108

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. Left foot.

Drip on my eye. Drip on my eye. Drip on my eye. Drip on my eye. Drip on my eye. Drip on my eye. Drip on my eye. Drip on my eye.

Mind the cramps. Mind the cramps. Mind the cramps. Mind the cramps. Mind the cramps. Mind the cramps. Mind the cramps. Mind the cramps.

Don’t dare to look back. Don’t dare to look back. Don’t dare to look back. Don’t dare to look b-

I curse my lungs out as my legs unknowingly drag my fatigued body down a cliff. A minor one it may be, but it does not stop a grueling ten seconds of mossy rocks and fallen forestry impaling already infected blisters.

An opportunity presents itself: lie down, catch my breath, and tend to my wounds with some medicinal sap I might be able to identify or just throw all that divine caution to the wind. Still, something stops me from making the nice choice; it is the footsteps of my chaser, crackling the numerous scarlet autumn leaves, growing in volume and the fact that I had done this a many times now. I cannot seem to remember when I found myself in this particularly drab dilemma (hours or maybe days, can you believe?), but the coming seconds do not permit themselves to me for pondering, do they?

I then clench my numb teeth and force whatever is left to hold on. My mind enters a state of strange sternness as I run towards the setting sun, piercing through the canopy. Nightingales and crickets awaken for the hopefully short darkness. As I traverse the fading trees, I reach out for a thick trunk, any ones with stable branches.

After five weary minutes, none so far, but my body needs more time for itself. However, my impossibly restless chaser needs none. I know absolutely naught about them except they gave chase after a blinding light and that one person screaming I think was me, but it has been too long to tell. Was it a woman or a man? I have come to the point where that is at the bottom of my priorities.

So, then, thirty minutes pass by and I am still looking for a tree trunk. All I just need is that: just a tree trunk. Lo and behold, upon a tight millisecond, I felt a hard surface and some heavenly entity has granted me with a decently sized birch with firmly attached ten branches. Wasting no time and catching my breath as to not give my position away, I rapidly climb my corpsely body onto the branches and crawled my way up to the still sun-kissed top.

Finally, some hope.

I dare to look down on my chaser and they went by. However, their exact figure was brushed out by the tops of the trees, but did I care to see? Still, for some reason, I feel no joy. No sense of hallelujah. With the secondly routine I had with them, it is hard to express it into words but it feels empty; like that eternal chase was the only thing I had and now it’s just gone. That only thing that allowed me to remember a sense of myself is away. Should I feel pathetic? Should I feel worthless? Should I feel dead?

Who am I? What is my name? Where did I come from? How did I get here? When did I get here? Why did I get here?

Still, bottom of my list.

The sun has set and the stars have come to play. The little nocturnal critters search the forest for scraps while the day time sleeps. Sleep. Maybe, I should get some sleep.

Before I do that, I pull out a knife open up a way for some sap. I start applying some of the birch sap to my wounds and all over my body. Not before long, I feel some semblance of what I give to be peace. This sap is a godsend: it has some wonderful blood curing qualities. I should know; I’m a doctor.

Did I know that? Wait a minute, how do I know that? A-a-am I starting t-to-?

No.

I was just probably blinding out from all this hope. Maybe a side effect.

And the knife? I probably must have saved that from trying to fend off my chaser. Keyword being “trying.”

Time for REM. As the cool wind helped doze me off, one thought goes through my mind.

Goodnight, my chaser.

“Would he be able to rest, Doctor?”

“The dosage we gave him should be enough to sustain him for longer, Mr. Ellis.”

“I-I don’t know who to talk to right now. Our family, his family is miles and miles away but they haven’t came at all and n-now I can’t stop thinking about how the last thing he said to me was about his unfinished conference reports were going to derail everything. Stupid thing is, of course, they were finished.”

“Ahh, your husband. Your 5-Hour Energy husband. You know I proof read them, before you two left, and from all of his research, the time he spent, the time he spent at the diagnostics lab, all the hearts he studied, I can safely he was going to be popular at that damn conference.”

“I knew he spent all of his time and I

didn’t-”

“It wasn’t your fault. Again, this is not your responsibility to take.”

“Ugh, I know. I know. Yeah, no dates. No flowers. No sex. No nothing. No- I’m overreacting. I told you too much, sorry. Doctor, it’s just that I love him too much and I still do. I only wish he knew that I did and that he could rest whenever he wanted.”

“I do too. I hope that he can. But as of right now, the a-”

I wake up to scratching.

I slowly open my crusted eyes to the cold morning sky and find my head resting against the tree. I turn my head down and find that my fingernails were endowed with gray tree dust and seeping with blood.

Scared and confused, I lean back and look at what I had done. In striking strokes, I had scratched some sort of message. I could barely make out what I wrote.

“Upon continuing from the jogging experiment, conducted inside a makeshift gymnasium, my laboratory partner, Tom Ellis, and I had recorded the bpm of my heart with a pulse sensor: 203 bpm. Back to Chapter 7, where I had formulated a theory on the effects of emotional extremity on the myocardium, we inputed the data of the bpm and the time-”

Nothing more. Why would I write this? What was the time, though?

“Ten hours.”

The world came to a halt.

A voice came from around the tree.

No one else but my chaser had found me.

“Ten hours it took for that experiment.”

He was talking so normally. His voice reeked of no phlegm; no short of breath; no stops; no idea what he had done to me; no imperfections.

I couldn’t speak because I knew this how I would die.

“Ten hours for all that work, but only ten seconds for this one. Might as well let you see the face of Death.”

Might as well. No more running.

Simply, I trembled as I took one last look at another person.

Then, he pushed me off.

Before I could see another human, he pushed me off.

Ten.

I tried to get a look at him.

Nine.

I squinted my eyes.

Eight.

Wait. I know him.

Seven.

Hours of forgetting gone as I remember him.

Six.

Me.

Five.

Me, a doctor.

Four.

Me, a failure.

Three.

Me, hopeless.

Two.

But, me, a husband.

BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ.

“CLEAR!”

BUZZ.

I awake.

I curse my lungs out as my legs suddenly feel something as gradually does the rest of my body.

“He’s awake. Nurse, can you notify, Tom? Mr. Ellis, can you understand what I’m saying?”

I give him a nod.

I look at my surroundings and find myself in a gown in a hospital gurney attached to a vital monitor and an IV line.

I croak out.

“What happened to me?”

“To put it simply, you and your husband got into a car accident. No other drivers on the road but you two but you got the worst of it. That was eight weeks ago. As of now, your body just decided to go into a myocardial infarction. It all happened so quickly... 800 joules. You’re a fucking tough nut.”

“Huh.”

Only one thing was on my mind though.

“Where’s Tom? He’s okay?”

Footsteps squeak outside the door.

“Is this room 108? I can’t fucking tell. I was just in this damn room!”

The door opens like a hurricane blasted through.

It was a hurricane. It was a hurricane stricken with an exhausted face and baggy eyes.

“I-is he?”

“Yup,” I say back to him.

“C-can I come to you?”

To me, the doctor says, “You just woke up. Are you sure, Mr. Ellis?”

“I’m very sure.”

He then carefully got off my bed before checking my vitals and left me out of the room for a moment, closing the door.

Tom approaches my bed, lies down, cuddled with me and spoke to me for the first time.

“I have so many things to say to right now, but I’m sorry.”

“Don’t do that, I started that fight. I should’ve rested with you.”

“I didn’t know if you’d... you know.”

“I didn’t know if you did, come on.”

“I thought I wasn’t going to be able to say that I loved you and that you loved me.”

“Why do we need to say it?”

“Richard, you were gone for eight weeks. Only eight weeks but it felt like a year. A year.”

“The year when I spent all that time without us?”

Seeing that he was exhausted even before I went into a coma, I let him put his face into my shoulder and let out a year of what I did to him. I did what I did and consoled him.

“You fucking suck but you’re still the one I love.”

“I’d torture myself if I even thought of pushing you away. That would be over the fucking line.”

“What about killing yourself again and again for ten hours?!”

“That was just a job. I was providing. I was just proving something. Nothing else.”

“It was something else, but no more running, please, Richard? Just please.”He strained out in his hiccuping voice and hugged me tighter.

I lifted his chin towards mine and looked into his tearful eyes.

He needed me, just so I can need him.

He fell for me, as I fell for him.

I looked for so long at the only world where I can be given rest in a field of birch trees, away from my demon, and I put his lips onto mine. It felt like a year.

So, of course, he interrupted me.

“By the way, I still went to that conference. I submitted your work and the board approved of it.”

“That’s nice, but I’m in the middle of something right now.”

We resumed.