Awakenings
The first thing I notice is the light. Not the kind of light you see outside, not sunlight cutting through blinds or streetlamps slicing the dark. This is hospital light—white, pressing, unforgiving. It burns a little at first, and my eyes clench instinctively. I'm not sure how long I've been asleep. Hours? Days? Weeks? Maybe even months. My head hurts in ways I can't quite describe—sharp, dull, aching, and weighted all at once, like it's trying to remind me that I exist, here, in this body, in this room.
"Kenjiro…" The voice is soft, trembling. Familiar. My ears tune to it automatically. My body moves before my mind fully catches up. My eyelids are heavy, but I force them open.
Mom. Her face is wet, shiny with tears, and there's something in her eyes I haven't seen before. Relief? Fear? Something older, deeper, that I can't name. "You're awake," she says again, barely above a whisper, but it carries weight. Her hand reaches for mine. I let it fall into hers. It's warm. Solid. Human.
I hear dad's voice next, lower, steadier. "It's okay… you're awake, Kenjiro. Take it slow."
I want to answer. I want to tell them I'm fine. But my throat is tight, my tongue heavy. Nothing comes out. I blink, slow, deliberate. I flex my fingers. They move. My arms. My legs. Everything works. I'm alive.
The room feels enormous. The machines, the white walls, the hum of the ventilators and monitors—they're all there, all real, yet slightly off, as though my eyes and brain are still learning how to process them.
I notice flashes. Tiny, fleeting, surreal. A line of light twisting where it shouldn't. Shadows bending subtly around the equipment. I see it and then it's gone. My first thought: the medicine, the sleep, the coma—it's just my mind tricking me. It has to be.
I try to lift my head fully. Pain, sharp and dull at once, runs through my neck. Mom supports me without saying a word. Dad crouches beside me, checking vitals, murmuring instructions, gentle reminders. I take shallow breaths, tasting the antiseptic air, the faint metallic tang of the hospital.
Time is fluid. Seconds stretch impossibly. Minutes slip by unnoticed. The more I move, the more I feel my body waking up. Each muscle, each tendon, each joint. Small twitches. Tiny adjustments. Little sparks of sensation I haven't felt in forever. My body is a map I'm relearning, and it is exhausting, and exhilarating.
I close my eyes briefly. Shapes flicker in my mind—threads of light, spirals, loops curling inward and outward, gold and white, shimmering. I tell myself they're memories, dreams, hallucinations, the mind playing tricks after so long. I can't name them. I don't understand them. They disappear if I focus.
Mom's hand never leaves mine. Dad's is steady on my shoulder. I move my toes, fingers. The smallest movements feel like triumphs. I blink again and realize I can't remember when I last did this—last consciously moved like this. There's a vague fog in my mind, pieces of time missing. I don't know how long I've been out.
The first day is slow. Everything is slow. Moving, breathing, thinking. Mom reads to me from somewhere between hopeful and terrified, her voice a tether to normality. Dad monitors, instructs, reassures. Each small victory—lifting my head, swallowing, speaking a word or two—is met with tears and smiles and quiet exclamations. I want to speak properly, to tell them I'm okay, but the words feel fragile, like they might shatter midair.
In the quiet moments, when my parents step out or shift in their seats, I notice the small oddities. The monitors flicker faintly, just at the edges. Light bends weirdly on the floor tiles, almost like it resists me. Air vibrates subtly. I try to ignore it, blaming fatigue, the coma, or the strange lingering effects of medicine. I'm not ready to think any other way.
I sleep, and I wake. Time moves in strange rhythms. Weeks fold over themselves. Mom and Dad remain constant, eyes tired but hopeful, hands warm, voices soft but firm. My body regains strength slowly. I sit more, speak more, eat more. Each day feels both normal and unreal, like I'm catching up to a life I haven't lived yet.
Sometimes, in the quietest moments—while I blink awake, while my hand stretches toward Mom's, while I focus on breathing—the flashes return. Brief, cosmic, dreamlike: spirals, currents, loops, whispers of motion I cannot name. Always faint, always fleeting. I tell myself it's my mind playing tricks, leftover fragments from a long coma, stories I half-remember from before.
Mom smiles at me one morning when I manage to sit up without help. "See? You're getting stronger every day." dad nods, watching me carefully. I nod back. The tingle in my fingers comes again when our hands brush lightly. Just static electricity, I tell myself. Nothing more.
Months pass. The hospital routines fold into a pattern: therapy, meals, rest, observation, minor victories. Mom adjusts her hair, smooths my blanket, murmurs encouragement. Dad checks vitals, watches my progress, makes quiet notes in a notebook no one else can see. Outside, seasons change. Sunlight shifts through the window, casting longer shadows, softening the stark walls.
Time becomes a gentle river. I float along, relearning my body, reacquainting myself with breath, motion, and words. I notice the little details—how my reflection in the window lags slightly behind my movements, how shadows lengthen and curve oddly when I shift my gaze, how the air carries a faint hum just beneath consciousness. I dismiss them. I have to. There's no other explanation.
Two months. Maybe two months?? I have no sense of duration, no anchor to measure the passage. Just the slow, relentless recovery, day after day. Mom and Dad are always near. Hands, eyes, voices. Their relief and exhaustion are palpable, mixing with pride, love, fear. I respond in small ways. A word. A gesture. A nod. Each small triumph is a tether to life, grounding me in reality.
Then, one morning, I wake fully. No fog. No lingering haze. No uncertainty. Just the weight of my body, the clarity of my senses, the unmistakable reality of here and now.
Mom's face is inches from mine, eyes wide and brimming. Dad's hand grips my shoulder, steadying. Both are frozen in relief, exhaustion. I want to speak. I open my mouth. Words form easily now, solid, real.
But the world around me is subtly… different. I don't understand it yet. There's a pull under my skin, a faint vibration in the air, tiny sparks of electricity brushing across my fingers when I move. I notice them, fleeting, and then tell myself it's nothing—just my body readjusting, imagination, after-effects of long sleep. Nothing more.
I breathe. Mom squeezes my hand. Dad nods, almost imperceptibly. The world is ordinary. Normal. Safe.
And yet, in the faintest edges of my perception, I feel threads of something else. A rhythm just beyond understanding. A shimmer at the corner of sight. A loop that curls inward, outward, impossible and fleeting.
I dismiss it again. My mind tells me it's a trick. A phantom. My imagination playing games with me.
I am awake.
I am here.
And for now… that is enough.