Bright Lights

Bright lights. Intense, painful white lights. My whole head hurts. I can’t move. I can’t speak. I can feel my body on a soft but stiff surface. I think it’s a bed. The lights suddenly disappear and the pain slowly starts to subside. Relief. My thoughts slowly begin to blur and my brain becomes foggy, as if in slow-motion. I feel myself slipping back into nothingness. I try to hold onto my thoughts, to something, but I can’t. A dark calmness slowly seeps into my mind as my thoughts disappear.

———————————————————

Bright lights. Intense, painful white lights. Hold on, I’ve thought all of these thoughts already. But when did I think about these things? I close my eyes. Instantaneous relief. I can close my eyes! I try to re-open them, testing if I can do that. I quickly find out I can, but with the overhead lights, I swiftly force them closed. If I can move my eyelids, I must be able to move my body.

First, I focus on my hands and, soon, I start to feel my joints moving. My knuckles, my wrists, they’re moving! I feel myself smile. Slowly, I start to move my elbows, my feet, my knees, my shoulders, and I try sitting up. Even though I’m excited, my body is sore and it aches. My back is stiff, the joints pop when I move. I touch my face and feel my eyelashes, my eyebrows, my lips, my nose. I then feel a tube sitting horizontally across my face. I feel it wrapped around my entire head and I sense two small tubes, one going into each of my nostrils. The plastic feels weird on my face, so I slip it off and lay it on the edge of the bed. I start hearing a sound in my left ear, a repetitive beeping. It becomes louder, but after a few seconds, the sound stabilizes.

I am going to sit up, I tell myself. Maybe even stand. But I will sit up.

I grit my teeth and groan through the pain as I slowly get into a half-comfortable sitting position. I’m gasping for air. While my breathing stabilizes, my eyes begin to get used to the bright overhead lights. After a minute, I can squint without a problem. And after a few more, I can fully open my eyes. I blink a lot, but at least I can see. I turn my head to look at the annoying beeping machine. The screen shows a dancing green line with some numbers in each corner. A heart monitor! I remember! But no one lives with a heart monitor, only people in hospitals have one next to their bed.

I look around the room: the heart monitor to my left, an IV drip beside it, a small table to my right, a beige folder on top of the table, lights above me that I refuse to look at, a small mirror, boring plain white walls and a door on the other side of the room.

I pick up the folder, I’m attempting to remember my life before now. The folder reads: Daniel Covey. After reading my name, my mind is bombarded with memories of my life. I remember who I am, my interests, my friends, my family, my girlfriend. I have a mom and a dad, and two brothers. And we have two dogs, and a cat. The strongest, most vivid memories, the ones that seem to be most recent, are with my girlfriend. Her name is Samantha. I remember that we started dating in grade 9 after meeting in history class. And I remember that, for our 1 year anniversary, I gave her a locket. A rose-gold, heart-shaped locket. I also remember getting a necklace for myself that went with it: a rose-gold key. I remember her loving it so much, she never took it off. I look down at my chest, only to see that my rose-gold key isn’t there. I have to find it.

I force myself to stand up. I walk around on the painfully cold floor to end up standing in front of the mirror. I vaguely remember what I look like, but my face seems to have changed. As I stare at my reflection, I recognize myself less and less. I’m sure that just yesterday, I had pimples all over my face, but at the moment, my skin is spotless. My jawline seems more defined than I remember. My eyes are the only things that haven’t changed, blue as always. My hair is deep brown, like usual, but it has definitely grown. I then realize that I have a short beard and that my skin is paler than it used to be. I look down at my body and see myself standing in a way-too-loose hospital gown. I feel a rumble in my stomach and realize that my IV bag has nothing inside of it. It seems like nothing in this room has been touched by humans for at least a week or two.

I carefully remove the IV drip tube from my arm and try to find a band-aid. As I’m looking for one, I discover a drawer under my bed and, inside, there are bandaids, unused needles, and gauze. I apply a bandaid and I sit back down on the bed. I open the file. The first thing I see is a newspaper article. The headline reads “Tragic 4 Car Pile-Up Lands 2 Teens in Coma” in big black letters. Underneath the title, a picture of the 2 teenagers is shown. The two teenagers are me and Samantha.

—————————————————

I start flipping through the file, trying to find anything that can help me figure out what happened after the crash. After a bit of searching, I find my medical record. I’m reminded that I was born on the 8th of December 2006. As far as I know, the year is 2022, almost 2023, so that would make me 16. I suddenly vividly remember the night of my 16th birthday. Samantha and I are sitting in the new car that I got for my 16th birthday. I had just gotten my license and I was taking her for a late night drive. The roads were surprisingly busy, but everything was going completely fine. We were having so much fun, we got caught up in the rush and Samantha convinced me to run the next red light. I remember stupidly agreeing, and stupidly doing it. I recall bright lights, but then, nothing else. If we both went into comas, then that would explain why I look different and why I’m in a hospital. But I still don’t know why nobody’s around.

I start getting worried about Samantha. I need to find her. First, I need to find out why I’m isolated, so I start looking around the room, trying to find anything that belongs to me and not to this hospital. I eventually look beneath the bedside table and I find a dull green backpack. It’s mine! I remember! Inside, I find the clothing from the night of my birthday and my necklace with the rose-gold key attached to it. I slip on the necklace and I put on the cargo pants and the dark blue t-shirt that are in my bag. I sprint out the door only to find a huge room with windows and skylights. I see eight burgundy coloured chairs surrounding a giant black table in the center of the room. On the table, there’s a silver laptop. I sit down at the table and I turn on the computer. Surprisingly, the computer opens without the need of a password. I look around the screen and see the date: August 17th 2024. I’ve been in a coma for 2 years.

————————————————————

No way. I try to make sense of this, of everything, but my mind won’t comprehend what I’m seeing. I look back at the computer to see that there’s one app at the bottom of the screen: a green square with a camera on it. I press it, and a tab opens. At the bottom of the tab, the number “63” appears, indicating the total number of recorded videos, and on average, each video is ten minutes long. I press the first video on the screen, the one labeled February 9th 2023. A new tab opens. I press the sideways triangle in the middle of the screen, and the video starts playing. A red-haired man sits in front of the camera and starts explaining a medical project that he’s directing. The man explains that he’s trying to create a lab-made virus that would be injected into a certain section of the brain. He continues and says that it would have an effect of reversing the process of going into a coma. He clarifies that 25 patients are participating, and lists each name. I hear both my name and Samantha’s. We participated in the experiment. I’m guessing that our parents didn’t believe we would wake up, so they volunteered us for this, hoping we would get better. In the videos, the data of all of the patients’ progress are shared and analyzed. Though none of the patients had woken up yet, the doctors and scientists were thrilled to see improvements in our brains.

Over quite a few videos, less and less people are in the room. The scientists and doctors seem tired and they mix up their words quite frequently. The videos start becoming shorter and shorter over a span of a few months. Then, in the last video, there is a different doctor, a woman I haven’t seen in any of the videos. She recorded it on August 4th 2024. Only 13 days ago.

She is hysterical and she’s speaking quickly. She informs the camera that, with the virus, the patients in comas were improving and getting healthier every day, but that billions of people around the world had gotten tested and were found to be infected with their lab-made virus after becoming critically sick. She explains that after a few tests, the lab found that the virus was extremely contagious and lethal. Since the lab’s workers were the first ones exposed, it made them the ones who spread the virus beyond the lab, the first to be hospitalized, and the first people to pass away due to it. The video ends and I simply sit in silence, trying to process what I just learnt.

What she just said explains why no one is here. And why the videos have less and less people and why the scientists and doctors looked so exhausted. This means that Samantha’s okay! I need to find her. By impulse, I jump out of the chair and start towards the other door of the big room. I assume it leads to the rest of the lab. I stop running when I pass one of the windows. I peer through the window to see the world completely run down. The power seems to be cut off, making all of the shops and restaurants look somber and uninhabited. The street lights are off as well, and every car in sight is off and motionless. There isn’t a human in sight.

I’ll focus on this later, I tell myself, finding Samantha is my top priority. I push open the door and dash out into seemingly never-ending corridors. I’m frantically opening doors only to see empty beds. I need to find Samantha. I know that if we’re working together to get through everything that’s going on, we’ll be okay.

Out of nowhere, I suddenly hear my name being called. Where did the sound come from? I freeze when I see a figure standing behind me. She has long blond hair and deep green eyes. I recognize her. I realize that she’s Samantha. I look at her collarbone and, on a thin chain attached around her neck, I see the rose-gold, heart-shaped locket.