Someone's In My Head (WATTYS AWARD WINNER 2015)

Chapter Two

I sensed that freaking out wasn't gonna help me to obtain any information, so I forced myself to calm down. "Do what?"

"Say 'hello'."

I gave him a sideways glance. "Hello?"

For some reason, Dr Gordon was visibly relieved by the fact that I had managed to utter a casual word of greeting. I decided to take that as a cue to ask the questions that had been on my mind. "May I ask what the hell am I doing in a hospital ward? And what day is it now, huh?"

The doctor smiled. "I will surely answer your questions, young man, but first we'll have to carry out a quick neurological examination, if that's okay with you."

I was starting to get irritated by the way he spoke to me like he was giving me options to choose from when in the actual fact there was none. "Sure." I replied curtly.

The neurological examination was a series of logical thinking questions that I had to answer in a certain time limit. I was also asked to state my name, birth date and some other basic information about myself. I hate to boast, but it wasn't as hard as I expected. Even the maths question was a first-grade question; I'd flinched visibly when Dr Gordon announced that he would be asking me a maths question next, but the doctor chuckled heartily. "No worries, young man. It's not algebra."

It happened to be two plus two.

A short while later, Dr Gordon told me that I've passed the examination with flying colours. I realized that this was the first time that happened. Sigh.

Misinterpreting my sigh for depression, Dr Gordon was quick to add, "That signifies the success of the surgery and the minimal amount of damage to your brain cells. You may find it difficult to remember things on and off, but it won't be permanent. Exercise your brain with mathematical puzzles like Sudoku and you'll soon be back to normal."

I nodded. "So, how did I end up...here?" I waved around.

"Well, you were in a ravine, barely conscious when the paramedics found you. They quickly performed CPR-"

"Wait a minute, you mean they found me? Like they happened to be passing by the accident site at what, twelve o'clock in the midnight?" I did remember crashing into the ravine, but not any signs of paramedics nearby.

"No, no, no." Dr Gordon shook his head. "We received a call. An ambulance was immediately dispatched to the exact location the call was coming from. However, when the ambulance arrived, the caller was nowhere to be found. But we found you, and thanks to the caller, we found you in time. If we'd got there any later you would have died from excessive blood loss."

I wondered who the mysterious caller who saved my life was. "Do you still have the guy's number? I think I might wanna call him to thank him personally."

The doctor seemed uneasy. "Well, we've been trying to call him back for the past two days but-"

"Past two days?!" I exclaimed, sitting up abruptly. Instantly, vertigo shot up to my head and I grimaced. "Ugh."

Dr Gordon gently lowered me back into my inclined lying position. "That's pretty normal for a patient who'd just suffered head injuries. Try to avoid any abrupt movement in the near future." He advised. "By the way, no, we hadn't managed to track the caller. It appears that he'd been calling from a discarded phone."

I totally ignored him. My mind was still lagging two days behind. "What's the date today?" I asked weakly.

"Today's the twenty-fourth."

"Twenty-fourth of March? Twenty-fourteen?" I wanted to confirm that I hadn't missed an entire century in Limbo.

"Yeah." He confirmed.