The Lost

Chapter Twenty-One

Beep, beep, beep...

I can’t breathe.

Oh, God, I can’t breathe! I try to inflate my lungs, but my throat feels stuffed shut. Whoosh, I hear. Air suddenly floods into me, and my chest expands. My eyes fly open.

I am lying on my back looking up at a tiled ceiling. One of the tiles has a water stain. The overhead light holds the shadows of a few dead bugs. Beep, beep, beep. I can’t breathe again. I try to gasp for air. My hands fly to my mouth. I hear a ripping sound and feel a sharp pain in my arm. An alarm wails. My hand touches my mouth. A tube runs into it, filling it. Whoosh, again, and my ribs expand as oxygen is forced into my lungs.

I hear doors fly open, slam against the wall. Footsteps. Faces press over me. Men and women in scrubs. “She’s awake,” one says.

“Calm down,” another says. Her voice is even, a faint hint of a Mexican accent. It’s a musical voice, soothing, as if it has practice calming wild horses. “You’re in a hospital. You’re all right. We’re taking care of you. Steady. That’s it. Steady.”

A hospital. It smells like a hospital. I know this smell—antiseptic. But I’m not supposed to be in a hospital bed. I hear the whirr of equipment around me and the beep...my heart rate, faster than it was. Air again pushes into my lungs with a whoosh.

“You have a breathing tube in you.” The same woman speaks calmly. She holds down my hands so I won’t claw at the tube. “If you try to tear it out, you’ll hurt yourself. Do you understand me?”

There are tears in my eyes, blurring my vision, but I nod. I can’t talk. I feel as though I am gagging. I want to vomit. Whoosh. And then the sound of a bag deflating. I feel air sucking around my mouth as a nurse prods me with what looks like a dentist’s tool. “We’re suctioning the excess secretions so we can remove the tube,” the doctor explains in her soothing voice. “This will pinch.”

It feels like my lungs and intestines are being yanked out my throat. I want to scream but I can’t. Pain radiates through my entire body, blanking out every thought. I inhale a ragged, shaking breath on my own, and I cough so hard that my entire body shakes. The alarms sound again as the IVs shake in my arms. Someone places an oxygen mask over my mouth. I breathe. My lungs hurt. My ribs hurt. I ache everywhere. But I can breathe. I open and shut my mouth, and then I gesture at the oxygen mask. It’s lifted from my face. I breathe again, and I don’t cough this time. My tongue feels thick and dry and swollen. I swish it around in my mouth. I know I should say thank you—but I don’t.

Beside me, a doctor with bouncy auburn hair and green scrubs pats my hand. “How do you feel?” She’s the one with the soothing accent. She checks the monitors and feels my neck for my pulse.

“What happened?” I try to say, except my mouth feels dry and gummy. It comes out as a garbled, “Whaaa...ed?”

“You had an accident, but don’t worry. We’re taking care of you.” She beams at me with a megawatt smile.

I don’t remember an accident. All I remember is Peter and the barn fading around me... I must have reappeared somewhere dangerous, like in the middle of a highway. I remember the Missing Man saying Claire would reappear where she was lost. I’d been on a road.

“You’re very lucky,” the doctor says. “Do you remember the car accident?” I shake my head, and pain shoots down my neck. I wince. She checks one of the IV bags. There are three hanging from hooks beside my bed. “Probably just as well. Your ribs were broken, but they’ve healed now. You’ll feel some residual soreness in your chest, and your legs will feel stiff for a while. We kept your muscles active, but you’ll feel unsteady on your feet at first. Does anything hurt now?”

I feel achy, but not hurt. “M’okay. Want to get up.” It feels as though my mouth is remembering how to talk. My jaw feels wooden.

She laughs but it’s not an unkind laugh. “Not just yet.”

“How long asleep?”

“Let’s check you over, okay?” She doesn’t wait for my response. I feel myself poked and prodded. “Can you tell me your name?”

“Lauren Chase.” I’m here anonymously?

“That’s right.”

Not anonymously. That’s good. “What happened?”

“What do you remember?” she asks.

Peter and the barn, fading. I open my mouth and close it. I can’t say that. She’ll think there’s more wrong with me. “Don’t remember car accident.”

“Your memory may return in time, or it may not. Often traumatic events are lost to our short-term memory. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything serious.” She proceeds to ask me a series of basic questions. Where I live. Where I work. What’s five times five and other basic math and trivia. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

I think I can tell the truth but omit the impossible details. “I was in a little town with...some friends. Visiting them. My car broke down, ran out of gas, but the town was so small that it didn’t have a gas station. And lousy cell phone reception. And...” I didn’t sound any more believable that way.

Her smile disappears for an instant but then it’s back. She looks so cheery that I think she’s about to burst into song. They must teach that in medical school. Perkily, she says, “Your car was found upside down on Route 10. You’d driven off the side of the road, hit a ditch, and flipped it. A trucker found you. Saved your life.”

I frowned. That couldn’t be right. I hadn’t been in my car since it ran out of gas. It was still sitting outside Lost. It hadn’t flipped. “I was in Lost. The town was called Lost. I left home on March 23 and was stuck there for weeks. Months!” My voice is shrill. I struggle to sit up. She puts her hand on my shoulder. I flop back down. Wince. The hospital light is glaring in my eyes. I look down at myself. I see wires running to blue stickers stuck to my chest, and more wires running down my faded blue hospital gown. An IV is stuck in my right arm. The nurses and doctors are murmuring to each other, but the auburn-haired doctor stays by my side.

“You were in an accident on March 23.” The doctor’s voice is gentle, kind. “You have been in a coma for the past three months.”