindness appears to be temporary, likely neurological rather than structural. We'll continue monitoring you closely."
Temporary.
The word floated past me without meaning.
I lay there, staring into nothing, my heart racing as my mind tried—and failed—to make sense of a world that had vanished without warning.
I didn't cry. I didn't panic.
I simply lay still, breathing shallowly, listening as the doctor spoke around me, his voice fading into background noise.
Then he turned slightly.
"Mr. Calder," he said, his tone shifting subtly, becoming more precise, more formal, as though he had stepped into a different role.
"Based on her presentation, the prognosis is cautiously optimistic. She's stable, but the next twenty-four hours will be critical. We'll be monitoring for intracranial pressure changes, delayed neurological responses, and any signs of regression."
The name cut through the haze.
Calder.
The sound of it landed with weight, sharp and immediate, like a blade slicing through fog.
My thoughts, which had been drifting sluggishly, snapped into sudden, painful clarity. It was as if the room had tightened around me, every sound sharpening, every breath suddenly too loud.
Back to the road.
The forest.
The blur of headlights cutting through darkness.
And then—
Him.
The face I hadn't been sure was real.
The one I'd told myself was a hallucination, a trick of shock and exhaustion and dying neurons misfiring in my brain. I had been so sure of that. I'd needed to be sure of that.
But now—
The intensity of that gaze came back to me with unsettling clarity.
Those eyes.
My breath caught painfully in my chest, the air suddenly too thin, too sharp. My fingers curled faintly into the sheets, my body reacting before my mind could catch up.
Even in the darkness, I knew.
The voice I had just heard—the one the doctor had addressed so carefully—belonged to the man I had seen before everything went black.
And suddenly, the word safe felt like a lie someone else had written for me.
Because I wasn't sure anymore whether I had been rescued—
Or found.