Play@YSDC

The sight of Joel brings vivid chunks of his nightmare back to Leroy. The shock of seeing him in real life (?) on top of learning hes just woken up for a coma is enough to render him incapable of coherent speech. For a while he just stares, opening and closing his mouth...

"Joel?" he says eventually "Did i dream you or are you dreaming me?"

"Good question," Joel says from his seated position in bed. "I checked outside, it's nice ... a pleasant day... white fluffy clouds, no signs of ash anywhere. I've got no scars on my belly ... so I'm confused. If it was a dream, why do I know who you are? If this is a dream... well, it beats the last one."

He looked around the room. If they had been admitted, there should be a closet or locker with their belongings. "Maybe if they kept all the stuff we were carrying ... that could prove things one way or another."

"the stuff? yeah yeah." Leroy struggles to get up.

ooc: do the characters still have the same hp they ended up with in ch1. is leroy still hurting i guess is what i'm asking. can he stand?

"do you remember other people? sarah? louis?"

"Sarah went off to help the others get the kids on the helicopter. And Obi-Wan decided to take his chances back in the hospital." Joel considered swinging his legs down off the bed but thought better of it, "I'm so... weak. I guess that is to be expected after 3 years of bed rest. It's hard to stand without holding on to something."

It dawned on him, the last part of the nightmare. He asked Leroy, "My mother... at least we saved her from ... whatever that thing was. All those pipes and black goo." He shivered. "I wonder if she's here, probably not. Not if we were in a coma for 3 years. They're probably calling her now."

"And you don't think its weird that we dreamt the same thing, the same people. How can that be?"

Leroy feels nauseas and weak, but uninjured. There is a closet pressed against the wall for each patient but they only contain the two patients' normal clothes and a few knick knacks. Leroy's closet contains a box of old chocolates - the use by date indicates it's a year old.

"Who says I don't think it's weird?" Joel asked Leroy pointedly. "Whole bloody situation is weird. But it fits into the whole equation of what I was saying earlier. All that we experienced... the weird stuff... must have been a mass hallucination, even got to me at the end. Then the poison in the air finally took us down for the count. Instead of dying, we fell into a coma."

Joel coughed and put a hand to his throat, "At least my tonsilitis is not an issue anymore. Still got this stupid IV attached to my arm though." He chuckled as he looked over to Leroy following the IV tube in his arm up to the bottle suspended over his head, "at least I'm not the only one this time."

Leroy nods unhappily, accepting the explanation as the only one they have. He grins back.

"Look at you, all grown up." A moment later he is frowning again. "We need to find a doctor, someone needs to tell us what happened. I need to see my kid.."

Anxiety creeps into his voice as he sways slightly and grabs the bedrail for support. The situation seems a bit much for him.

Joel falls silent for a moment, feeling a little empathy for Leroy. He knew what it was like to worry about a loved one. And as far as he knew, they found his mother alive and well. Joel wasn't in a right state of mind at that moment. Leroy might know better, but he wasn't telling.

Joel broke the silence a minute later, "Say Leroy... you think this is the same hospital?"

Joel reaches for the cards and photographs on his right, looking through them out of interest. "I wonder who's been curious enough to keep tabs on me for 3 years during a coma?" he mutters to himself.

Leroy looks around to see if he reconizes his surroundings, then starts looking through the cards and photographs by his own bedside, anxious to find one from Marsha and Toby.

"You know what's funny, Leroy? I can't remember a lot of what happened at the end there ... but I do remember you saved me from something." He flipped to another card and read to himself as he continued talking to Leroy, "I want to thank you, even if we were just hallucinating. I appreciate your standing up for me and helping free my mother. I'm sure she'll be thanking you too."

He flipped to the next card and read through it, admiring the cute and funny nature - wondering if the people who sent it did so to relieve them from the burden of remembering a fallen family member, or because they truly felt he might wake up eventually.

"She said something at the end there ... 'Observe the story'. Not really sure what that meant." He looked up and tilted his head, "No, that's not right... observ...atory. Observatory. Yeah, that was it. Wonder why she was so keen on the observatory. Hell, I don't even know where one is."

There are a few cards from Marsha and Toby. It seems the two have been writing them together each month. Marsha seems to be going through the motions after awhile but not Toby. At least, not for the first year. After then, he had been receiving cards every Christmas and birthday. He also finds a card from Cynthia.

Joel finds cards from all sorts of family, relatives, even a few teachers but none from his mother.

"Observatory? The only one I know of is at Greenwich" says Leroy. "I remember taking Toby there..mad on astronomy that kid."

He starts reading Cynthias card. Its contents seem to trouble him.

"They are coming after you...hide.." he mumbles to himself. He sits down on the bed and starts to read through the pages in more detail.

"Hmmm, no card from mom," Joel muttered to himself, thinking it strange. When Leroy said something, the boy turned his head quickly.

"What?" Joel asked ... although he'd been comatose for 3 years, it still seemed like yesterday that they were worried about every little bump in around the corner, and hiding every inch of the way. When he overheard Leroy say someone was coming after him, and to hide... it automatically sent of warning alarms in his mind. "Who's coming after me?"

He looked over at the door, anxiously awaiting the appearance of some mad doctor.

Leroy doesn't read much further before getting up and heading for the closet.

"Grab some clothes" he says to Joel, "Its time to get out of here."

"Are you kidding me?" Joel said in disbelief. "We're in no condition to go gallavanting around. It's gonna take weeks of physical therapy to get back to the shape we were in." He chuckled, "You'll be hugging the wall the whole way just so you don't fall down flat on your face, and eventually even that won't be enough. If you're lucky, you might find a wheelchair though. Why don't you just wait for the doctor? Then we can find out what really happened to us. There's nothing to be running from here."

Leroy turns around. He looks a bit bewildered, but all the same his voice carries conviction.

"I've got a card from Cynthia..its says someones coming for us, its says we've gotta hide, right now. I know that doesn't make any sense...theres more pages, but it says to read them once we're safe...whatever was happening to us, i think its still going on..."

Leroy grabs his clothes from out of the closet, and looks around the room they're in for an exit. Joel is right, he feels terribly weak.

"This is crazy," Joel said crossing his arms defiantly. "Does that even make sense to you? Your ... what is she, your wife? Girlfriend? She writes you a note in a get-well card that you read who knows how many years later... and you act upon it like it's the utmost urgency. What is she, psychic?" Joel held out his hand, "Let me read the letter... make sure you're not seeing things."

Having retrieved his clothes Leroy passes the letter to Joel but isn't going to wait around, he looks round again for the exits. Of course he realises its crazy but at the same time doesn't care...

"Say what you want, I don't think we're all the way through the looking glass just yet, and back where we were signs like this were all i had to go on. Cynthia had gypsy blood man, you need to listen to what she has to say."