Rebirth - Friday Flash
When he finally regained consciousness, his first picture was a vista of sparks and coruscations as if he were witnessing the birth of the cosmos. He rent the air with a scream that pierced the universe. Partly from the pain pent up from the entire time he had been in a coma, but also from the sudden inundation of all the suppressed senses held under for the same duration. Inside the projection screen of his mind, he could recall the features of the man throttling him. But his eyes were registering nothing outwards, other than amorphous shades of black and white with twinkling pain flashes. Maybe he was actually dead after all and he was merely dreaming these serrated sensations as some delusion of life.
Somewhere in the yonder of the void, the doctors explained that there were neurological issues brought about through the lack of oxygen under constriction. The police whispered in his ear that they had caught his assailant and there was evidence aplenty to guarantee he would be put away for life. He had another searing body-wide paroxysm that cleaved the universe in two, as he realised he could neither respond with word nor gesture. Or perhaps it was just the conflagration of diverse emotions, from relief, through rage to fear. What did they mean ‘neurological issues’?
The medics simplified it for him as ‘brain damage’. His family testified he was lucky to be alive. The physios stated that now the hard work really began. He heard the words, but couldn’t understand what they were saying. He couldn’t put the pieces together. The physios said that was exactly what they had to do with him. To reconnect parts of his brain to his body. At least those black and white dancing hues had settled down and begun to cohere into shapes and depth. An elaborate regimen of drugs brought his physical pain under control, but his mental maladies would not be so ductile.
First they had to train him to lift up his head and support it. As the locus of the original trauma, this was a monumental feat to achieve. Each flex of the cervical muscles, each tiny motion of the head, pricked vivid images and wild flashes back to when his neck was being assailed by the other man’s hands. Every time he thought he was going to blackout. He imagined he could feel the force of the sensations from his body reaching up to petition his brain for processing, but held in abeyance by an impenetrable barricade where they just couldn’t cross. This anguish was far more deleterious than any to do with swollen sinew or traumatic memories. He raged impotently at what he had become, to what he had been reduced. His brain was feverishly trying to fire messages across dead zones. And such emotion with nowhere to go to be discharged by a broken body, just heaped the torment further upon him.
Once he mastered controlling his head, they got him to work on sitting up in his bed. Then they rebuilt the motions he needed to chew his food and swallow, so that they could remove the drips and tubes sustaining him. They gently pincered his chin and worked his jaw for him. Even babies didn’t have to suffer this indignity. He reclaimed the ability to drink from cups without spouts and without the liquid dribbling back out of any crookedly sealed lips. They also worked on teaching him how to speak again. Now he realised he had fully become a toddler for the second time in his life. That all his primal howl on reentering the world had lacked for, was a midwife slapping life and air into him. Instead he had burned into his retinas, the image of his would-be killer fulfilling the opposite role of taking the final air from his lungs and delivering him into death. It spurred him on all the harder to grab on to this his rebirth.
After he managed sitting up, he was taught how to structure the movements to feed himself with a spoon. His speech was slurred, but he reacquired some gestural movement in his hands to bolster his meaning. His face however remained slanted and his expression frozen. He was transferred into a wheelchair and for the first time was able to exercise his eyes on sights other than the four walls of his ward. He was being wheeled like a baby in a buggy he thought ruefully. In the hospital gym they toiled with him to define his musculature and begin the long march to getting him to stand, to support his own weight and eventually to walk. When finally he had mastered an awkward, angular shuffle, he could take himself off to the bathroom so finally there were no more of commodes and nappies.
He could dress himself as long as he perched on his bed to do so. He relearned how to clean his teeth. He drew pictures in crayon that were recognisable for the subjects he was representing. He had ticked off virtually every one of the developmental stages in his baby book for a second time. Except he had yet to manifest a smile.
Somewhere in the yonder of the void, the doctors explained that there were neurological issues brought about through the lack of oxygen under constriction. The police whispered in his ear that they had caught his assailant and there was evidence aplenty to guarantee he would be put away for life. He had another searing body-wide paroxysm that cleaved the universe in two, as he realised he could neither respond with word nor gesture. Or perhaps it was just the conflagration of diverse emotions, from relief, through rage to fear. What did they mean ‘neurological issues’?
The medics simplified it for him as ‘brain damage’. His family testified he was lucky to be alive. The physios stated that now the hard work really began. He heard the words, but couldn’t understand what they were saying. He couldn’t put the pieces together. The physios said that was exactly what they had to do with him. To reconnect parts of his brain to his body. At least those black and white dancing hues had settled down and begun to cohere into shapes and depth. An elaborate regimen of drugs brought his physical pain under control, but his mental maladies would not be so ductile.
First they had to train him to lift up his head and support it. As the locus of the original trauma, this was a monumental feat to achieve. Each flex of the cervical muscles, each tiny motion of the head, pricked vivid images and wild flashes back to when his neck was being assailed by the other man’s hands. Every time he thought he was going to blackout. He imagined he could feel the force of the sensations from his body reaching up to petition his brain for processing, but held in abeyance by an impenetrable barricade where they just couldn’t cross. This anguish was far more deleterious than any to do with swollen sinew or traumatic memories. He raged impotently at what he had become, to what he had been reduced. His brain was feverishly trying to fire messages across dead zones. And such emotion with nowhere to go to be discharged by a broken body, just heaped the torment further upon him.
Once he mastered controlling his head, they got him to work on sitting up in his bed. Then they rebuilt the motions he needed to chew his food and swallow, so that they could remove the drips and tubes sustaining him. They gently pincered his chin and worked his jaw for him. Even babies didn’t have to suffer this indignity. He reclaimed the ability to drink from cups without spouts and without the liquid dribbling back out of any crookedly sealed lips. They also worked on teaching him how to speak again. Now he realised he had fully become a toddler for the second time in his life. That all his primal howl on reentering the world had lacked for, was a midwife slapping life and air into him. Instead he had burned into his retinas, the image of his would-be killer fulfilling the opposite role of taking the final air from his lungs and delivering him into death. It spurred him on all the harder to grab on to this his rebirth.
After he managed sitting up, he was taught how to structure the movements to feed himself with a spoon. His speech was slurred, but he reacquired some gestural movement in his hands to bolster his meaning. His face however remained slanted and his expression frozen. He was transferred into a wheelchair and for the first time was able to exercise his eyes on sights other than the four walls of his ward. He was being wheeled like a baby in a buggy he thought ruefully. In the hospital gym they toiled with him to define his musculature and begin the long march to getting him to stand, to support his own weight and eventually to walk. When finally he had mastered an awkward, angular shuffle, he could take himself off to the bathroom so finally there were no more of commodes and nappies.
He could dress himself as long as he perched on his bed to do so. He relearned how to clean his teeth. He drew pictures in crayon that were recognisable for the subjects he was representing. He had ticked off virtually every one of the developmental stages in his baby book for a second time. Except he had yet to manifest a smile.
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