During the ten years he had lived with his uncle in Il Torga, Tomaras had spent more than a few day's in the med centre. He'd broken bones, experienced hyperthermia, and almost lost some toes to frostbite. In his experience, Il Torga's medics offered two types of recuperation:
The first involved a blissful state of oblivion and submersion in a tank of liquid bacta. The tank was a sanctuary from pain and need, a welcoming home for as many hours or days as the medics deemed necessary—or in less ideal circumstances, as was more often the case, until bacta supplies ran low. The patient floated in pure, vicious health, emerging from unconsciousness gradually until full awareness was restored. The aches that came in the following days always felt worse for the loss of the bacta's pleasures, but passed soon enough.
The second type of recuperation involved lying on a hard bunk stinking of cleaning fluid and shivering in too-cold air while slipping in and out of sleep. During moments of near-lucidity, the patient was afflicted with visions of medstaff making their rounds, alternating stinging shots with numbing balms. During the sleep, the patient suffered confused fever dreams without narrative or logic: endless strings of images, of faces strange and familiar, along with inexplicable feelings of terror and alienation—as if dreamer were alone in a world where every once-familiar objects hid horrors.
Tomaras' recuperation took the second form. Following the cave-in, how long after he did not know, his uncle Qweg had discovered him and rushed him immediately to the outpost's med centre. The subsequent days were a blur of dreams and nightmares that roiled in Tomaras' mind.
During one miserable moment of clarity, Tomaras saw that the miner he had helped rescue, Brutus, had been placed in the outpost's only bacta tank. Lucky guy, he thought.
Tomaras' mind finally cleared after two days, much to the surprise of the outpost's medic, Michar.
"You've recovered far quicker than I had anticipated Tom," he had explained. "I feared you weren't going to make it when they first brought you in, and your fever only just broke last night. But here you are! Your recovery is quite remarkable."
"I don't feel remarkable." Tomaras had muttered. His whole body still ached, especially his legs, and a profound haziness hung over him.
During his days resting in the medcentre, he had racked his brain trying to decipher everything that had taken place during the cave in. But no matter how hard he tried, he could not make sense of it all.
It's impossible, all of it, he thought. I couldn't have stopped the boulders from crushing Yorst. There must have been something else stopping it. Then when I touched the crystal, what was that? A dream? The more he thought about it, the more he began to think he had imagined the entire thing. Or that it is was an hallucination brought on by an exhausted mind. He soon resolved to push the event from his memory, for now at least, and focus on resting and going home.
On his fourth day in the medcentre, Tomaras had finally had enough of tasteless medcentre rations and longed for something more forgiving than the firm mattress he had been sleeping on. "Can I go home now?" he asked.
Michar let out a long sigh. "You're a determined one, aren't you? Too much like your uncle, I think. Well if you really want to, I won't stop you. I'll grab your things and we'll go." The short rotund man rose from his chair and disappeared through a door on the right, before reappearing moments later, a grey plastic tub in hand. He placed it on the bed beside Tomaras. Inside where some of his belongings that he had on him on the day of the cave in: his jacket, a pair of ankle high boots with a pair of socks and his personal comm. He slid on the jacket, wincing as he reached back, and slipped on the socks and boots. As he placed the comm in his jacket pocket, he looked back at the tub to make sure he had not forgotten anything.
