The Aftermath Part 1

I opened my eyes to a blurry scenery. I tried to rub them, but my vision remained just as blurry as it had been when I first opened them.
"Hurry! Over here! Michelle is waking up!" Michelle? Is that my name? A bright light switched on above me, causing me to put my hand over my face to shield it from the light.
"How are you feeling, Michelle?" asked a man hovering over me. He was wearing a white lab coat and had fair skin, I could tell about that much. But otherwise, I couldn't see a single feature of him.
I opened my mouth to voice my complaints, but no sounds came out. I heard a few breaths, but that was all.
I felt him put a finger on my mouth. "Just a rhetorical question," he said. "Don't worry, you should have your voice back in a couple of days. For now, just relax, and we'll handle everything from here. You won't need to go out onto the battlefield for a while, that's for sure."
Battlefield? I was a soldier? I shook my head, but I felt things tugging back. I see, I had a whole bunch of wires connected to me. I guess this was some sort of hospital.
"Still, I'm surprised you are still alive after the impact that bomb made on your tank. I guess I might be pretty proud to see you still alive and well after all this time, but it's going to be a bit of a process to get back to how you were. Don't worry, I have you in good hands."
I felt a sharp pain in the arm and some sort of fluid being pushed in. I wanted to cry, it hurt so much. But I wasn't going to show it. If I was a soldier, I need to act like one. I can't just give in to pain.
The doctor nodded - that I could see. "I see," he said, "you don't remember anything, do you? I guess the brain damage was just as extensive as I thought. Don't worry though, your physical ailments will go away with time. I can't say so about your amnesia."
My eyes blurred even further, and a fit of exhaustion came over me. "That's right," he said. "Just go to sleep for now. I'm surprised you even managed to stay up these ten minutes. Perhaps that's a good sign to a speedy recovery!"
When I next opened my eyes, I could see a few more shapes. They still weren't entirely distinguishable, but they certainly were clearer than before.
"Ah, you're awake," said a woman next to me. "Here, try these on."
She took my head and outfitted me with a pair of glasses. The shapes consolidated, and for the first time I could see my surroundings. I was in a pure white room with no windows. There were a few doctors sitting in a corner, waiting for some sort of signal. And in the same room were three other girls. They seemed a little young to be in the military, but I guess I could be a little young too.
"Just a temporary measure," she said. "I know you probably can't talk yet, but raise a finger if you agree, and two if you disagree. Can you see clearly now?"
I raised a finger. I could feel another fit of exhaustion coming over me.
"Can you remember anything?" she asked. "Well, other than Dr. Carver's visit two days ago."
I was asleep for two days? Well, if the injury is as bad as they say... I lifted two fingers.
She jotted down a note on a paper. "Good," she said. "We wouldn't want you to get PTSD over the explosion." I yawned, and she looked at me with a bit of a smiled. "Ever a sleepy one, aren't you?" she asked. "Well, I can't blame you. I'll leave your next pair of glasses here for when you next wake up."
My eyelids closed yet again.
"Michelle, it's time to wake up," I heard the doctor say. I opened my eyes again to a sight even more blurry than the last time I woke up. The doctor reached down onto my face to take off the glasses and immediately I saw things much more vividly. When he put on the new pair, I was able to see perfectly again.
"Tha... yo..." I said in a raspy voice.
The doctor smiled. "Don't talk," he said. "It's good that you got your voice back, but vocal coaching isn't supposed to start for another day. Here, I have someone I want you to meet. This is Dr. Harrison."
A fairly short lady came over and smiled at me. "Are you feeling better?" she asked. "Nodding means yes, shaking means no."
I nodded, and felt my head was much freer than before. I guess they had taken off some of the wires.
"Good," she said. "Well then, let's get to work. I'm Dr. Harrison, and I will be your physical therapist today."
She sat in a chair and immediately started moving my arm back and forth. "Man, there's a lot of scar tissue in here," she said. "Well, it'll work its way out. We have plenty of time, now that the war's gone in our favor."
I looked over at the other beds to see them empty now. I pointed to them, as if to ask a question as to what happened to the other girls.
"Oh," she said, "they're a little bit ahead of you. You don't need to rush, we can take as long as we need with you. But they are already working on walking now. Come, let's get your legs moving."
She went down to my legs and started flexing them. I felt jolts of pain with each motion she did, and let out little whimpers. It hurt more to talk than the pain in the legs, but sometimes you just can't help it.
She laughed. "Well, at least I know you've got feeling back here," she said, continuing to flex them. I looked around the room again. The doctors were nowhere to be seen, and the door was closed. Then I realized why. I was in a hospital gown, and I couldn't feel any sort of panties on my privates. Dr. Harrison could have a full view of whatever she wanted if it pleased her, but she was more concerned with my knee. I guess I understand now why they had to get a different doctor to do the physical therapy.
She went through all the joints of my body, giving them a proper workout. "Man," she said, "it's like these muscles have never been used! Well, I guess it was like that with all your girls, but the others are doing just fine. Don't worry, we'll have you walking soon enough!"
I nodded, my eyelids feeling even heavier than before. "Ah, don't worry about it," said Dr. Harrison. "You can sleep if you want, I'll just keep working. Though you did very well staying up for an hour this time!" I let my eyes droop, and fell back into a deep slumber.
When I next came to, I knew better than to question my vision. I took off my glasses and grabbed a lighter pair off the nightstand. The other girls had returned and were walking around the room, talking with each other.
"Don't worry," said Dr. Carver. "You'll be with them soon. They were at the stage you're at just two days ago, and they're scheduled to move out to the dormitories later today."
He sat down and smiled. "Let's get some voice back."
He put his hands on my throat. "Say 'The little hen walked'."
I opened my mouth. "The... ittle... en... walk." It felt like there was a fire in my throat.
As I spoke, he massaged my throat. He opened my mouth and poured down some sort of chunky liquid. I could feel it as it went down - not just because of the chunks but because it was scalding hot as well.
He massaged my throat again, until he was satisfied. "Try it again," he said. "The rest of the words don't matter, just get out the -ed at the end."
I took a deep breath in. "The... le... he... alked."
He smiled. "Good, good," he said. He pushed down on my throat and I felt something snap into place. "This should help. Try now."
I sighed. "The little hen walked," I said, surprised at my own voice. It still was extremely raspy and low, but I was sounding out the syllables perfectly. Not like I wanted to keep talking. It still hurt so much.
"Good, good," he said, pinching my throat. "Now say it again."
I really didn't want to. But I'm a girl in the army. I have to be tough. "The little hen walked, I guess to a park," I said. Well, so much for my voice being low. He must have fixed something.
The doctor smiled at my added words. "Good, good," he said. "Are you tired?"
I shook my head.
The doctor laughed. "Yeah, the drugs should be wearing off now anyways. Don't worry about holding a conversation yet: that'll come in time. But we'll be giving you solid food in an hour, and I want you to make sure you eat all of it. Your body is just too used to the feeding tube we had you on."
I nodded, and he walked away.
Almost instantly, the girls from the corner came rushing over to my bedside. They couldn't have been much older than fifteen.
"So you're the slow one?" asked a blonde girl. "No problem! Better be slow now than tomorrow. I'm Jennifer, though I guess you could call my Jen. The doctor likes to shorten my name, so I guess I used to before the accident as well. But it looks like you're going to be my roommate."
I smiled.
"Wish I could tell you about my interests," she said, "but I don't really remember them. None of us do, really. So, we'll just have to find some new ones, right?"
"Oh, shut it," said the ginger haired girl. She was the only one of the three with a short haircut. Her straight hair didn't even reach her shoulders. "Sorry about Jen, she just seems to like to talk a lot. I'm Rachel, by the way."
I nodded to her as a greeting.
"Oh, the quiet one is Kelly," said Jen. "Come on, say hi."
The third girl had much darker skin than the other two, yet her hair was pure white. "Hello," she said, giving a small smile. Then she backed off to let the other two bicker.
"Why do you keep forcing her?" asked Rachel. "Just let her wave! She doesn't need to always talk."
"Because talking is a good thing!" said Jen. "You can't just wave and nod your head forever. Express yourself! Let people know about yourself."
"So what? You can show your emotions in other ways you know!"
I just laughed. They looked over at me and smiled. It's amazing how they are already such good friends. Maybe I can join them sooner or later.
"Lunch time!" said a voice from by the door. A man in a funny hat walked in pushing a cart of all sorts of colorful food.
"Wow, it looks amazing!" said Jen. "I'll take one of this, one of that, one of this..."
"Jen, if you eat all those sweets you're going to get fat," said Rachel.
She stuck her tongue out. "They told us we could eat as much as we wanted yesterday. Didn't you pay attention?"
"Tch, that was the only thing you did pay attention to," she said.
"So? It was the important stuff. I guess this injury isn't so bad. Being able to eat whatever we want and not putting on a pound... Thank you metabolism!"
Rachel shook her head. "But did you hear what they said after? About how if you eat too much you're going to get super tired while your body spends the energy to digest all that food?"
Jen sighed. "Always such a downer. Besides, look at how much Kelly took!"
And they both looked at Kelly who was already working on a thick slice of steak with an entire cake set aside for dessert.
The guy in the funny hat laughed. "We want you to eat," he said. "You're going to need the energy for what's going to come."
"Oh?" asked Jen. "What's that, Chef?" I see, that's a Chef's hat.
He put a finger to his mouth. "I certainly can't tell you."
He reached to the bottom and pulled out a small plate for me. There was a poached egg, a piece of toast, a small bowl of Jello, and a glass of what looked like grape juice to drink.
"Now, Michelle, this is going to be a bit difficult," he said, "but make sure to eat everything on here. Your stomach just isn't used to solid food yet, so it'll need to adjust."
He reached into his pocket. "Oh, and for all four of year, here's your daily pill."
Jen looked at it and frowned. "Why do we have to take this again?" she asked.
"You should ask the doctor for an exact explanation," he said, "but it's mainly to stop your body from rejecting the transplants we had to do after the explosion. You're going to need to take one for the rest of your life. But, not like there are any side effects."
Jen sighed as she popped it into her mouth and started chewing. Oh, good, it's a chewable. I don't know if I'd be able to swallow a pill at this point.
I started to dig into my food and saw immediately what the chef was talking about. While chewing wasn't hard, I found quickly that if I didn't chew my food thoroughly, I'd feel a massive pain as it slipped down my throat. And after just a few swallows, I felt full. But I'm an army girl. I have to keep pushing!
I continued through my meal for what seemed to be hours until I took the last piece of Jello to my mouth. The other girls clapped as soon as I finished.
"Is it that impressive?" I asked.
"Whoa!" said Jen.
"What?" I asked, dabbing my mouth with a napkin.
"You talked!" she said. "And from the looks of it, it didn't even hurt!"
Oh, yeah. I guess I did. I chuckled a little bit. "I guess that's the end of my voice lessons," I said.
We all laughed.
"Still," said Rachel, "you finished that meal so much quicker than we did. Kelly here took a full three hours when we had to deal with that two days ago."
I smiled. "Were you here earlier than me?" I asked, "or am I just slowing you down?"
"Dr. Carver said we were all in the same unit that got hit," said Kelly, speaking up. "So you are holding us back, yes."
"Holding us back from what?" asked Jen. "Do you really think they're going to just put us back on the battlefield? Look, we may not see another battlefield our entire lives. I know I don't want to, at least. So, why rush out of here?"
Rachel smiled at me. "So take your time," she said. "We'll wait."
Later that day, Dr. Carver came in and escorted the other girls out of the room.
"I'll keep your bed warm!" said Jen.
"Pervert," said Rachel, hitting her on the head.
"Tch, you're the pervert to think of it in a dirty way," joked Jen. The door closed and I couldn't hear them anymore.
Dr. Carver walked over to me and started to feel my arms and legs. "Good, good, these are coming along nicely," he said. "You should be good to start walking tomorrow, I think. I'll schedule an arrangement with Dr. Harrison tomorrow. For now, you should get some rest while I remove the remaining tubes out of your body." And I'm glad he said that. My eyelids had been heavy for at least an hour already. I gladly shut them and drifted off to sleep.
---
There were hundreds of people gathered. A few pretty hot boys were standing on stage, guitars in hand. "Are you ready to rock?" they asked.
I threw up my arm to agree with them. They immediately started playing music so loud that I could feel my eardrums vibrating. Jets streamed above, and little packets dropped down. Goody bags? This was a unique way to distribute them.
I felt one fall into my hands. It sure doesn't look like a goody bag. It looks like...
---
I woke up sweating. Dr. Harrison was sitting next to me, holding my mouth shut.
"Chew," she said. "You forgot your medicine." I obliged, still shivering.
"A nightmare?" I asked.
Dr. Harrison nodded. "Nothing more," she said. "Here, drink this," she said, handing me a water bottle. I took a few deep gulps and let the ice cold water go down my throat.
She smiled. "Better?" she asked.
I nodded, not sure if I was better or not. She put her arms around me, and pulled me up.
"What was that?" I asked. "I've never had nightmares before."
She helped me over to a pair of parallel bars. I propped both arms on them and started to walk, slowly.
"Your body was rejecting a transplant," she said. "So it tried to fight it by raising your temperature. Sheesh, when I came in here you were reading 102!"
"Is that bad?" I asked.
She laughed. "I guess you forgot that too. Don't worry, we'll teach you all you forgot again. 98.7 is the normal body temperature."
I took a few more steps. "Now, ease off the bars a bit," she said. "Yeah, that's right, just like that."
"So, then why did I have a nightmare?" I asked again.
"Because when the body's temperature is high, the brain acts strange. It's no strange that you were seeing delusions." I took another few steps, this time hardly putting any weight on the bars.
"I see," I said. I sighed. "I wish I knew what that package was," I said. "It'd be interesting to know."
"Package?" she asked. "What package?"
"Oh," I said, "I dreamed I was somewhere where these guys were playing their guitars and some jets dropped gift bags. But I don't know what was inside them."
Her face turned grave. "Is that exactly what you dreamed?" she asked.
I nodded. "Why, is it bad?"
She nodded. "It means your mind is very unstable. The guitars means a sense of rebellion, and the jets are a sense of hubris. The gift bag means that you are a very needy person. We're going to have to get you some therapy later today to forget about it, or you might die of the shock of the dream."
"Therapy?" I asked. "Is it that bad?"
She nodded again. "Don't worry, it'll just sting a little."
That afternoon, I realized exactly what she meant by therapy. Nodes were placed all over my body, and every time Dr. Carver pressed the button, I felt a surge of pain through my body. It generally was manageable, but sometimes he'd turn the switch to the "15000 V" which hurt worse than all the others. With each one, he'd ask me a question, but I don't even remember what the questions were about. In fact, by the end, I couldn't even remember why I was there.
"Do you remember your dream?" asked Dr. Carver.
"What dream?" I asked. He smiled.
That day, I was able to walk around the room whenever I felt like it. Of course, I had to deal with another unfortunate thing - the bathroom. I had to use a commode any time I had to go, and each time I had to shoo away the doctors. As they explained, my body is getting rid of a bunch of the toxicity left from my recovery, so I'd have to go a bit more often today.
They also took me on a tour of the facility. They showed me the dormitory and where I'd be staying (Jen waved hi), as well as the cafeteria and the movie room. In there they explained a whole bunch of stuff about the war we were having (apparent some country called the United States provoked another country called Canada, causing Canada to attack), our bodies (the stuff about being able to eat whatever we want), and our daily schedule (what they called "re-school" eight hours a day, swimming for two hours, breaks for meals, and a few hours of free time during the evening to watch movies or do whatever we wanted).
It was early in the morning the next day that Dr. Carver shook me awake. At least, I think it was morning. This room doesn't have windows or clocks, so I had to make all my judgments off of how my body felt.
I took my glasses off to grab a new pair, but he shook his head.
"You see fine now, don't you?" he asked.
Sure enough, everything was perfectly clear. He smiled and I smiled  back at him.
"Go on," he said. "Your roommates are waiting."
I shook his hand and walked out of that room.
"Oh," he said, "and don't forget your pill! We don't want a repeat of yesterday, do we?"
Of course I don't! That therapy hurt badly. I walked down the hallways to find my room. The outside door said "Jen and Michelle" with butterflies and sparkles flying around. In fact, the i in my name was dotted with a butterfly.
"You made it!" said Jen, jumping off her bed. She ran to me and hugged me. I wasn't quite sure what to do, so I hugged her back.
"Sorry I was slow," I said.
She laughed. "Don't worry, we had plenty of fun without you! But today, you're going to have fun with us. First, though, get out of that stupid gown."
And before I could protest, she pulled my gown off of me, leaving me stark naked. I covered myself.
"Jen, there could be people outside!" I said.
"Oh, the doctors don't come this way," she said. "This is the girls dormitory, they're not allowed. Besides, it's just the four of us here."
I blinked. "In this entire hospital?" I asked.
She nodded. "Seemed a bit strange to me too, but they just said that the war has already pushed far past Sioux Falls. Oh, that's the name of the town, by the way. Anyways, I put your uniform on your bed, so go change into it. I'll be taking care of this."
She took my hospital gown and threw it into the trash can. She quickly lit a match and threw it in, sending up a puff of smoke. Don't I have quite the eccentric roommate?
I walked over to what I assumed was my bed and saw my uniform. "Is this the military uniform?" I asked, putting on my underwear. "It seems kind of cute."
"Oh, that?" asked Jen. "Nah, it's just a uniform for our re-schooling. Apparently they want to make it seem as close to our original schooling as possible."
I nodded and pulled up the skirt. As I did, I felt a little pill fall out.
"Oh yeah," I said, and popped it into my mouth. "Can you believe I forgot to take this yesterday?"
"Oh gosh," said Jen. "What happened?"
I shrugged. "I guess something horrible. They made me get all these electric shocks and stuff, but at least now I can't remember whatever horrible thing happened."
Jen laughed. "All's well that ends well," she said. I pulled the shirt over my head.
"What about that stuff on your feet?" I asked, looked at Jen.
"Oh, these?" she asked. "They're called socks. I ordered them last night. We can get you them as well tonight, along with all sorts of pretty outfits for when we're not in re-schooling. For today, just live without them."
I nodded, and paced around. I heard something flowing.
I looked out the window. There, I could see a courtyard. The hospital surrounded it on all sides, but it was big enough on its own. Some pink flowering trees were planted in it, and beneath them was a small pond.
"Oh," said Jen, "we could go swimming in that pond tomorrow, if you want," she said. "I got my swimsuit today, but we can wait for tomorrow for you."
I shook my head. "I want to go now," I said.
"In that?" asked Jen. "Come on, just wait and..."
I shook my head. "I am so grimy! I haven't had a bath since I got here. Let's go!"
"Showers are just down..." started Jen, but I'd hear none of it. I was tired of being cooped up in a room. I sprinted down the stairs and entered the courtyard. Jen came out a few seconds later, sporting a nice pink bikini. I guess she had just accepted it.
I lept into the pond, and embraced the cool water on my skin. I lay down and laughed. Oh, I was probably going to be cold after this. But who cares? Right now, I felt wonderful. Right now I felt alive. Right now, I felt like a person again.