Into the Blackness

He awoke from the blackness to the monotone sounds of machines beeping, breathing, grinding. The room started to slowly materialize. It was caramel dark and poorly lit. Nothing looked familiar. Nothing sounded recognizable. Nothing felt, nothing felt at all. His senses became overcome with the abrupt realizations of his surroundings, the blackness came back.

13 days had passed before he had finally made it back to the land of the living. The doctor approached him to give an assessment of the past day's events. "Quite a trooper you are." The doctor said in pleasantly deep but somewhat distant voice. "You were beat up pretty bad when those hunters found you. The only thing that saved you was that bitter cold that they found you in. It stopped the blood loss and kept you alive." The doctor paused for a moment as to almost reset his train of thought. "Even though severe frostbite has set in we were able to save all of your limbs and extremities." He paused again for what seemed like a small eternity. "Unfortunately we were not successful in repairing the nerve damage to most of your outer dermis." The doctor struggled to better explain the diagnosis. "What I'm trying to say is…you've lost most of the ability to physically feel anything. We've ran pain tolerance tests and found that where most patients will feel an 8 or 9 on a simple 10 point scale you feel a 1 maybe 2 at best. Now, we're doing everything we can to try and reverse this but so far our efforts have produced little to no change at all."

The doctor continued to do his best to explain the situation but he had already tuned his medical droning out. The revelation of his injuries was clear now. He had survived but at what cost? "What is a life absent of feeling?" he internally asked himself. Never will he know the difference between pleasure and pain. Never be able to feel the warm rays of the sun again on his weathered face. The embrace of a loved one, forever void of any physical connection.

He looked away from the doctor and focused his vision at the porous ceiling tiles above him. He hadn't even realized the tears that were now streaming down his face. He slowly closed his eyes and began to drift off again. Back to the only place he had found any comfort in the past 13 days…back to the cold, silent blackness.