Name: Memory Flat-Line

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Kathleen wakes up after someone she loves leaves her in a hospital, only to learn an awful truth. But was everything really as it seemed?

Authors Note:This was originally a contest entry.

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Images thread together into a broken picture, still contorted in its own way that it wasn’t even fully developed. It remained only pieces fit together with a missing piece undiscovered; a slice of the puzzle that determined the sewn finish of the portrait. The bottom right corner was lost, vanished in the black vortex that surrounded its counterparts; the ending.

Suddenly a loud scream erupted from off the in the distance of the black, reverberating in each every way that it was nearly impossible to determine where it came from. The incessant screaming, falling from loud to faint every ten seconds it came, caused Kathleen to look around, halting her original search for the last puzzle piece. Another scream then another, each fainter than the first. Kathleen spun on her heel, looking around wildly.

The screams stopped. Instead, her name was being called repeatedly, as if trying to communicate with her. It was a man’s voice, deep yet calm, and had a tang of pain and sorrow as it pleaded with her to wake up.

She recognized that voice.

The fluorescent overhead lights were mere torture to her nocturnal eyes, more than she could stand. She squinted and grimaced, only allowing visions through a small slit in between her eyelids. Gradually, her ivory pools adjusted and she was able to look at her surroundings: a hospital room.

The room was plain, all white walls and sheets and tables and drapes. Nothing out of the ordinary. She heard someone groan as they shifted positions so she turned her head slowly, letting all the painful stiffness to wear off, and saw a figure sitting on her left side, staring out the window to the northeast, uncomfortably positioned in a steel chair that undoubtedly burned his muscles. A smile came to her lips. He was young, dressed down in a muscle shirt and loose jeans that hung low around his body while his streaked red black hair was disheveled and messy. She breathed his name.

He looked over at her and his intense brown eyes brightened most immensely. Immediately he dragged his chair closer to her and grasped her hand, beginning to stroke her cheek with his thumb.

"Hey you." he whispered, biting his lip. Kathleen smiled. "I missed you."

Kathleen smiled and nodded slightly in response. The man grinned and laid a kiss on her forehead. He gazed into her eyes, his smile disintegrating until it was barely even visible on his tan features. "I can’t stay long. We don’t have much time." He paused for a moment. "It’s fading."

Kathleen’s smile was replaced by an expression of utter confusion. "Stryder…? What do you mean?" she managed to say in one long gulp of air.

"You can’t either. You really have to leave before it comes." he explained.

"Stryder?" Kathleen repeated again and again, becoming more frantic as Stryder stood. "Stryder."

"Kit-Kat. Glad to know you’re awake." he mumbled. He pressed his lips to hers then parted and strolled to the door. He gripped the brass doorknob then looked over his shoulder at the petite brunette lying helplessly in the bed she had taken refuge in for a full two months. His smile was weak. "I’ll be seeing you soon, I promise." He paused, staring at her. "You should go now."

"Wait." Kathleen gasped, heaving out panicked rasps. She outstretched her hand, beckoning him back to her. Stryder stepped out the room and closed the door behind him. "Corey, no!" she screamed.

She continued to scream, roaring like a mighty lion, and thrashed about in her place. She screamed and screamed for him to come back, but nothing happened. Her limbs hit any surface near her, crushing her elbows and feet, before another specimen leapt onto the bed and grasped her arms, attempting to make her stop her mad rampage. She heard him talking to her, but his words were too fast and too disoriented for her to understand. She only heard him say ‘stop’ and ‘she’s awake,’ though none of that clicked in her mind. Panic only increased drastically at the unfamiliar situation.

She peaked open her eyes and saw the blurry image of a man sitting on the bed beside her, dressed firmly in a white lab coat, while two other figures drifted in and out of her line of vision, rushing around the room that she was apparently still trapped in. Another person, a woman, appeared at her head, something long lodged in her hand. Kathleen looked, but stopped as the woman stuck her. A needle penetrated her skin, sending a sting through her body, raising every nerve in her body on high alert. Fluids began to course through her sickly body and her muscles instantly calmed.

Her limbs came to an abrupt halt and she heaved, taking large gulps of air as if she’d never tasted oxygen before. This pause in radical movement cleared her vision nearly immediately and she was able to identify the man sitting beside her as a one Dr. Thomas Greensburg, as noted on his clearance badge. Kathleen examined his external features. He was an older gentleman, possibly in his mid-forties, with a black mustache and graying combed-over hair. Underneath his unbuttoned white coat was a tasteful lavender dress shirt and khaki pants. A clipboard consumed by papers beyond papers rested in his lap, the pen bouncing on his knuckle. He glanced up at the many machines she just then realized were beeping all around her and jotted down the results. He did this many times, looking back and forth at all the machines before he moved onto checking her pulse and heart rate. Kathleen knew the machines around them would tell him all that he was checking himself, but it appeared that this doctor didn’t trust modern technology.

Dr. Greensburg slapped the clipboard down on the steel table by her. "Ms. White, do you realize what you’ve just experienced?" Kathleen didn’t answer so he went on. " You’ve just awakened from a two month coma in the most unconventional way that I’ve ever seen in my twenty years as a doctor. It’s quite amazing if I do say so myself. "

Two months, Kathleen thought. The doctor proceeded to stare at her as he ranted about his years in medical service. She grew uncomfortable under his stare and faltered, looking around so she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes. She became aware that music was playing in the background. A thought suddenly came to her mind. This was the same hospital room that she was talking to young Stryder in, so maybe he was still around.

"Where’s Stryder?" Kathleen interrupted, not looking at the man.

Dr. Greensburg hesitated in replying. "I’m sorry, who?"

"Stryder. He was just here."

"Care to elaborate?"

"He was the young man with red streaked hair that just left this room. I need to talk to him."

"Ms. White, no one has come to visit you except your mother and sister. We’ve never had a Mr. Stryder come into this building. For that matter no male has come into this room except for myself."

"Well, you’re wrong. Check again because I was talking to him."

The philanthropist’s brow furrowed. "Ma’am, do you have any recollection of the accident?"

"Accident?"

"Yes." He sat back, laying his chin on the pad of his palm, staring at her in deep thought. "Try to remember. Anything could help a patient remember."

Kathleen looked at him; brow raised, but then did as she was instructed. She closed her eyes and thought back to the last thing she remembered. Broken images swirled around, creeping up on her, giant lights of overpowering confusion. Then, she saw it: herself on her phone, in her car, talking happily to her older sister.

"My sister…I was going to see her. My nieces birthday." Kathleen said slowly, prying more and more out of her brain.

"That’s right." Dr. Greensburg replied.

Kathleen shook her head slightly, redirecting it to the side in a short tilt. "But I didn’t get there…"

"Correct."

"What happened to me?"

"You were involved in a car crash two months ago, considered the worst one in this cities history. Thirteen people died in the nine-car pile up. You don’t remember any of it?"

"No. I’ve been in a coma for two months; one resulted from a car crash during a trip to see my sister? Is that right?" Kathleen mused hoarsely.

Dr. Greensburg suddenly stood and picked up his clipboard once again. "Ms. White, I can see this will take time for you to accept; I don’t think it’ll be easy. I’ll leave you. You need your rest." He smiled awkwardly at her in an attempt at comprehension and turned his back on her. He stopped mid-way to the door and spun around, only to see Kathleen’s fragile eyes staring into his. His shoulders drooped. "I’d just like to say, that if it wasn’t for this fortunate event, you wouldn’t be with us at this moment."

He left her in her room with that final thought. He closed the door then collapsed against the wall outside the room. Passers-by nodded to him in acknowledgement, to which he returned the gesture courteously, then continued on their way. He cared not if anyone was watching him any longer. He dropped his head down to his knees in a deep stretch and covered his face with his hands, heaving out a loud, soothing breath.

"Tommy!" he heard someone yell from off in the distance.

He looked up, straightening his tired form, to see his fellow colleague and long time friend Dr. Joshua Utterson briskly striding towards him, his white coat flying open in the back. A gracious smile was spread across his face, indicating his good mood, but that fell as he neared his friend. He patted Dr. Greensburg on the shoulder then peaked into the room where Kathleen was being roomed.

"Jeez, man, I heard about your patient." Dr. Utterson exclaimed.

"It’s by far the strangest case I have ever heard or seen. I’m bewildered; I don’t know what to do with this situation." Dr. Greensburg confessed, now facing his colleague.

"What exactly happened? All I heard was that a coma patient went wacky this morning."

"You didn’t get the better half. That young woman in there was the victim of the I-30 Pile-Up,"—Dr. Utterson winced—"and has been in a coma ever since. Thing is, today, she wakes up, screaming and thrashing like a child does after a violent nightmare with monsters under the bed. But she kept asking about a man named Stryder with dark hair. Someone that doesn’t exist. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s a bad case of nostalgia, but maybe she had hallucinations in her coma due to her dystrophy, though that sounds impossible."

Dr. Utterson studied the man; he was obviously weary and exhausted, though that was explainable. He’d been working for nearly forty-eight hours straight since the arrangement had been made. "She suffered brain damage; it could have been an infection of her marred body. It’s such an eccentric case…"

"I know, which makes it even more bizarre. You knew what was happening, with her family. We didn’t think she was going to make it, so I urged them to release her. We set up a day to pull the plug on her. Today was the day…today, two o’clock. What is the possibility of a woman being in a coma for two months with the slimmest chance of survival suddenly waking up on the day that we were going to condemn her, claiming she was just talking to an unknown man? What is that?"

Dr. Utterson, unable to answer due to his own puzzlement, shrugged his shoulders then looked at Kathleen, who was staring off into the distance at the wall. "Do you have any clue of who she could’ve been referring to? This Stryder?"

Dr. Greensburg shook his head. "The only name that comes to mind is Corey Stryder. But he died in that crash. I wasn’t even aware that they knew each other. I haven’t even told her that she was only survivor."