As I began to regain consciousness, the first thing I felt was a sense of motion. I could not open my eyes (that is, if I had any) but I could hear several voices:
"Give me another bandage."
"Here. God, what a stench."
"Be careful, he might be able to hear."
"I doubt it. He doesn't seem conscious. What the hell happened to him? Did he douse himself with gasoline, or something?"
"Don't know. We found him like this on the floor. Funny thing was, nothing else was burned in the room. Even the carpet under him wasn't burned. How could that happen?"
"Beats me. Hand me that syringe."
It dawned on me that I was in an ambulance, and the EMS crew was attending to me on the way to the hospital. I could not move or speak, so they assumed that I was unconscious. I could not feel anything except that singular numbness of corporeal awareness, the slight rocking motion of the ambulance, and a vague sense of busyness around me.
"He has third degree burns over his whole body. How is he even still alive?"
"I don't understand it. Hand me those forceps. Did you take his vital signs?"
"That's what's so spooky. His heart rate is normal, blood pressure normal, even his eyes respond to light. I don't know how it is that his eyes were not burned. Most of his face is gone. He has no lips at all."
"Having no lips is the least of his problems."
God, I wanted to laugh!
"Alright, here we are. Open the doors."
I remember an endless series of manipulations, immersions in baths and applications of sundry ointments, skin grafts from unknown donors of all shades, injections and bandaging. During all this, I was in and out of consciousness, half dreaming, but always feeling no pain. I was taken to be in a coma, and was hooked up to respirators and monitors, and finally seemed to be mostly left in one place. Gradually I began to feel more solidly in my body, and eventually I opened my eyes.
This innocent act provoked a great commotion around me, as I heard nurses running everywhere.
"Esmerelda! He's awake. Call Dr. Rausch"
"Madre de Dios! The poor dear."
A beautiful Filipino face approached mine, smiling and with a look of amazement.
"Welcome back Mr. Zot. Can you hear me? Blink if you can hear me."
I sent nerve impulses to my eyelids, and my vision was briefly blacked out, so I assumed that my attempt at blinking was successful.
Oh! Esmerelda, he can hear me! Don't you worry, Mr. Zot, everything's going to be O.K. You know, you're famous. You were in all the papers. Nobody can figure out what happened to you. It's been a big mystery. Can you speak?"
I tried to speak.
"I... don't...know."
"Yes you can, you can! Don't strain yourself now, wait until the doctor gets here. Oh, it's so good to see you coming around."
The beautiful face disappeared, and nothing happened for several minutes, although I could hear a commotion outside my room. Eventually, a group rushed in.
An older man with gray, shiny hair approached, and spoke first with a heavy Texas accent. Behind him were several other men in white coats, and the now familiar Filipino face that entranced me with its beauty.
"Well, Mr. Zot, I'm glad you could join us. My name is Dr. Rausch. You've caused a lot of commotion, what with your mysterious accident and your miraculous recovery. Not many people thought you would make it, and no one would have imagined that you would recover to this extent. Yet here you are, awake and talking. How do you feel? Could you tell me?"
The faces beamed expectantly as they awaited my reply.
"Well... I've...been...better."
I tried to smile, and felt a mighty stiffness around my mouth. I was not surprised by this, but suddenly I remembered that, after the accident, I had had no lips, so I wondered how I could smile at all. I lifted my hand to my face and felt around. Sure enough, it felt almost normal.
Now I must have looked astonished, for the group exchanged significant glances. This time, a younger man, also in hospital whites with pendant stethoscope, spoke excitedly.
"It's completely unbelievable, but your tissue has regenerated. We began by giving you skin grafts, but your condition was so bad that they were not taking. We were starting to despair when we noticed that your own skin was growing back at an astonishing rate. We stopped the grafts, and in no time you were covered with healthy tissue. Not scar tissue, but normal, healthy tissue! It was unbelievable!"
He could barely contain his excitement. He was like an eight year old who had just seen an ant pop from focused sunlight under a magnifying glass for the first time. He was almost jumping up and down.
By this time, Dr. Raush was examining me with various implements and making satisfied grunts under his breath. He seemed like someone who had just closed a killer business deal, and was looking forward to a new BMW. Esmerelda was fussing with the curtain and whispering to another nurse who giggled softly. I heard only a few words of what they were saying: "grew back", "even that?", "enormous!", "wow!"
I also noticed, behind the group of doctors, and also in the hall, other men in suits and also policemen. The one with the most presence was an older balding man in a gray suit who was quietly watching me from the doorway. He did not pay any attention to what the doctors or nurses were doing, just watching me. Next to him was a younger man writing in a small notebook. He kept licking the tip of the pen he was writing with, and as he did I could see an ink blot on his tongue. I found this slightly disturbing, but my attention was drawn back to the doctors around me, and Dr. Rauch was asking me something.
"Mr. Zot, are you with us? Can you tell us what happened?
Could I tell them what happened. What had happened? I let myself go back, to what was my last memory. I remembered changing my guitar strings, sipping split pea soup, and then I remembered the voices in the ambulance. No, there was something in between, like a blur or a smudge of paint that swirled many colors together. If I could get closer to the smudge, maybe I could see what was in it. It seemed that it was important, I wanted to see what was in it, but right now all it was was a smudge of colors, sort of swirling around. Guitar stings, a smudge, and here I was.
The were waiting expectantly for an answer, they all looked like they would faint from holding their breath if I didn't say something soon. It was sort of comical, the pregnant silence in the room, and I felt like this was not the first time a group of people had awaited my words with such concentrated anticipation, but I could not place why I felt that way. I spoke quietly, but the words were coming out more easily now.
"I was in my room...changing my guitar string...cut my finger..."
They hung on every word, waiting for the punch line. I was staring at my finger, the one that I remembered being punctured by the metal of the string. It was my thumb, and as I gazed intently at it, as if it would tell me what to say next, I began to see images in the nail, some yellow, some red, or blue. I was hypnotized by them and no longer was aware of anything else. A patch of yellow, in particular, floated to the front and began to approach me. Or rather, I began to be drawn into it, for I felt that I was leaving the "real" world more and more behind, and entering into what I can only describe as a yellow enigma.
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