I FINALLY WOKE UP. Totally frustrated and beyond confused.
Because I was in a bed. A hospital bed.
The same hospital bed I had woken up in before. I recognized the blue knit blanket.
A nurse dressed in scrubs with a stethoscope draped around her neck leaned into my field of vision.
“I’m Nurse O’Hara,” she said with a smile. “It’s so good to see your beautiful blue eyes, Daniel.”
It was her again.
“Where am I?”
“The hospital. Intensive care.”
I tried to sit up.
“Now, now. You mustn’t push yourself, Danny Boy.”
Danny Boy. This time, I knew for sure where “Nurse O’Hara” picked up that little pet name. The Prayer. This was probably the start of my next torture round in the twisted “catch, torture, and release” hunting game.
“Saints be praised!” crowed the way-too-Irish nurse. “You’re alive.”
I shook my head in disbelief and smirked. “This is the part where the three doctors come in, right?”
Nurse O’Hara looked momentarily puzzled by that.
“Yep,” I said, as three white coats strode into the room. “Right on cue.”
“Good morning, Daniel,” chirped the handsome guy with perfect hair who looked like he’d just waltzed off the set of that TV show The Doctors.
“We heard the good news,” said the one who looked like Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
“It’s a miracle,” said Nurse O’Hara, wiping a fake tear from her rosy cheek. The second time through, she was definitely overplaying it. Going borderline Soap Opera on me.
I knew this whole scene was another move in The Prayer’s Olympic-sized mind games. This was the ultimate torture: taking me out of commission while the forces of darkness’s solar-system-sucking black hole grew and grew like a giant zit on the tip of the Milky Way’s nose. Number 1 was buying time for Terra Firma to reach its event horizon—that point of no return.
“So,” I said, “I guess I had a motorcycle accident?”
“That’s right,” said Dr. Gupta. “It’s a very encouraging sign that you remember what happened, Daniel.”
I shrugged. “Whatever. I’ve been in another coma, huh?”
“Another?” asked one more familiar-looking doctor.
“What was I gone for this time? Eighteen months? Two years? Or did I totally Rip Van Winkle it this time and now it’s like twenty years in the future and earthlings are buzzing around with jetpacks on their backs?”
All three doctors and the nurse were gawking at me like I was insane.
“You know the funny thing about comas?” I said. “No matter how many you guys tell me I’ve had or how long I’ve been conked out, I never seem to age at all.”
“Daniel,” said the Dr. Gupta look-alike. “You need to rest.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I said, looking up to the ceiling, figuring Number 1 was somewhere watching this daytime drama unfold.
I tossed off my hospital blanket and yanked aside the sheets.
“You’re not to leave that bed, young man,” scolded Nurse O’Hara.
“Or what? You guys will haul in another set of jumper cables and a couple of car batteries? Or maybe this time, since the hospital bed is adjustable, you’ll just tilt it back and waterboard me.”
Nurse O’Hara turned to the handsome dude. “Dr. Fabricius? Do something!”
The doc reached into the deep hip pocket of his lab coat.
Before he could extract another syringe filled with blackout serum, I sprang out of the bed, spun around, and landed a roundhouse kick to the handsome man’s breadbasket. He clutched his stomach, dropped to his knees, and tried to remember how to breathe.
He was coming at me with a wickedly sharp needle. I swung up my arm and locked my hand around his wrist, catching him in midthrust.
Then, twisting his wrist until I heard it pop, I brought that needle down hard and gave the good doctor a taste of his own medicine—right in the thigh. Dr. Gupta’s eyes rolled back in their sockets as he drifted off to happy comaland.
Unfortunately, while I was administering my treatment to Dr. Gupta, I felt a needle jab in my butt.
I glanced over my shoulder.
Nurse O’Hara.
She was smiling at me and holding up a shimmering syringe. Her smile wasn’t the friendly sort, either; it was more like a “we’ll see who’s in charge here, young man” kind of smirk.
As the sedative swam through my bloodstream and my brain began to fog, all I could hear was my father’s voice calling out to me from somewhere far, far away:
Go look for your backup, son! Find your backup!