#seb is back

{commission}

                                                   How long has it been?...

        You can't remember. You can't remember a lot. One minute everything is dark, peaceful, calm. Like floating in a tranquil river, untouched by the cruel hands of existence.

        The next you're blinking white light out of your eyes, squinting at the roof of what you can only assume is the medical bay. White roof, white walls, white floor. White. You hate that color.

       There are doctors hovering above you but you aren't registering what they're saying. You can see them, see that their lips are moving, understand that there are words being formed, but you can't decipher the words. That is, until you remember that they primarily speak English here. You've been listening, but you've been listening in Russian. They don't speak your mother tongue on this ship.

      Once you wade through the cloud of language barriers you can hear them say words like 'vitals' 'stable' and 'coma'

                                                Coma.

                                                                             Were you in a coma?

      Well you couldn't be now, you were awake, and they were talking to you. At the appropriate times you nodded, sat up when they helped you. They asked if you remembered how you got here and you stared blankly at them as if by boring your gaze into the doctor's forehead you could somehow figure out what it is that happened to you. But as your silence dragged on the doctor slowly explained to you that you've been in a coma for a good two months. That your ankle is still shattered and they've set the bones but it's still healing. That since you've gone under you've had many a visitor come and go.

     You ask if you can go. The first words you speak since waking up. You never did like it in the medical bay. The idea that you've had to spend two whole months laying there stale on the sheets makes your stomach churn. You wanted to go to your own room. You wanted to put on your own clothes.

     The doctor seemed hesitant but agreed to let you go so long as you allow him to run some diagnostics to make sure everything's okay. You're okay with that.

     You don't know how long after it is they let you leave but soon you're limping down the hallway on a pair of crutches and watching the steel, unchanging walls of the Mother of Invention pass you by. You wander through the cafeteria, the halls, everything's the same. And it's unsettling. It makes you uncomfortable to know how everything went on as normal even though you were comatose no more then a day ago.

    You try to swallow the bitter taste in the back of your mouth as you think about it and instead move on to your room. Your cat Tuz is sleeping soundly on your neatly made bed. Someone's been feeding him for the past two months it seems. The only reason they let you keep a pet here is because you're crazy and they hope it'll help to keep you calm. You always scoffed at the idea but now? It doesn't seem as humorous.

    The first thing you do is put on clean clothes, the smell of the vanilla hair gel you used coming to light. It's a smell your clothes all reeked of. To you it was heavenly.

    The next thing you did was wander into your bathroom and stare at yourself. Your hair's grown out. The shaved sides have gotten long since fuzzy and you grabbed your razor with disgust. Those have got to go.

    You decide once you're nice and cleanly shaven again that you'll keep your hair long, what of it isn't shaved. You don't mind it that way. It doesn't look half bad.

    Quite a few thoughts float through your head as you run a hand through your hair. You've gained a few scars. Then again you've always had a shitton of them anyway, what's it matter?

    You recognized the face in the mirror as you flicked the lights off and hobbled over to your bed, flopping over backwards onto the soft sheet and sighing contently. Yes. You recognize that face. That's your face. But somehow it looks different.

                                                        You feel different.

    Why is it that in all the time you've been comatose, the only thing that's seemed to change, is you?