Voices

Chapter 8

I woke up to a pure screen of white light enveloping me. Maybe it was a screen, maybe it was a light source, I wouldn't have known.

All I knew was that I survived from a car crash, and a following car explosion.

The screen of white light continued flaring at my eyes for what I would have guessed was a minute or two, and it went on and on.

I could hear myself breathing, hearing. I simulated where my hands were and I clamped them together.

All my senses were working.

But I still couldn't make the white light dissipate.

"Doctor Zand?" I heard a deep, strong voice call my name out. I turned to wherever I heard that voice from. "My name is-"

"I can't see you."

The words just came out of my mouth so suddenly, as if something else was controlling my body, controlling me.

"Why can't I see you?" I inquired, my voice weak. My parched mouth was having trouble talking, the dryness in my mouth already all the way to my throat. I coughed, hard.

"We are still-"

I cut him off and told him what to do. I was a doctor, even he knew that. Just those three words that he had said, I could figure out a lot.

One, he was a doctor as well. Two, he had tried whatever he could do to figure out what was wrong with me. Three, I was in a hospital.

Four, he knew who I was even though my existence was a secret. One big secret.

As he started to fiddle with some things in whatever room I was in, I managed to feel and take a bottle of what I hoped was water. "Is this water?"

"Yes."

I gulped the thing down to nothing, some of it worming its way down my chest. I could hear the plastic container getting crushed by my hand as I swallowed the remaining drips.

"Done?" I asked him as I no longer heard the sound of equipment. My ears captured the sound of beeping, a constant rhythm.

"Doctor-"

"Did it work?" I raised my voice, my throat no longer dry. I felt the tubes connected to me move.

"Please let me finish," he replied, his tone sounding apologetic. There was a little moment of silence. "When you came out of the crash, your eyes were moving around rapidly, provided you were unconscious."

"We managed to get you in the nearest hospital that could cater to your... injuries. We have successfully taken care of most of them, but your eyes-"

"I'm blind?"

"The nerves connecting to your eyes are no longer functioning."

There was silence, for a very long time. All I could hear was the ticking of the clock, four hundred times.

I was blind.

I was done for. What was going to go with my work?

Why did my passion have to end this way?

"I need to get to Jason," I muttered to myself, repeating the six words over and over, my voice getting louder and more hoarse every time I repeated. "I need to get to Jason. I need to get to Jason."

"Doctor, you still need time to rest-"

"Don't talk to me about that bullshit," I spoke. "I was unconscious, you said? That was enough rest."

"The injuries-"

"Haven't you successfully taken cafe of them? Look, whoever you are, I think I know why I'm still alive. And I'll be holding on to that lead as long as I'm alive, because I'm not supposed to be. I might even die soon-"

You will live.

The headaches started forming again, the pain receptors starting its work. My hands went for my head, trying to block out the noise. I could tolerate this.

"Please," I told the doctor. My voice was weak, frail, begging. "Let me go. Two lives are on the line-"

My head hit the back of whatever I was lying on, my ears managing to get some words even though the voices were getting louder. The tubes were disconnected all of a sudden, waves of pain going through my body every time one was pulled out of my skin.

"Coming through, coming through!" That was the doctor's voice. I could feel the vibrations of the wheels hitting the gaps between the tiles as I felt the breeze of fresh air on my face.

I heard the sound of a door opening, a car door. I was carried out of the thing I was lying on and was dropped on a firm, leather seat.

"Go get them," I heard the sound of the doctor through the closed door, knocking three times on the window. "Get payback for the three."

A thought hit me- like a truck. I chuckled to myself as I pat myself on the shoulder, shaking my head jokingly as the sudden revelation hit me.

That was the head of CIA, no wonder his voice was so familiar.

No longer minding the white blinding light (sorry :D), I spoke to the driver of the car I was in.

"146 Brooks Street."