by Anna Hub
When I did return, the pain had become unbearable. The morphine had worn off hours ago, and since I'd appeared to be asleep, they hadn't thought to give me more. I pushed the button for help and wiped sweat stricken hair from my face while I waited for the nurse to arrive.
“My leg is burning.” I whimpered as she opened the door.
“You haven’t had anything for a while. It’s very easy for the pain to get out of control, so it's important you let us know before it gets this bad.”
“I couldn’t.” I snapped.
It took a long time for the pain to die down but the medication eventually lulled me into sleep. It was probably the most rest I’d had in the last two months, but somehow it was never enough.
A knock at the door woke me and I struggled to get my bearings.
"How are you feeling?" Natasha brought in a huge bunch of flowers that seemed to pulsate in my blurred vision.
"Getting there," I croaked.
She sat down; red bags obvious beneath her eyes, despite her efforts to cover them with make-up.
"You?"
She swallowed loudly. "Tell me what happened to your leg.”
In my drugged state, I couldn’t think of any reason to withhold the truth. “It was a creature. It had a tail like a lasso; it was a ... a cowboy cat.” I giggled.
Natasha scratched nervously at her face. “I checked the death notices.”
That comment sobered me slightly. “And?”
“Brayden Shaw.” She nodded, eyebrows pulled tight as though she was considering that what I told her might be the truth. It was more than any of Brayden’s family had done.
“It doesn’t make sense but ... I saw what happened to you,” she choked on her words, shaking her head as though fighting a panic attack. “I have to go. I wish you a fast recovery, Sel.”
“Natasha? Wait.” But she was already halfway out the door. I wondered if I would ever see her again.
Nathan appeared in the doorway. “I saw Natasha in the hall. She looked pretty freaked out.”
I breathed deeply. “I don’t think she likes hospitals.”
He nodded. "I get that. How is the pain?”
“It’s fine.”
Nathan smiled. “Well I know that’s a lie, but you were always stubborn and tough.”
“I just don’t want to look at it again. Somehow it makes it hurt more.”
“You can’t see anything; it’s bandaged up.”
"Right."
“Dad said he would be back later.”
“Tell him not to worry.”
Nathan shrugged. “You know he wants to be here.”
"That's not what I meant." They had no idea how bad this was going to get.
"Well, he'll worry anyway."
A tingle spread through my toes. I was going to pass. Panic gripped at my chest as I lay back on the bed in preparation.
“Is something wrong?” Nathan straightened.
“I’m just tired.” It wouldn’t be long before my body lay empty and I didn't want Nathan to call the nurses. “Keep talking,” I mumbled before the sounds of the world disappeared.
Chapter Eleven
Something was inside my mouth, holding my lips open and stretching all the way to the back of my throat. Which world was I in? I lifted my hand and found tape holding an intravenous drip in place and a small clamp hugging my finger. A mask sat over my face and a steady stream of air had turned my lips to stone.
“Hold on. Just hold on a minute.” A hand lifted the mask and pulled the bit from my mouth. The inside of my lips stung as my tongue brushed over them.
“I want you to squeeze my hand if you can hear me, Selena.” A warm hand slipped into mine and I did as she asked. My grip seemed weak; drained of strength as though I’d been asleep for a long time. “Welcome back.” A kind face smiled.
I was in a different room with occupied beds on either side of me. “Where am I?”
“You're in the intensive care unit, Selena. You've been in a coma for two weeks.”
“A coma?” It didn’t make any sense and I had no memory of that time passing while I was in the shadow world. “Why?”
“There has been some unusual brain activity. You've been slipping in and out of consciousness and the doctors felt it would be safer for you to rest for a while. And your leg is much better, we've removed the stitches but it will be a little while before it's completely healed.”
I couldn’t believe two weeks had passed. I hadn’t been in the shadow world; I hadn’t been anywhere—just gone.
The doctors checked on me; speaking in a medical language I didn’t understand as they looked in my eyes and explained why they had put me in a coma. My mood lifted when they told me my brother and father were waiting.
“Sel.” They rushed in, both their faces exhausted. Rather than comfort me their presence only seemed to upset me more.
After a while, I pretended to be tired to escape their doting. And for the first time, I really understood why Brayden no longer wanted to return to this world. It was too hard. I closed my eyes and eventually the nurse told them I needed to rest.
A few hours had passed before the staff brought Natasha in to see me.
She sat down again, her face drawn and tired. “Brayden Shaw is buried.” She took a breath as though it was the first one she’d had in a long time. “He was young. I spoke to his mother at his funeral.”
The mention of the word funeral almost winded me. I didn’t like to think of his body buried and decaying already.
Natasha took my hand. “She didn’t want to talk to me until I mentioned the shadows. I told her about you; it made her cry so much that I held her in my arms as though we were friends."
“Brayden’s family believed he was insane.” For his mother, it must have been a horrifying thought; that perhaps what happened to him was real and she'd forced him into a treatment that couldn’t help. But it didn’t matter anyway, anything she tried wouldn’t have worked.
“I’ve spent hours thinking about this, Selena. The logical side of me keeps saying you’ve lost your mind, then this other part wonders if there is a possibility,” she hesitated. “I saw what happened to you. There's no way to explain that.”
“No.”
She wiped stray tears from her cheeks. “I think I believe you.”
I cried with her, completely lost for words.
“Just tell me what to do,” she said.
“Nothing.” I battled to keep my emotion under control. "You can’t help me.”
“There has to be a way.” She held my hand tighter and without warning the shadows stole me away.
Again, I landed on the rocks near the waterfall, but this time delicately balanced on a small ledge with a dizzying drop to the ground. I backed up against the rock wall and closed my eyes. If the bed had been even a foot out of place, I could have fallen all the way to the ground. I'd expected the hospital would be a safe place to pass with the rocks but hadn’t considered being moved to a different room. The building was multileveled and the risks would need to be addressed as soon as I returned.
I clung to the cliff for hours, afraid to breathe in case it tipped me over the edge. The forest carried on for a long distance, the landscape shaped into a valley with two rivers running through the middle. Beyond that stood a row of mountains. The sight was captivating me before ominous clouds rolled over the trees with a cool wind.
Rain drops hit my skin, causing goose bumps to sprout. I used one hand to hold my hair aside and caught a glimpse of skin in the forest. It was probably a hunter, his figure moving fast enough to make my heart beat wildly. If he was running, it meant there was something to chase.
A familiar screech echoed through the valley followed by the crack of a cat whip. The man in the forest ran faster before a cat burst from the trees, throwing its tail out to catch him. He tripped and rolled twice before landing in a run and continuing his escape. I caught the dark tangle of a tattoo on his shoulder and involuntarily cried out.
I knew that tattoo.
“Brayden?” I screamed his name and he looked up, his face covered in stubble that would no longer be shaved. It was him. Tears of joy mixed with the rain hitting my face. The cat screamed once again and the smile fell from my lips.
“Run!” I cried out.
The cat turned away from Brayden, hissing as another man ran toward it. I gasped; sure I was about to witness something awful. But the man had a whip of his own, throwing it back and forth each time the cat's tail swiped forward.
I wanted to watch the battle but my need to be with Brayden was stronger. He stood at the river beneath the rocks. His gaze stuck on me as his lips moved. But the rain grew heavier and a clap of thunder masked his voice. He motioned for me to come down and I turned carefully to check the rock face for handholds. The excitement of seeing him alive gave me the courage to climb and despite the rain, I managed to claw my way to the top.
“Selena?” He pointed to a pathway near the waterfall and I ran with a wide smile plastered on my face.
As I dropped onto the ground and stopped before the river, I turned and noticed a piece of clothing tied around his waist. "How did you—"
“Wait there. I’ll come to you.” He jumped into the river that ran between us and swam across the flooding water with ease, the muscles in his arms and shoulders working to keep him afloat. His hair hung almost to his chin while it was wet and the weight of the water made it look straight as he flicked it away from his face.
I stepped forward with my arms outstretched but when he lifted his head, I froze. At first, I wondered if it was really him. His features were the same but somehow the expression he wore didn't belong to him. I almost stepped back but he didn’t notice my discomfort and pulled me into a hug.
“Where have you been?” Brayden dragged me closer to the rocks, the slope sheltering us from the rain.
At first, I could only stare dumbly but as his hand squeezed my arm affectionately, I shook my head. Of course, it was him. Who else could it be?
“I ... I was attacked." I wiped rain soaked hair from my face.
“I’ve been waiting for you at the shelter. When you didn’t come, I was afraid something had happened to you.”
"I'm in the hospital."
His gaze softened. Perhaps he was thinking about how long it had been since he'd been to the hospital. Was it possible he had no idea what had happened to his own body?
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Where was I supposed to begin? "Brayden, I ..."
"What is it?"
"I thought you were dead.”
“What?”
I cleared my throat and spoke louder, “I didn’t think you were here. I thought you were dead.”
“Why would you think that?” He blinked quickly to clear the rain.
“Your body is gone.”
His face turned blank and the fingers that held my arm tightened.
“Brayden?” I lifted my free hand and touched his. His eyes came back into focus.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
I swallowed. “You’re dead.”
“How?” He pulled his hand away and looked at his arms as he turned them back and forth.
“I don’t know how to explain it. But in that world you’re dead. I saw your body myself.”
He turned toward the rock and rested his forehead, arms stretched above. “Are you sure?”
“You’ve been buried already.”
“How is that possible? It's only been a few days since I passed.”
“A few days?” I shook my head. “No, Brayden. It’s been two weeks.”
“That’s not right.”
“It has to be. I’ve been in a coma since then.”
“No, I was at the shelter waiting for you. You were with me the day before ...” he frowned. “I swear it hasn’t been that long. I would know.”
I couldn’t think what else to say while he muttered to himself. Then a shadow crept up my leg. “I’m passing.”
He turned and grabbed my arm again. “Don’t leave me!”
My eyes widened as I fell through. It was beyond my control.
Back in the hospital bed, my hair was dry. The rain did not pass with me and I felt a little too warm now that the blankets held me tight. I kicked them free and noticed my muscles were trembling. The excitement of finding Brayden alive had completely disappeared and was replaced with nervousness. He was different somehow, more certain than he'd been back in the shelter but it was his confidence that made me apprehensive. I rolled onto my side and stared at the pattern of the curtain, relieved for the chance to gather my thoughts before I had to face him again.
Chapter Twelve
It was part way through the next day when I passed again and the storm was over in the shadow world. I climbed the rock wall once more and made my way toward the waterfall. Surely Brayden would be waiting nearby and yet the idea of seeing him didn't fill me with excitement anymore. I stared at the path down to the ground level, biting at my nails.
Perhaps I was overthinking things. Was it really so incomprehensible that he would be different? In the hospital, he was constantly sedated and the nurse told me about the side effects of his medication. It had already been two weeks since he'd stopped taking it and I didn’t know him before he was hospitalised, so I had nothing to compare to. Maybe he was always like this and I just wasn’t used to seeing him like that. I shook my head. It was crazy. It had really only been a subtle change in his expression. Nothing sinister.
I started down the path and gently called his name.
He leaned against the wall where I’d passed. “I hoped you wouldn’t be long.” He lifted his head. “Is this where you pass?”
“At the moment, I'm landing on the ledge.” I hovered, feeling fidgety.
“Better than the reptile's cave, I guess.” His face was downturned but relaxed and the extra breath I'd been holding slowly to seep out. He’d lost everything, his family, friends and any withered stems of hope he may have been carrying. I leaned against the rocks beside him and placed my hand on his arm. His skin felt cold and I noticed the cloth from his waist was now missing.
“When I saw you before there was something around your waist.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what it is. At night, it disappears but during the day it's stuck to my skin like a leech.”
I stared. “What?"
"I know. This place gets crazier every day.” He sighed. “I keep wondering if I’m really here.”
He must have had a hard time since I told him what happened to his other body. I shook the empathy away. It was too confronting; soon my own life would be over too.
“I don’t understand how any of this happened.” He paused. “I wondered why she stopped shaving me. I just thought Sophie had given up.”
It seemed inappropriate to tell him the way I'd found her, slumped over his body. Suddenly I wanted to cry.
“I was willing to accept she didn’t care anymore but this—”
“She cared.”
A shudder travelled through his body and his jaw twitched. I spoke quickly to change the subject, “I didn’t really know what to do without you. It felt pretty hopeless.”
It was quiet for a while before he answered, “To be honest, I didn’t think you were capable of feeling hopeless.”
I snorted. “Yeah, right.”
“For a while there your optimism was quite irritating.” He laughed.
I smiled. It seemed he was the same person after all.
Morning light hit and Brayden’s attention fell on my wound. “What happened to your leg?”
“I was chased by a wild cat, the same kind that chased you yesterday.”
“I wasn't chased.” he frowned.
“I saw you being chased by the wild cat in the forest.”
“That wasn’t me.”
It was the second time he’d blanked out on something. “It was you. I know it was.” He didn’t argue but I could see he didn’t b
elieve me either. “Anyway, it had a huge tail that it used to flick out and trip me. Luckily my body was with a friend when it happened and she called an ambulance. I had forty-two stitches.”
“Jeez.”
“It hurt like hell.”
“I bet.”
I turned thoughtful. “I guess I was going to end up in the hospital sooner or later. I just don’t really know what to say to my family.”
He didn’t respond. The subject was probably too raw for him.
“I’ve started coming here multiple times a day. But at least I don’t have to worry about drinking while I'm in the hospital and if it gets bad enough they might put a feeding tube in me too.”
“I found a stream to drink from. Stupidly the thirst wasn’t enough for me to figure out what had happened to my body.”
I hadn’t really considered that Brayden had already spent a long time here alone with no support from the hospital. While I was in a coma, he'd been here fighting for his own life. Even if he didn't remember it.
“Have you eaten anything?” I asked.
“Not much.” The answer came too quickly and I wondered what he'd done for survival.
“I know you thought my research was ridiculous but all of it's true. Insects aren’t the most desirable meal but their nutritional content is valuable. And you can’t really go too far wrong. Just make sure you stay away from the brightly coloured ones.”
“Are you going to eat them?”
“If it came down to life or death I would.”
The sunlight reached us and Brayden lifted his leg. A thick black strip grew beneath his foot.
I stepped back impulsively. "Is that skin?"
He picked it up and stretched it between his hands. "Kind of. Like spare skin maybe. I can feel it and it's stuck to me but it only grows from my feet."
Brayden held it out and I cautiously opened my hand, recoiling at the warmth. "Does it hurt?" I pulled, seeing how far it would stretch. He looked as though he wanted to say no but couldn’t force the lie from his lips. The two strips from each foot eventually joined and as I moved away, I was able to separate the parts that were doubled over.