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The floor tiles are cool against his face. Like a nice, chilly breeze. The blow of air conditioning humming from the wall unit, striking in a full-force wave of relief as soon as he swings open the apartment door.
That seems right. The haze is fitting for a hot, slow summer’s day. His back is warm, fabric sweat-stuck to the ridge of his spine. If not for that, it would be perfect for a nap. He’s not fully driven off from the idea, even then. The coolness is comforting, lulling. Some part of him knows this isn’t his bed, but he’s still tempted to fall asleep right where he is, wherever that is.
Hmm. His ears are ringing. There’s some kind of ruckus, but he can’t quite make any of it out. One of his mother’s TV dramas? Did grandma leave the news on again? In that case, maybe he should get up, it wasn’t good to leave the TV on, it just wasted power and brought up the electric bill. But…the floor feels so nice, and he’s so tired, he can't imagine moving from whatever he’s laying on.
Strong hands peel it away, or maybe he’s the one that’s moving. The world spins until he’s facing the ceiling. The fluorescent bulbs shine with bleary halos, but he doesn’t have much time to admire them until something blocks the view.
“Hey, kiddo, can you hear me?”
He could hear them, but anything about where they were or where the voice was coming from was another matter altogether. The dark shapes don’t look like people. They don’t look like much of anything at all.
Someone takes hold of his arm. Another brushes his neck. He wants to flinch back, but his body doesn’t have enough energy to manage. A snippet of thought quietly hopes that whoever has his hand won’t suddenly let go, because if they do, he won’t have the strength to keep it up, and it would just hit the ground.
A sudden beam of light burned his eyes, and before he could try to close them, something nudged one of the lids open and held it there. “What’s your name?”
He can’t muster an answer. His mouth is still stuck on the same word, the same he’d been repeating over and over like a mantra.
“K…Kou…” He only managed a mangled croak.
“Kou? Nice to meet you, Kou. Where do you go to school?”
Even if he could speak properly, he can’t focus. Any moment of attention he can muster goes to the pulls and prods going on elsewhere all over. The beam of light clicks off, leaving smears in his vision that blur with the ones that were already there.
“No signs of spinal damage so far, but still be careful,” a new voice says, and he’s relatively certain they’re talking to themselves. “Here, here, let’s get him out of here-”
“Kou, can you pay attention to me? Where do you go to school?”
If he knew which of them had been talking to him, they’d already vanished into the mass. It’s hard to focus. It’s hard to think. The shadows surrounding him sway, and the already-weak grasp on his thoughts slip and smear as he’s suddenly moving again. It feels as though they’re throwing him right into the light before he slams back down onto something else solid. Instinct tells him it was a slight, careful drop, and yet his brain is rattling around inside its casing, careening back and forth like a ping-pong ball and only growing more and more incoherent.
“Unresponsive- “ The world starts to slide, and someone is putting their hands on him again. “-head injury? No external-”
The lift and drop echo in his bones, up and down like ocean waves, plunging into dreamlike incoherency and vague snippets of bizarre places he’s never been to, and rising to the surface again with sensations all over. The ceiling lights zip by like a zoetrope wheel, but there’s no picture on the other side. Maybe he’s the one being watched, then. Light, shadow, light, shadow, light, shadow. Blip, blip, blip-
Blip. A glowing red rose, miles away in the sky.
“Fell down…top…witnesses-”
“-rrhythm….pressure?”
Blip. Shooting stars, close enough to reach out and touch. He’s flying…
“...face down…”
Something too tight grabs his arm and squeezes, and he’s worried it’s going to collapse.
“Commotio cordis? ...can’t get-...more than twelve-”
Blip. A gigantic tree, glowing in pastels. Babbling coos and chirps and a comforting weight in his arms.
The colors of the world wash out, leaving everything white and gray. An instinctive unease coils in his stomach. He doesn’t like this. Where’s mom, where’s grandma? Why does everything ache?
Blip. An iridescent castle. Endless twisting corridors.
There’s a little black cat with bright red eyes sitting curled up on his chest. He blinks. It blinks back. He blinks again. It’s gone. Light, shadow, light-
“Don’t like…prealbumin test-” A gritty, grainy voice drags through his ears like sandpaper. “No rhythm-”
Blip. An endless, blurry red void. And…panels, like a chessboard, crosses and circles, spinning around and around and around and-
A horrible pain lances through his chest, and he jerks with a gasp. His lungs don’t move the way they're supposed to, nothing does, and all his body can manage is a pathetic half-lurch, like a dropped fish flopping on a dock. Everything in his vision smears and spirals, and all he can do is swallow down the acid pooled in his throat and pray for the feeling to go away. Sleep. He wants to sleep. Things don’t hurt when he’s asleep.
The voices are in a frenzy, the brief snippets of understandable sound shrill and uncertain.
“Blood- …50/35- !”
“...start it up…gonna shut down- !”
There aren’t any moving lights anymore. There’s only one, massive and radiant and still, just like the sun. Maybe it is the sun. Maybe he was sitting on the balcony with mom again, watching the sky after work. But if it was the sun, why did he feel cold…?
If there was any air in his lungs, the sudden blow to his ribs would have knocked it out. One of the shadows holds something, presses it to his skin. This one’s all wrapped in white, like an angel, but this angel doesn’t have a mask made of metal. He’s not sure why he expects them to, all he knows is that it doesn’t feel correct.
The hands come back, feeling all over. Darkness drapes over his face, and something tries forcing warm air down his throat. It doesn’t stay. Something cold replaces it, and he suddenly misses the darkness.
Grandma’s watching in the corner of his vision, why isn’t she helping? He’s scared, he doesn’t understand what’s going on, and she’s just looking on. His hand twitches in place. She doesn’t reach out to hold it. Doesn’t say a word.
Another blow hits him, in the same spot as the first. She’s gone, just like the cat.
“Shit- amiodarone- !”
The giant light beckons him. It’s the only thing he can make out. It promises warmth from the cold. As soon as he lets go, it will wrap him up in its embrace. Let go…let go of everything…the pain, the cold, the darkness, sink into the warmth of the light. Sleep. Let go.
It’s a promise he couldn’t say no to, even if he wanted to. He’s so tired that he can’t even force his eyes shut. The sensations start to muddle, fuzz, vanish into nothing. Another hit makes his body jerk, but he can’t feel it. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is the light. It promised him heat, but everything is so cold.
Cold…it’s cold…
-
A droplet of warmth strikes his cheek.
His vision sharpens as he blinks. Someone is on top of him, blocking out the rays and draping a shadow along his body.
Despite that, as he looks at their face, he knows he’s still staring up at light.
And he doesn’t feel cold anymore.