Consciousness returned like a dial being slowly turned up from zero. First came awareness—a vague sense that I existed somewhere in the universe, though where exactly remained a mystery. Then came the realization that I had a body, though it felt like it belonged to someone else, all heavy and disconnected.
My mind felt like it was swimming through molasses. Thick, sticky thoughts that wouldn't quite form properly. I tried to remember where I was, what had happened, but the memories felt slippery, like trying to hold onto water with bare hands.
I attempted to open my eyes, and even that simple action felt like lifting weights. My eyelids were concrete slabs, and my brain was a construction worker who'd called in sick. When I finally managed to crack them open, the world looked like someone had smeared petroleum jelly on a camera lens.
Everything was blurry, unfocused, like I was looking through frosted glass. Shapes moved in my peripheral vision—indistinct blobs that could have been furniture, people, or interdimensional entities for all I could tell. I tried to lift my arm to rub my eyes, but the command got lost somewhere between my brain and my muscles.
Christ, I felt drained. Not just tired—drained. Like someone had pulled out my batteries and forgotten to put them back in. Even breathing felt like work, each inhale requiring conscious effort instead of happening automatically like it was supposed to.
Gradually, my vision began to clear, one blink at a time. The blurry shapes started to resolve into recognizable objects, and that's when the smell hit me.
Industrial disinfectant. That harsh, chemical smell that tried to mask other, less pleasant odors but only managed to create a unique bouquet of "institutional cleanliness." Underneath it, the medicinal scent of bandages and antiseptic, with hints of floor wax and that indefinable hospital smell that seemed to permeate every surface.
I didn't need to see the room to know where I was. That smell was as distinctive as a fingerprint.
Hospital. Definitely a hospital.
My vision finally decided to cooperate, and I took stock of my surroundings. The room was trying its best to be cozy, like a motel that wanted to be a bed-and-breakfast when it grew up. The walls were painted in that particular shade of beige that interior designers probably called "soothing neutral" but which really just screamed "we gave up on making this place look good."
To my right, a dresser squatted against the wall like a beige troll, its surface covered in medical equipment that looked like it had been designed by someone who'd only heard vague descriptions of what electronics should look like. Machines with screens displaying numbers that meant nothing to me, cables snaking between devices like electronic spaghetti, and a few gadgets that could have been life-saving equipment or elaborate paperweights for all I could tell.
Directly in front of me, positioned under a window that showed nothing but gray sky, sat a small table that was clearly fighting a losing battle against institutional cheerfulness. Someone had placed a pot of flowers on it—daisies, maybe?—but they looked like they'd seen better days. The petals were starting to curl at the edges, and a few had already given up and fallen onto the table like tiny white surrender flags.
The walls were decorated with the kind of motivational posters that probably made the hospital administrators feel good about themselves. "Hang in There!" with a picture of a kitten clinging to a branch. "Every Day is a Gift!" with a sunset that looked suspiciously photoshopped. Medical illustrations that tried to make the human circulatory system look friendly and approachable, though I'm not sure there's any non-terrifying way to display a diagram of someone's internal organs.
To my left, a door stood closed, presumably leading to the hallway where nurses in squeaky shoes roamed the corridors like benevolent ghosts.
That's when I felt the pressure on my right hand.
I turned my head—slowly, because apparently my neck had forgotten how to move properly—and saw a sight that made everything else fade into background noise.
My mom was slumped in a chair next to the bed, her hand wrapped around mine. She was asleep, but it was the kind of sleep that looked more like exhaustion than rest. Her hair was mussed, sticking up at odd angles like she'd been running her hands through it. Her clothes were wrinkled, the same outfit she'd probably been wearing when she'd gotten the call about me. Dark circles under her eyes told the story of someone who'd been existing on hospital coffee and worry.
The sight of her hit me like a punch to the gut, and suddenly everything came flooding back with crystal clarity.
The night shift. The endless parade of fluorescent minutes ticking by while I sat behind that counter, reading garbage novels and contemplating my life choices. The peculiar customer—Christ, that rainbow-colored fever dream of a person with their enormous goggles and craft beer. The lottery ticket that wasn't a lottery ticket, black as obsidian and covered in symbols that looked like they'd been designed by someone who'd never seen human writing but had heard it described by a drunk alien.
The blue screen. That impossible, physics-defying holographic rectangle floating in the air like it owned the place. The text materializing letter by letter: Multiversal Lottery Consortium. The casual mention of shutting down my consciousness like I was a computer being rebooted.
And then... nothing. The switch being flipped, reality cutting out like a TV with a loose cable.
But here I was, very much conscious and very much not dead. The memories were so vivid, so detailed, that they felt more real than the hospital room around me. Which was exactly the problem, wasn't it? Because no sane person would look at those memories and think, "Yeah, that seems like a reasonable sequence of events."
I could practically hear the conversation if I tried to explain it to anyone:
"So you're telling me a mysterious person in rainbow clothes gave you a magic lottery ticket that summoned a holographic computer system?"
"Yes."
"And this system claimed to be from a multiversal lottery consortium?"
"Correct."
"And then it knocked you unconscious to 'fuse' with you?"
"That's what it said, yeah."
Cue the concerned looks, the gentle suggestions about head trauma and stress-induced hallucinations, the subtle hints about psychiatric evaluations.
My mom would think I'd hit my head when I collapsed—which, for all I knew, maybe I had. Maybe everything I remembered was just my brain's attempt to make sense of a perfectly ordinary fainting spell brought on by too many energy drinks and not enough sleep. Maybe the weird customer had been a perfectly normal person buying cigarettes, and my overtired mind had transformed them into some interdimensional lottery agent.
It was the rational explanation. The sane explanation.
The boring explanation.
But if it was not all just a hallucination, then where was the system? Where was this limitles thingy that was supposed to have fused with me? Shouldn't there be some sign, some indication that something had changed?
I tried to focus, to feel around inside my own mind for anything unusual. Did I feel different? More intelligent? Less intelligent? Did I suddenly understand advanced mathematics or have the urge to build impossibly complex machines?
Nothing. I felt exactly like I always did—tired, confused, and vaguely disappointed by the general state of existence.
I sighed, the sound barely audible but apparently loud enough to stir my mom. Better to shelve these questions for now. Even if the whole thing had been real, there was no way I could explain it to anyone without sounding like I needed a padded room and heavy medication. My mom had enough problems without adding "son might be having psychotic break" to her list.
The poor woman already worked herself to the bone, juggling multiple jobs just to keep us fed and housed. She cleaned offices at night, waited tables during lunch rushes, and did data entry work whenever she could find it. The last thing she needed was to worry about my mental health on top of everything else.
I closed my eyes, planning to take a short nap and let my mom sleep a little bit. She needed the rest.
---
When I opened my eyes again, my mom was standing by the door with her back to me, talking to someone in a white lab coat. The doctor's voice was professional but tired, the kind of tired that came from having the same conversation multiple times a day.
"Are you sure that's the only solution, doctor?"
"I'm afraid so, ma'am. It's already been a day and a half. He can't go much longer without food."
A day and a half. I did some quick mental math, which wasn't easy considering my brain still felt like it was running on backup power. I'd been working Sunday night when the whole lottery ticket incident happened. If it had been a day and a half, that meant it was Tuesday. Either some customer had found me unconscious during their midnight munchie run, or Judy had discovered me when she came in for her Monday morning shift.
The thought of Judy finding me crumpled behind the counter was both embarrassing and oddly touching. She was in her sixties, worked the day shift, and had a tendency to treat all the younger employees like wayward grandchildren. She probably panicked, called 911, and rode in the ambulance while clutching her purse and muttering prayers.
At least I hadn't been unconscious for weeks or months. I sighed. A day and a half was manageable. Weird, but manageable.
That's when my mom turned around, probably having heard my sigh—mothers had supernatural hearing when it came to their children's distress. Her eyes went wide, cycling through surprise, relief, and what looked suspiciously like the urge to cry.
She covered the distance between the door and my bed faster than I would have thought possible, moving with the kind of speed usually reserved for emergency situations or Black Friday sales. I could see her fighting every maternal instinct that was probably screaming at her to throw herself on me and squeeze until she was certain I was really okay.
Instead, she settled for taking my left hand in both of hers, her grip warm and slightly damp with nervous sweat.
"Oh, thank God!" Her voice wavered like a radio signal trying to find the right frequency. "Sweetie! Are you alright? Are you hungry? Do you need water? Are you in pain? How are you feeling? Do you remember what happened? Mommy's here."
The questions came rapid-fire, like she'd been storing them up during her vigil and they all decided to escape at once. I almost rolled my eyes—not because I was annoyed, but because it was so perfectly her. Even in crisis mode, she was still the woman who packed my lunch with little notes and worried when I was five minutes late coming home.
But rolling my eyes would have been a dick move, considering she'd probably been sitting in that uncomfortable chair for thirty-six hours straight, surviving on vending machine coffee and the kind of determination that only mothers possessed.
Instead, I tried to smile, though I wasn't sure how successful I was. My face felt like it belonged to someone else, all stiff and unresponsive.
"I..." I started to tell her I was okay, that everything was fine, that she didn't need to worry. But my throat had other ideas.
The sound that came out was less like speech and more like someone trying to start a car with a dead battery. Rough, scratchy, and completely unintelligible. My vocal cords felt like they'd been replaced with sandpaper, and my mouth was drier than a stand-up comedian's sense of humor.
Right. A day and a half without water or food, plus being unconscious the whole time. No wonder I sounded like a chain-smoker gargling gravel.
"Oh, how silly of me!" Mom's hand flew to her forehead in the universal gesture of someone who'd just realized they'd forgotten something obvious. "Let's save the questions for later. You clearly need water and food first."
She turned toward the doctor, who'd been standing patiently in the doorway like a medical statue. "Doctor, could you—"
"Don't worry, ma'am. I already notified the nurse. She should be here shortly." He stepped back into the room, probably having stepped out to give us a moment of privacy as well as notify one of the nurses. "We'll get him hydrated and fed, and then we can discuss his condition."
His condition. That sounded ominous. Though I supposed "unexplained unconsciousness for thirty-six hours" probably qualified as a condition worth discussing.
"Thank you, Doctor," Mom said, her voice heavy with the kind of gratitude that came from having a medical professional take your concerns seriously.
She turned back to me, her eyes scanning my face like she was trying to memorize every detail to make sure I was really there.
"Can you wait just a little bit, honey? You must be starving." She reached out and placed her hand on my forehead, probably checking for fever out of pure parental instinct. Her palm was cool against my skin, and the gesture was so familiar, so normal, that I felt something tight in my chest start to loosen.
I nodded, not trusting my voice to cooperate if I tried to speak again. I was hungry—now that she mentioned it, I was really hungry. The kind of hungry that made you want to eat everything in sight and then consider eating the sight itself.
A few minutes later, the door opened and a nurse walked in. She was middle-aged, with the kind of cheerful efficiency that suggested she'd been doing this job long enough to find genuine joy in helping people feel better. She carried a tray that looked like it had been assembled by someone who'd heard the concept of "appetizing" described but had never actually seen it in practice.
"Good evening!" she said with the kind of brightness that could probably power a small city. "Here's your five-star hospital cuisine!"
She was joking, obviously, but the humor in her voice suggested she was the type of person who found ways to make the best of any situation. She set the tray down on the dresser next to my bed with a gentle clink of metal against metal.
I tried to sit up, my muscles protesting like union workers being asked to work overtime. But Mom's hand immediately pressed against my chest, gentle but firm.
"No, honey, you shouldn't move too much yet."
The nurse's kind gaze settled on me, and I could see the professional assessment happening behind her eyes—checking my color, my alertness, probably making mental notes about my condition.
"No need to get up," she agreed. "Let me help you get into a more comfortable position, alright?"
I nodded, and Mom stepped back to give the nurse room to work. She moved with practiced efficiency, adjusting controls on the side of the bed that I hadn't even noticed.
The bed began to rise with a quiet mechanical whir, folding at what I assumed was the waist until I was sitting upright. It was like being transformed from a horizontal person into a vertical one through the magic of hospital engineering.
"Comfortable?" the nurse asked, fluffing pillows behind my head with the kind of expertise that came from years of pillow-fluffing. The pillows were that particular shade of hospital white that suggested they'd been sanitized to within an inch of their lives.
I nodded again, and she smiled.
"Great! Now..." She retrieved the tray and positioned it over my lap, the metal legs extending to bracket my sides. "Eat to your heart's content. Don't be shy about asking for seconds if you're still hungry."
She leaned in conspiratorially, lowering her voice to a stage whisper. "Though I'd go easy on the soup—it's not exactly what you'd call palatable, if you know what I mean."
She winked, and I found myself genuinely smiling for the first time since I'd woken up. There was something endearing about a healthcare professional who was willing to acknowledge that hospital food was, objectively, pretty terrible.
"Ahem." The doctor cleared his throat with the weary patience of someone who'd dealt with this particular nurse's commentary before. "Miss Johnson, shouldn't you be bringing Mr. Gustavo his lunch? You know how he gets when his meal is delayed."
Miss Johnson's eyes widened with the look of someone who'd just remembered they'd left the stove on. "Oh! Right! You could have mentioned it sooner!"
She bustled toward the door with the kind of hurried efficiency that suggested Mr. Gustavo was indeed someone you didn't want to keep waiting. The doctor sighed and shook his head, but there was affection in the gesture.
"May I feed him, Doctor?" Mom's voice cut through the slightly awkward silence that followed the nurse's departure.
"Of course, ma'am. No need to ask permission."
Mom settled herself on what I now realized was a fold-out chair that had probably been her bed for the past day and a half. The thought of her trying to sleep in that thing made my chest tight with guilt. She'd probably twisted herself into uncomfortable positions, waking up every few minutes to check if I was still breathing.
"I'll leave you two to it," the doctor said, moving toward the door. "I'll have Miss Johnson check on you in a bit, and we can discuss the next steps."
Next steps. More ominous medical terminology. But I pushed the worry aside—I was awake, I was coherent, and my mom was here. Whatever came next, we'd deal with it.
The door closed with a soft click, leaving us alone with the tray of allegedly five-star hospital cuisine.
Mom reached for the spoon, which was the kind of utilitarian metal that suggested it had been designed for durability rather than aesthetics. "Let's start with the soup. The warmth will be good for your stomach."
She dipped the spoon into the bowl, which contained what looked like chicken broth with a few sad vegetables floating in it like survivors of a culinary shipwreck. The liquid had that particular translucent quality that suggested it had been made more for nutrition than flavor.
She lifted the spoon toward my mouth, and then something magical happened. My mom, this strong, capable woman who juggled multiple jobs and kept our family together through sheer force of will, opened her own mouth as she brought the spoon to my lips.
"Aahhh..." she said automatically, the sound coming from some deep parental programming that apparently never got deleted no matter how old your kids got.
I couldn't help but grin. The sight of my grown mother unconsciously mimicking the feeding motions she'd probably used when I was two years old was both ridiculous and incredibly endearing. I wanted to tell her I wasn't a toddler anymore, that I could probably manage to eat soup without visual demonstrations of the mouth-opening process.
But then I saw her catch herself, her cheeks flushing slightly as she realized what she'd done. Her eyes met mine, and we both started laughing—or rather, she laughed and I made what I hoped were appreciative chuckling sounds given the current state of my vocal cords.
"Come on," she said, still smiling. "Aahhh..."
She did it again, completely deliberately this time, her eyes crinkling with amusement. And honestly? I didn't have the heart to object. If acting like a two-year-old made her feel better after thirty-six hours of not knowing if I was going to wake up, then I could play along.
I opened my mouth and accepted the spoon. The soup was... well, Miss Johnson hadn't been wrong. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't good either. It occupied that perfect middle ground of hospital food—nutritious enough to keep you alive, bland enough to not offend anyone's palate, and forgettable enough that you wouldn't dream about it later.
But it was warm, and it was food, and after a day and a half of existing on whatever reserves my body had stored up, it tasted like salvation.
The next few minutes passed in comfortable silence. Spoon to bowl, bowl to mouth, repeat. It was meditative in its simplicity, this basic act of nourishment. My mom's movements were gentle and patient, never rushing, never making me feel like an invalid despite the fact that I was literally being spoon-fed soup in a hospital bed.
I could feel my energy starting to return with each spoonful. The foggy exhaustion that had been weighing me down began to lift, replaced by something that almost felt like normal human alertness. My throat stopped feeling like the Sahara desert, and I started to think I might actually survive this experience.
Soon, the bowl was empty, and I realized I was still hungry. Really hungry. The soup had been more of an appetizer than a meal.
"Still hungry, honey?" Mom asked, reaching for one of the bananas that had been arranged on the tray like yellow crescent moons.
I nodded enthusiastically, probably more enthusiastically than the situation warranted. But damn, I was starving, and those bananas looked like the most appetizing things I'd seen in recent memory.
She peeled the first one with careful precision, breaking it into bite-sized pieces before feeding them to me one at a time. The sweetness was almost overwhelming after the bland soup, and I devoured each piece like I'd been stranded on a desert island.
We made quick work of all five bananas, and by the time we were done, I felt almost human again. Almost normal. If you ignored the hospital setting and the fact that I'd just spent thirty-six hours unconscious for reasons that defied rational explanation.
"Oh, you must have been starving, honey," Mom said, depositing the last banana peel on the tray with a slightly helpless expression. "But you probably shouldn't eat too much more right now."
I wanted to argue—there was still Jell-O on the tray, and what looked like crackers, and I was pretty sure I could handle more food. But she was right. Too much too fast after extended fasting was a recipe for digestive disaster, and the last thing I wanted was to end up vomiting all over the hospital bed.