Questions But No Answers
Doran was vaguely aware of the others around him helping him onto a hard surface covered in thin fabric. A cup was pressed to his lips and he drank even though dehydration wasn’t the problem. He cringed from the hands running over his body, examining his various injuries, and someone screamed when they lifted his arm. Oh, wait, it was him.
They dabbed something on the gash and the surface immediately numbed. He wondered if they could apply that to his entire body, starting with his brain.
He shut his eyes. Whatever they did to him didn’t matter.
When he opened them again, an older woman with long gray hair tied behind her was bent over him. Face set in a frown, she painted a brown, tacky liquid over the gash, gentle in her touch. They’d probably have questions for him. He closed his lids before they noticed he was awake.
He wanted to sleep, he wanted to forget. He tried to picture his family but their faces eluded him. Please, no. There was no one else who could remember them.
Then, silence, and he was perhaps more grateful for that than whatever bitter-smelling substance they slathered on his arm that benumbed it. He wanted to believe he could do something to change their fate, but lying on a mattress that crinkled softly under him, so unlike anything he had ever known, he couldn’t believe it was possible. That he escaped seemed to be nothing but a fluke, and one that would be rectified when the Apollyon arrived.
He was suddenly awake and sitting on the bed, shirtless with a layer of sweat pouring under his arms while his fingers traced over the gash. The pain throbbed in a rhythm with the beating of his heart, a rapid drumbeat he could play a frantic song to.
“Are you all right?”
Doran raised his fist even after he saw it was the woman who tended to his wounds, and her own hand came up before he was able to get a hold of himself. He forced himself to relax and sat back down to show he wasn’t a threat.
“Sorry, you scared the hell out of me,” he said. “My head feels like it’s going to explode and I had no idea you were even around.”
“It’s all right,” she said, her eyes shining hard. “It may be a side effect of your head injury.”
“My head?” He put a hand on his hair and raked his fingers through it. All the pain seemed to be on the inside, not the outside.
“I didn’t find anything when I looked you over, but if your skull rattled your brain hard enough, it can have the same affect. A few years ago, a man came in with head pain after falling off a husker. No visible injuries, but the damage was there, and it was days later that he collapsed from it.”
A husker? Another question he couldn’t ask.
