Feathers

2. The Fire Inside

The room smelled of disinfectant. The light cast by a muted television hanging from the ceiling was like a mild strobe, throwing patches of colour against the white linen hospital sheets.

At the moment he was struck by lightning Michael didn't know how many million volts of electricity were flowing through the metal shell of his car. He didn't know that lightning strikes caused burns not only to the outside of your body, but to the inside. He didn't know anything apart from blinding light, pain and a deafening explosion of thunder.

"This is going to be bright," said the doctor who smelled pleasantly of aftershave, leaning down close to Michael's face as he shone a pinprick of light into eyeball. "Very good and now the other one."

The doctor stood up and placed the pen-shaped light back in his pocket. He turned so he was looking at both Michael and Kobie.

"You were both very lucky".

Michael lay on his side and watched as the doctor examined Kobie again. Kobie's eyes were already wide open before the doctor held them that way for his tiny light. He knew why. She probably saw the same thing as he did when she closed them. The unbearable brightness filling up the car so quickly that their entwined bodies shone like the filament metal glowing molten hot inside a light bulb.

"All your vitals are looking good. But we're going to keep you in overnight for observation, just to be on the safe side".

The doctor closed the curtains behind him as he left. A trolley rumbled down the aisle on the other side of the curtain. A respirator wheezed in and out and the steady beeping from someone doing worse than them continued so regularly that Michael's brain barely registered it now.

Michael watched as Kobie lost her ongoing battle with sleep. She had been drifting in and our of sleep ever since they'd arrived in the hospital. The nurse that did their intake said it was normal. One of the after-effects of shock.

Michael felt safe, but not safe enough to sleep. He didn't want to see the pictures burnt onto the back of his eyelids. The hospital was full of the bright fluorescent light you'd expect. But it was different from the deadlight of the storm. The hospital lights were orderly, safe, contained.

They weren't going to jump without warning, like a gunshot from the ceiling and run through his body, through his fingers, along his tongue. The inside of his mouth felt like someone had poured a boiling mug of coffee into it. It hurt to swallow. It hurt to breathe. He sighed and laid back against the pillow. Staring at the white nothingness of the ceiling.

So far the nurses and doctors hadn't been able to answer many of his questions. Why had the lightning burnt Micheal when they were safely inside the car? Weren't you safe in a car because of the rubber tyres?

Thankfully his phone had survived unscathed and he'd been able to get some of the answers he wanted from Google.

Interesting lightning fact #1: The thing about rubber tyres was a myth.

Rubber was somewhat insulating, but not enough to stop the electrical current from a bolt of lightning. You were supposedly safer in a car because the metal shell acted as a Faraday cage. Named after a scientist who figured out a metal cage would move static electricity around an object placed inside it, protecting it from harm.

Interesting Lightning fact #2: Cars were only safe if you weren't touching anything

You couldn't' touch anything connected to the electrified metal skin of the car. That meant not touching the radio dial, the windows or the steering wheel. Even though it was covered in plastic, the metal core of the steering wheel probably carried enough of charge to make its way through the resistance of the plastic cover and into the conducting wet skin of Michael's forearm which had rested on the steering wheel as he had twisted in his seat to kiss Kobie.