Clerical

Chapter Three

Barry's last several hours have been nothing but a blur. Dropping in and out of consciousness and being in what most would describe as acute pain has fully reminded him that he is indeed still alive, albeit barley.

The morphine circulating through his body has done a marvelous job at keeping him dozy, and although he can feel every inch of his body spiking with pain every now and then, he doesn't have the faculties to really comprehend it.

As his conscious moments become more frequent and sustained, he questions the validity of what he's just been though with regards to all this heaven malarkey. He’s heard the stories of people having out-of-body experiences when they've been in hospital for an extended period of time. He always thought they were just mad religious lunatics looking for something to solidify their own beliefs, but that felt so real. The mind works in mysterious ways, and perhaps he's just witnessed what happens when you combine hard drugs with intense physical injury.

Barry starts to come into a more lucid existence, and he quickly becomes adjusted to being awake. His vision is a little burry, but he can make out two figures at his bedside. The first leans over him to adjust some wires in his arm and check his vitals on the machine they are attached too. He recognizes this woman from the hours prior. Whenever he came too, this woman was here helping him. The second figure, he doesn't recognize at all.

Still slightly confused, he takes a good glance at the man. He's a rough looking man. His un-kept three-day beard and a clearly uncared-for hairstyle just screams that this is a man who's either too busy to care, or just doesn't give a damn.

Barry attempts to speak, but can only muster a groan through his oxygen mask. The unkempt man checks his watch and sighs in frustration. The nurse turns to him with an indignant look.

“Like I said, he'll be no use to you for a long while yet. I'll contact you when he's in better shape.”

“Time is a factor here, sweetheart.” The man says in a gruff Scottish accent.“So if you'd kindly get-to-f**k, and go piss about with some of your other patient's bedpans, I'll make sure he doesn't sick himself to death.”

“I'll be reporting this.”The nurse growls as she storms out.

The unkempt man stands up and leans over Barry. He ungently rips off his oxygen mask and gives him a little shake.

“Lookie here, pal. You with me?”He says, snapping his fingers in Barry's face

Barry is in a complete stupor but nods at the man.

“I'm DCI Brogan from Scotland yard. I need to inform you that you were involved in a little incident, just in case you didn't realise. You were the only survivor. Do you remember?”

Barry nods. The words 'only survivor' really hit home, but with very little going on in his head, he has little physical reaction.

“A bus crashes in London because of some sleepy dickhead at the wheel, but just because this is 2017, it has to be investigated as some sort of act of terrorism before we can write it off to sheer incompetence.” Brogan puts Barry's oxygen mask back on. "With that said, I've been tasked with taking a witness statement from you, just in the off chance anyone was screaming anything remotely suspicious before they slammed a bus into you. Any religious nonsense or the like?”

Barry groans.

“I can see that the wee nursey wasn't joking. Waste of time.”Brogan pulls out a business card and lays it on the side table.“In the event you don't wake up braindead and you know anything about what happened, anything out of the ordinary that night, then please give me a call. But just remember that I'm a 55 year old semi-alcoholic divorcee, so don't go wasting my time, son.”

Brogan stretches his arms aloft.

“You're a lucky man to be alive, I'll give you that much.”

The officer walks out of the room, muttering under his breath something about how things used to be and how he needs to have a drink.

Barry rolls his head. Things are starting to come back to him more clearly. The buzz of the café, the monotony of his life, the noise of the last few seconds of his life. He really doesn't remember that much, but what he does remember is quite vivid. He feels like s**t, that much he does know.

He starts to wriggle as the feeling in his body comes back, it hurts to even attempt to move. He checks himself over with what energy he has left. Legs are still there, both arms are still attached, p***s still there, thank god. He sighs in relief; genuinely happy to not be a vegetable.

Out the corner of his eye, he spots a television mounted on the wall of his private room. BBC News is covering a story outside the café where he worked. Flashing across the screen in front of the reporter is the headline,‘8 Dead in Suspicious Bus Crash'. Barry deflates. He may have been a sourpuss about the people he worked for, the customers he saw day in and day out, and the drudgery of his daily life, but this certainly isn’t what he wanted to happen. A grease fire that shut the place down for a week would have been welcomed: this is just overkill.

As he rests his head back onto his pillow with a pant of pain, he's immediately jumped back up by a surprise voice coming from his left.

“Tragic. So very tragic.”The voice tingles with put-on/feigned apathy and quite a thick Northern accent.

Barry almost loses control of his weakened bowels as he spins to see the source of the voice. It takes a second to connect the dots, but he knows he recognizes this man who sits on a chair, legs crossed. The brown stylish hair, the boyish good looks, and the very familiar voice. This is the mysterious man from the café.

“On the plus side, there was at least one survivor. Quite a miracle.” The man winks at Barry. “Hello again.”

Barry manages to mutter,“terrorist?" softly and with great pain.

The man laughs. “No, don't be daft. Anything but, buddy boy.”

Barry tries to speak, but once again, can't get the words out.

“Quite a state you're in, let's have a look at you.” The man says, slapping his knees and rising to his feet happily.

The man takes Barry's chart out from the foot of his bed and flicks through it. He shakes his head and tuts looking over it before throwing it over his shoulder.

“Ahh, not so bad. Some semi-serious internal injuries and shock, nothing that time can't fix.”

The man walks back to Barry's left side and places his hand on Barry's fragile chest. He winces in pain as the man pushes down.

“Unfortunately for you, there ain't enough time for bedrest. But you already know that, don't you?”He gives Barry a knowing look.

Barry groans as he rolls his head back onto his pillow. The man places another hand on Barry’s head and closes his eyes. Barry feels a surge of the most intense pain imaginable; like a thousand daggers made of jagged iron piercing his skin and twisting inside the wound. But within seconds, Barry’s pain has completely subsided. He feels twice the man he was only moments ago. The man smiles at him and nods.

“There we go.”

The man sits back down and casually changes the channel on the TV. Barry pats himself down in disbelief. He stares at the man for a few seconds.

“Who are you?”He asks accusingly.

“Now’s not the time for that. All that you need to know is that the clock is ticking, Barryboy. So if you'd kindly get up from that bed, we can get started.”

Barry looks at the man in disbelief. He opens his mouth to speak but is interrupted by the nurse barging into his room.

The stressed out nurse saunters around to the foot of the bed, not looking up from her paperwork until she spots that the chart is not where it should be. As she notices he well laid out files strewn across the floor of the hospital room she grunts and curses out the detective from before.

Barry turns back to look at the mysterious man but to his utter surprise he is no longer there. Hyperventilation starts to overcome Barry, who’s fairly certain he’s lost his mind. The machines surrounding him go berserk with panicked beeps and alarms. The nurse immediately reacts, rushing round to control his panic.

She grabs the oxygen mask that lays idle by his bed and secures it to Barry’s face, instructing him to take long deep breaths. As Barry starts to take the deep breaths, his mirage-induced terror slowly fades away. He tries to shake off the image of that man, again putting it down to stress and drugs.

With help from the nurse's soothing words and the heavy amount of oxygen he’s breathing in, Barry returns to normal. He can’t help but notice how much healthier he feels, it's like he's ten years younger and hasn't smoked like a chimney for the past two decades. But the shock of what he’s just seen, or at least, what he thinks he's just seen, takes away a good chunk of that new body feeling.

The nurse gives Barry an injection to finish calming him down.

Barry isn't sure what to believe. He reminds himself of the out-of-body stories; perhaps it will wear off in time once the rock star levels of opioids in his body start to fizzle out. The nurse finishes comforting him as he drifts off to sleep.

Barry doesn't really dream during his half-an hour nap, it’s a very peaceful nap, but one of those that when he wakes up, it feels as if no time has passed at all.

As he comes back to the land of the living he spots a doctor walks studying his charts by the foot of his bed.

“Nurse? Can you explain to me why this gentleman is still here?” The doctor says with more than a hint of passive aggression.

The nurse who helped him earlier walks into the room.

“He's had severe-“

The doctor raises his hand to stop her speaking.

“Had being the important word here. Go see to the other patients, I'll make my assessment.”

The nurse leaves, giving a little smile and shrug to Barry as he exits. The doctor comes over and perches on the side of the bed.

“Let's have a look at you then, Mr. Miracle.”

The doctor goes through his checks. Shining a torch light in Barry's eyes and asking him to follow it side to side. Checking the inside of his ears. Listening to him cough. Putting pressure on his chest. Finished, the Doctor stands up with a slightly quizzical look in his eyes.

“Do you know your name?”The doctor asks.

“Yeah.”

“Do you know where you live?”

“Yeah?”

The doctor sighs, slightly concerned.“You seem perfectly fine. Ideally I'd like to keep you in for some more tests because, frankly, you appear to be in better shape than before you had an accident. Which is something of a medical anomaly. On the other hand, the NHS really is feeling the pinch, so I'm going to have to ask you to get out of the hospital ASAP quick time.”

“Don't I normally have to eat something before I go?”

The doctor searches his pockets and brings out a snickers. He throws it to Barry.

“We can check that box then.”Barry says under his breath.

“Try to eat it before you leave, if you collapse on your way out then I'm sure someone will assist you. Really is a trifle messy in here at the moment, but as we appear to have completely fixed you somehow, we should really free your bed for some of tonight's drunken stabbings. So, if you could hurry it up then that'll be wonderful. Chop! Chop! There's a good man.”

Barry tucks into his snickers, but notices that the doctor is staring at him and clearing his throat. He gets the message and jumps out of bed.

“Where are my clothes?”He asks with a mouth full of Snickers.

The doctor checks his watch again.“Incinerated I believe. Go to the front desk, they'll give you some clothes from the lost and found.”

“Right. What about my wallet? And my watch?”

The doctor chokes a little and covers his wrist with his sleeve.“Right, come on now, we can't have you lolling about! This is a hospital, not a shopping center.”

Barry sighs in defeat and waddles towards the open door to his room. His bare bottom showing the world just how far he's sunk.