TNG: Iblis, the First Hero

Chapter 3: Everything Changes

Everything Changes

Cid could feel blinding rays of sunlight on his face.

His extremely blurry vision captured the pale whiteness of an unfamiliar room. As his vision slowly focused, he noticed the numerous machines and cords hooked up to his body. He then heard the dull beep of an electrocardiogram.

I'm in a hospital, he told himself

A nurse soon entered the room. She noticed that he was attempting to move, and she pressed her hand to her mouth, dashing back out of the room.

Cid tried to sit upright, but he found himself unable to. Why can't I move? He asked himself as he futilely tried to move his deadened muscles.

At that moment, the nurse returned to the room, with a couple of doctors in tow. The first doctor was a man of perhaps forty years in age who looked like an overgrown kindergartener. The small, slightly thin tuft of hair on the top of his head only aided in his childlike appearance. The second doctor was an older woman whose frayed beach blonde hair and stern but wrinkleless face suggested that she was trying to reacquire her glory years.

They both took notice of Cid's current situation when they entered the room. The first doctor's face changed to that of an excited school child, and even the female doctor widened her eyes in surprise.

The first doctor walked right up to the bed, grabbed a rolling chair, turned it around, and sat on it backwards, with his arms crossed over the back of the chair. The female doctor remained a distance from the bed and began conversing with the nurse while looking at her clipboard.

Cid noticed that the first doctor was still next to him, and was just staring at him with a "somewhat creepy" smile.

The doctor ultimately broke the awkward silence by speaking. "Hello! I'm Dr. Gabronski! How are you?" he asked. His voice and mannerisms suggested that a five year old was living inside the man's body. Dr. Gabronski started rocking back and forth in his chair, unable to hide his excitement.

A brief chuckle escaped Cid's chest as he couldn't help but laugh at the comically immature doctor in front of him.

"Ouch...," he muttered, realizing that it hurt to laugh.

He started to speak, but the Dr. Gabronski beat him to the punch. "I can imagine that you are a little confused about what's going on. I would be too if I woke up in a hospital! ...Wait... I have woken up in a hospital before... I work here... Candy?" he offered, pulling an enormous bag of candy out of his pockets, which couldn't have possibly held the girth of the bag.

Dr. Gabronski began to stuff his face with candy. What... the... heck...? Cid asked himself as he watched the doctor devouring his bag of candy.

"Well, since you didn't say anything, I'll just eat all this candy myself. Hey guess what? Did you know that you might have some kind of hospital record for surviving cardiac arrest? Seventeen times in three weeks, to be exact. You were also practically braindead, but I didn't call it because I'm a neurologist, and neurologists know when people are really braindead," the doctor remarked.

"No, I didn't know..." Cid stated. He noticed that his voice sounded dry and cracked, as if it hadn't been used in several days.

Before he could finish his sentence, the doctor started talking again. "Well, you are one heckuva fighter. We were starting to wonder if it was right to keep bringing you back after the fifteenth resuscitation, but now it all seems like it was worth it! Congratulations! Hey, do you know how you got here?" he asked, swallowing more his candy.