Waking From Surgery

Lumen Ater woke lying on her right side in a hospital room at Tobey Hospital. Her back and butt felt numb and she still couldn't feel her legs. She stared at the curtains that only partially shaded the windows as she tried to get her half asleep brain to organize her priorities. She needed to contact the school about her classes, needed to call Jake about getting her mail, and she needed to work. But with her laptop and phone out of reach behind her there wasn't much she could do until the nurses came in to roll her over. Lumen Ater closed her eyes. Housing and schooling needed to come first. Her jobs could wait a little longer.

She deepened her breathing. Let her thoughts grow still until the smell of several different deodorants entered the room. The several nurses that had entered the room rolled her to her left side and bolstered her body to keep it in place. Lumen Ater opened her eyes as they left and pulled the rolling tray closer. She fumbled for a moment before finally being able to grab her phone. She called her landlord.

"I just left!" he yelled into the phone.

"That's fine, Jake," she replied calmly. "I am calling to let you know I'm going to be at Tobey Hospital for a few weeks and…."

"What for?" he interrupted.

"I was pushed off the road last night. The impact broke my back and…."

"And?! What are you some friggin' cripple now?"

"Paraplegic," she corrected. "Only my legs…."

"Oh, no. No, no, no, no! I am not installing an elevator because you don't know how to drive."

"I'm not asking you to. I called to see if you would be willing to forward my mail to me here at the hospital. I want to make sure all of my bills are covered including the rent I will owe while I'm away. I can…."

Jake hung up.

Lumen Ater blew out her breath and hung up her phone. She set her phone back on the rolling tray. She didn't bother to call him back. He was difficult to work with on a good day, and today was clearly not a good day.

She pulled the rolling tray a little closer so she could open her laptop. She had several emails to send and homework to complete. She found her headset and tucked the ear bud into her ear. Lumen Ater dictated her emails and homework assignments. She was grateful for the dictation program that allowed her to save and send her work without needing to touch the laptop's keys or mouse pad. And grateful that she could work without needing to see the screen since her work was interrupted every few hours when the nurses came in to change her position.

When she could see her computer screen, Lumen Ater looked around for tech jobs. She found several simple ones that wouldn't take her long to complete. They also paid well enough to cover the cost of her medical bills. She wrote several tech patches while the two to four hour rotations continued. She had just started working on another patch when she thought about some of the tech requests she had found on the dark web. They were sketchy at best. But when the completed work was placed in the right hands it didn't matter how much money ended up in her bank account.

It was dangerous for sure. She never knew when she was going to piss someone off who would try to get revenge. It was one of the challenges of taking on more than one dark web job. Navigating the dark web was tricky business. It took some forethought and planning to be able to make inquiries without letting your target know that you're seeking them. And even then it wasn't entirely foolproof no matter how good a cybernetic tech genius you were. Lumen Ater needed to figure out if her current situation was because she had pissed off the wrong person, but not just yet.

She finished the tech patch she had started as her phone chimed. She grabbed her phone to check the text she had just received.

'How do you expect me to send you mail when you didn't give me a room number?!' Jake wrote.

'Room 247,' she replied, not bothering to remind him that he had hung up on her before she could give it to him.

She set the phone back on the rolling tray just to pick it up again. There was one other thing she needed to check. Lumen Ater secured her internet connection before getting into the dark web. She found 'Riku's' message to 'Sora'. She dug a little more to see what Sora had done to trigger Riku's intervention. When she saw his inquiry, she sighed.

"Sora!"

Lumen Ater shook her head then made a few inquiries of her own. Inquires that informed her that Sora had indeed backed off after receiving Riku's message. She nodded to her phone as the nurses came in to help her into a supported seated position so she could eat dinner. She logged out of the dark web. She ate. She opened her Discord Chat then rested until the nurses came in to lay her down. Once she was alone again, Lumen Ater contacted Sora.