Visions

Part Two

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Mr. & Mrs. Fields visited religiously every day from then on, keeping a vigil beside Karen's bed for as long as the hospital would allow, and to hell with their jobs. They wondered why they hadn't done so earlier, but their daughter had seemed so strong, so capable in their other visits. Never had she broken down like that before. How could they have been so blind?
Day after day they sat there, but as the weeks and then months went by, Karen literally didn't move an inch. A nurse came along every so often to move her so she didn't get bedsores. They thought this a trivial thing until the nurse told them that people could sustain serious harm from lying so still for so long. Something about blood pooling and not circulating properly. Only the gentle beeping of the heart monitor (which was not really so gentle) and the occasional blink of her half-lidded eyes gave indication of life on the outside.
On the inside, Karen was still reliving the horror of unjust accusations and the brutal consequences, still burning alive over and over again. A tiny part of her was still her, and knew her parents were there, and fought the nightmare, however futilely. She was more successful than she knew.
As the months continued, and Karen's condition didn't change, let alone improve, her parents faced a difficult decision. Their jobs were in severe jeopardy, despite the boss' sympathy and two years worth of paid, unpaid and sick leave. Bills added up (mostly hospital ones) and something had to be done. They had to live, and it was becoming painfully obvious that Karen's prognosis was far from cheerful, if predictable.
At first they took turns working part-time, and sitting with Karen, but they soon realised that it was a very short-term solution. They both went back to full-time work. They still spent every spare minute at the hospital, but it was a scant few hours compared to their previous vigil. Karen noticed, in the part of her capable of noticing anything external. More accurately, she registered a loss in her primary source of strength, and it began to show.
The nurse who noticed burns on Karen's legs didn't credit his eyes at first, but there was no doubt. At first an effort was made to find a possibly homicidal arsonist, but no scrap of evidence could be found for a human agent. The bedding was untouched by fire. The doctor shrugged her shoulders and treated the burns.
Her parents had no way to connect their absence to Karen's burns, but they tried to spend more time with her. Eventually, as again nothing changed for a month and more, they were convinced by a well-meaning counsellor that continually seeing their stricken daughter wasn't helping either party at all, and the visits became still fewer and shorter as the Fields' lives readjusted to a semblance of normality.
In the corner of her mind Karen cold still claim to be her own, despair overcame determination. Her parents had given up, after all, she couldn't tell them she knew they were there, and were helping her by their very presence. She gave up.
At 2:43am, a piercing shriek echoed through the halls of the St. Michael's hospital, startling the night staff, waking the patients in the same ward, and in fact several wards, and sending security running for the source of the desperate wail. They found Karen, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth gaping, her hands clutching handfuls of sheets white-knuckled, her legs writhing in a disconcerting way. Screaming. Only a dangerously large dose of sedative stilled her, and allowed the doctors to treat the horrible burns on her legs, arms and body.
Her parents were notified and came quickly, but the tiny part of herself Karen had fought for and clung onto had been irrevocably lost. She didn't know her mother's face as she peered into Karen's eyes - Karen had forgotten she ever had a mother, forgotten her name was Karen, forgotten everything except flames and pain and injustice. That last made her scream as much as the fire did.
The screaming began again as soon as the sedative wore off, and it soon became apparent that this new development was not temporary. It was less a development than a deterioration. Karen now had neither the reason nor the ability to keep her screams bottled up. She was swiftly moved to a mostly sound-proof, solitary, white room in the wing for psychiatric patients.
At least they didn't have to send someone to move her to prevent bed-sores now. At least she was mobile again, in the most meaningless, literal way.
Everyone in the hospital was now aware of her condition, whether through the grapevine, or just having to work within earshot of her room. The door had to be opened sometimes, and as silly as it had seemed at first, those who had to go in wore ear-plugs. Even when Karen's voice grew hoarse and raw, the sounds she continued to make were worse, if anything.
Her burns became almost untreatable, and they couldn't dose her with enough sedative to keep her still without seriously endangering her safety. How best to Do No Harm? Let her writhing rub her burns and let them seep? Sedate her into vegetativeness and risk her dying? Was it kinder that way? The Euthanasia debate was still raging, and to all accounts her brain was certainly still very active. They swathed her in bandages and dressings, strapped down her needle-filled left arm and strapped her knees and waist down, that was the best they could do.
One day, the morning shift came to work in the psychiatric wing, and noticed something... different.
Quiet.
The nurse who's turn it was to check on Karen (an onerous and heart-breaking duty, and not coveted) was in the now-automatic process of putting in earplugs, and decided not to, since it was quiet. Hope bloomed in her - maybe Karen was better? She went in with a smile on her face.
Everyone within earshot sighed when the screams started again. So much for that vain hope, and brief respite. It wasn't until the white-faced nurse ran out and found a doctor that someone thought to notice that the screams had been stronger of voice than Karen's had been for some time, not to mention of a different sound.
Despite the doctor's demands for an explanation, the nurse merely stammered and pulled her to Karen's room. They entered, the doctor impatiently, the nurse hesitantly.
They were greeted by a scene both horrifying and merciful. Blood soaked the bed and made a congealing puddle on the floor; more coated the walls behind and to Karen's left of the bed. Karen herself was no longer really on the bed, but dangled grotesquely off the side, held only by the strap across her knees. Her face was downwards, hair soaked with blood obscuring her face. Blood smeared a dent in the steel bed-post at the head of the bed. A much larger dent was in the back of Karen's head.
All the IV needles had been torn out of her arm, arteries severed.
The coroner's report was straightforward - Karen Fields had some sort of seizure or convulsion, and in a fit of strength remarkable for such a wasted body (or of pain and desperation), had torn loose most of her restraints, and all her IV equipment. In the throes of thrashing that had followed, her head had come into forcible contact with the bed-post, delivering the fatal blow.
No one cared to explain the bloody fingerprints in her arm restraints, or the unexpected look of peace and relief on her face.

FIN
"To let it go, and to fade away..."
"Like a thought unchained,
Like a runaway train..."

Part One of Visions

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