1: Cure

The world pulled back into focus to Verre flailing his arms around as the nurses crowded around him and one of them calling for his favorite sedative, the one that made his brain feel fuzzy but didn't knock him out or push him back into the darkness. He was tempted to keep flailing if only to be sedated, but he knew that wasn't good, so he calmed himself and surveyed his surroundings, looking for indications of the time and date. The clock told him it was maybe three in the afternoon, but it was analog and not digital so that was all it told him. He wanted to ask the nurses, but his mouth didn't seem to be something he could control at the moment, which sent a vicious spike of uncontrolled annoyance down his spine and through his arms, causing them to twitch violently, alarming the remaining nurse that checked him over to make sure he didn't hurt himself. He wanted to apologize, but he still could not, he twitched again.

Verre wondered how long he had been like this. Between all the missing time and the time spent in isolation for becoming too violent, he could never tell. He knew the nurses gossiped about his sob story sometimes, but he could never remember conversations for long after they happened. He wondered which part of him had been broken so badly that he ended here. He wished he could remember how he ended up here, he wanted to know what happened. Mostly though, right at this moment, he wanted to go home.

His thoughts were slipping away from him again, he could feel them leaving him. He was scared, he didn't want to go away again, he hadn't even gotten to see his big brother yet. He missed him so much and he only ever seemed to come around when Verre wasn't there. He missed his big sister as well. He wanted to know what she was doing, he wished he could remember what she was doing. He knows he was told, but it was gone and his vision was going dark around the edges, and if he could please just have a little longer, just a little was all he was asking for, please.

Each time he became aware of himself it was like coming up for air. It was like he was drowning and every time he got air, his limbs got a little weaker and he was able to break the surface less and less, and every time he was getting a little less air. He could feel himself slipping away, losing the battle to time faster with every day that ticked by. Verre hadn't much time left on his own, and even on all the machines his family could afford and the hospital could provide, he didn't think he'd last much longer.

He hoped that he'd at least get the chance to say goodbye, that his awareness would take hold of him and his family would be in the room like in one of those cliche movies. The ones where the main character said goodbye themself right before the heart monitor went off and the doctor had to declare the time of death. If he was going out, he wanted to go out like that.

The next he was aware, his limbs hurt and they were moving him out of isolation again. He was set on his hospital bed once more as the nurses placed the mittens on him. He could see Fleur off to the side and his heart fluttered with happiness, legs twitching and mouth falling open to vocalize his emotion. His big brother turned and smiled at him, coming to kneel by his bed and look him in the eyes before he spoke.

" Hello little one, I see you are doing well. I know you can understand me so just move for yes and stay still for no, can you do that?" he twitched, his best rendition of a yes. It made Fleur smile and laugh as he understood that he was being answered,

" Good, good. The doctors wanna try something, they say it'll make you better, but they won't tell me what it is, just that it's some new surgery they just came up with. I wanna say no, but I wanted to know what you wanna do?"

Verre twitched so hard he nearly fell off the edge of the bed. He knew if they weren't explaining it that it was probably a very bad idea, but he couldn't really care, not when the opportunity was right in front of him and he could grab it with his own two hands! Fleur looked nearly constipated as he smiled, and Verre understood, he really did, but he wasn't Fleur, and Fleur wasn't him. Fleur didn't understand what it was to be stuck like this, day after day, having no idea about who you were before this, and if you'd be someone after it. If there was an after for you at all.

Verre watched as Fleur walked back over to the doctor he had been talking to before and grabbed a clipboard filled with so many papers that they nearly all fell off. Verre would have sat there for however long it took for Fleur to fill out those papers, but the darkness closed back in, and the next thing he knew he was alone in a new hospital room, that same overpowering disinfectant smell the only thing the same as it was before.

Doctors and nurses buzzed around the room, saying things he didn't get and poking at him, sticking him with needles here and then as they exchanged numbers and words. He was gone again before they could get him prepped and out of the room, but he very uncharacteristically blinked in and out as they pushed him along the halls. Once they were in the operating room it became far less visual feedback and far more sounds and bright impressions of light. He remembers heat and a voice telling him he wasn't allowed to fail, that he was required to be a success. Heat became pain and all he could feel was the vivid impression of stars, of galaxies being crammed into too-small spaces. Loud became blinding white noise and everything spun ten times the speed of light. He was gonna throw up, but there was nothing to throw up and he wanted so badly for it to all be over but it seemed like it had just begun, and then all at once he was back in his room and wondering when he had been able to last move his arms so freely.

He marveled at the speed at which he could wiggle his fingers, the dexterity they had once again gained. He wasn't all there, but even just being able to move this much felt like so much that he was overwhelmed, and for the first time in a while, he cried real tears. They streamed down his face like a waterfall down a cliffside. He was near hyperventilating when someone finally came into the room to check on him. Pity filled their face as they looked at his chart and understood just the tiniest bit why he was the way he was, and then they went and got what he would later learn was his on-call therapist.

Dr. Marcell and he talked as much as Verre could for a little while. He wasn't fluent in english anymore, much to his chagrin, so the conversation was choppy and unfinished. Thanks to his injuries speech was even slower moving than normal as well, and he knew he was better, had proved it to himself already, but he didn't feel better, and this was making him feel even worse and he just couldn't explain that. This would be so much easier with his brother or sister here, at least then they could translate, but eventually their time together was up and neither of them had shown.

Verre slumped back in his bed, tracing the ceiling with his eyes, mapping the little holes as if they were constellations. He didn't know what he was supposed to do now. There was nothing particularly interesting in his surroundings, only the empty room and a tv he didn't have the remote to. He knew he could ask, but he didn't want to ask the nurses. He didn't want any of them in his room after that hot mess of a conversation. He made himself content to wait there.

When he woke up he was afraid he was slipping again, but he recognized the sensation of sleep slipping off of him and calmed enough to realize once more that he had changed rooms. He also realized that it was far colder in this room than it was in his previous one. He was shivering so bad his teeth chattered, and his breath puffed white in the air. He buried himself deeper into the thin hospital blankets, searching for the barest bit of warmth.

His luck was at the same time as astronomically good as it was bad, as a nurse walked in and found the room to be absolutely unacceptable and turned up the heat. He was thankful, so he thanked her, and she smiled, and he knew she had heard. It made his chest hurt a little with the realization that he had improved a little, that he was able to speak louder and articulate his English a little better, though thank you in french was a word he knew a lot of Americans knew.

Fleur took that moment to walk into the room and happily greet Verre, which made Verre's legs twitch with excitement. He proceeded to ask as many questions as his lagging mouth could handle. Fleur looked happy to indulge him and patiently wait out his stuttering, halting speech.

Then he blinked and the tv was on, and it had been a time since he was last awake, as the sun rose and his brother slumbered on in the chair next to his bed. Sleep had not claimed him this time and he knew that being cured so soon was too good to be true. Maybe this was temporary, maybe he would forever suffer this loss of time. It saddened him so, but if this was but temporary, then he really wanted to go home and see the place before he ended up back here.

Physical therapy started two days after what he had found out was the second half of his very complex and mind-bending surgery. He didn't feel any different and he saw no visible changes to himself but the doctors said that what they had done worked and that he should be good to go. He started physical therapy two days after they said the treatment was done. At first, he couldn't even get out of the chair by himself, let alone put one foot in front of the other. Speech therapy didn't go too well either, Verre barely being able to get a word out through his teeth the entire time. This cycle repeated itself for a week before anyone saw any progress. Verre was able to get out of his chair by himself with a lot of struggle but then he had to get help from the nurse the rest of the time. In speech, he almost formed a whole sentence, even if it was a little shaky and he stuttered a lot. He slowly, very slowly got better. He was able to walk with the help of a cane and he could talk in shaky broken sentences. The doctors said that in a few days if nothing came up that he could go home with Fleur and Max, his sister. For the first time in a long time, Verre felt excited!

He worked real hard, and besides blacking out once or twice during physical therapy, which did extend his stay by a few days, nothing major happened and he was released with a few meds and a cane for help with his lacking mobility skills, plus a few more PT sessions before he was cleared for heavy physical activity. He walked out of the hospital in brand new clothes, since all of his were far too small now that he was 17-years-old. He knew a lot of time had passed, but 8 years was a lot of time to lose.

Fleur drove him home, a 7-hour drive with a few stops in total. He remembered they lived in the mountains when he was younger, he adored the trail that led down the mountain that sat behind their house. It was covered in trees and you could make maple syrup in the spring and summer, he remembered doing that almost every summer with his Papa. Mama would make pancakes and they would…eat, probably, the memory tapered off there, he had been regaining some of them but they often cut off and were incomplete. But the car ride was boring and making up the end of his own memories was far more interesting, if a bit depressing, than the endless expanse of grassland before the foot of the mountain. As far as his eye could see there was nothing but wheat and grass. He spent so long staring that he barely noticed the shift in altitude, only really noticing the end of the fields, but by that time he was more than half-asleep, and he was descending fast, so fast in fact, that he was asleep before he was even halfway home.

And as was already so cliche for him, he awoke as his brother was moving his limp body from the car. He didn't kick or fight, his legs were cramped and he still had to put muscle back onto them before he could walk for any type of long distance, even if it wasn't that long a walk to the front door of their house, or well, he guesses it's just his now.

Fleur would be taking care of him for the next two weeks until his final PT session, then he was on his own with the occasional check-in from his siblings and the local healthcare facility. It wasn't like his siblings' lives just stood still because he was in the hospital. His family was fairly well off thanks to his great-grandfather, evidenced by the high living cost this small mountain town boasted, so his siblings didn't struggle to pay his medical bills, something he would be eternally grateful for. Max, his sister, was studying in a high-end law school, finishing up her JD, and Fleur was a professor of science in some university halfway across the country that he took time off for Verre. Fleur had a wife and two kids, who sometimes came to visit. They gave him a bunch of little trinkets that Fleur kept on a keychain for him, a keychain that now housed his house keys, and would hopefully house car keys once he was well enough to drive himself around and get a driver's license. He rid himself of unwanted thoughts as he was set down on the couch, settled neatly against the very obviously freshly cleaned pillows.

There wasn't a speck of dust on any surface in his squinted sight, and the nearly pleasant smell of lemon failed horribly at covering up the awful acrid smell of bleach and other such harsh cleaning supplies. As he sat himself up he looked around himself. What he remembered of this living room was sparse, but he did remember the little tv he used to sit in front of with his favorite stuffed dog named bear. That tv was still in the same place as he remembered, sitting there on the stand that was still covered in the magazines that his Mama would read in her free time. Max's favorite candle was missing, burned out, or taken to her new home he had no idea, but it left the coffee stain from his Papa's most used and most hated coffee cup.

As Verre took in his home he relaxed, content to just sit on the couch as his brother finished up dinner for the both of them.