"It was also incredibly lucky that you had the EMS team that you did, even though James is still in his training period. They began CPR as soon as they arrived at your side, and they were able to revive you in about... oh, a minute or so."
Emmit whipped his head toward Dr. Fuches so fast that his glasses fell down to hang in front of his mouth.
"Say that again?" He asked dubiously, his words muffled by the hanging frames. Dr. Fuches smiled warmly.
"I know, it's hard to comprehend. But they noted that you were clinically dead for around 52 seconds, I just rounded up. You see? Lucky to be alive. When your brain is deprived of oxygen, it doesn't take long for things to go very, very wrong."
52 seconds?
"It just... it felt like... weeks."
52 seconds.
His memories returned to his brief friendship with Tim , better known as The Reverend, and the only pleasant experience he'd really had while being dead. Standing outside on watch and craning his neck to look at the shifting night sky, watching the death of a star. Something no living person could ever hope to see. Time really hadn't played by the rules in that place, and if it had been Hell or some version of it, it made perfect sense. Even now, while alive, his agony made the seconds tick by like years. An afterlife of punishment for damned souls had probably been designed to build upon those very same principles.
Roy slicing his cheek. Poke impaling the Rev, murdering him as he watched helplessly. Pup's mutilated legs. The cloying stench of the living dead. The roar of the swarming Megahorde. The taste and slimy consistency of human flesh being ground up in his mouth. All of it came flooding back in a rush, and Emmit went a little bit insane for a few moments. He tried to comprehend how nearly a month's worth of horror and violence could be compacted into a single minute here on Earth, but it was like grasping at flowing water. His brain simply couldn't connect those dots.
He felt utterly lost; lost in time, lost in life, lost in every sense of the word. All it took was one more glance at the empty chairs beneath the window, holding nothing but that old magazine, and the tears came and refused to stop. Despite his best efforts, he had joined the living dead after all.
Not even death could stop the pain now. I know what's waiting for me.
"That's alright, Emmit," Dr. Fuches said compassionately, rising to leave after grasping Emmit's hand and giving it a quick, gentle shake. "I'll let you rest now. You call me or one of the nurses if you need anything, okay?"
"Thanks, Doc," Emmit mumbled, carefully rolling onto his uninjured side to watch the storm raging outside. The trees were blowing and thrashing like pom poms, struggling to hold on to their leaves as they swayed and bent in the throes of the violent wind. To Emmit, it was nothing short of beautiful. He felt like he hadn't seen a tree with leaves in years.
He slept surprisingly well that night, thanks largely to the meds they kept flowing through his veins and the relaxing tap of rain on his window. He was grateful that he didn't have any nightmares, but the dreams he did have were just as painful. They were short, sweet, and to the point; he dreamed of Deacon coming to visit him, crawling into his hospital bed and curling up beside him. He dreamed of holding his son one or two more times before they locked him up and threw away the key, and then he'd quite probably never see him again. Kelly definitely wouldn't bring Deek to a prison for visitation, and he'd be forced to grow up telling the other kids that his real dad (there would almost certainly be a stepdad in the picture) was a deadbeat who was rotting away in jail.
Emmit was startled when, coming out of those bittersweet dreams, the first thing he saw was a shiny foil balloon tied to the plastic rails running up the right side of his hospital bed. The balloon was emblazoned with Captain America's shield design, and on the back, in huge red comic book letters, it said "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" Emmit reached out and plucked at the string as if he'd never seen a balloon before, making it bob and dance in the air.
On his dinner tray was a card standing on end, hand-illustrated by a child who was talented but hadn't quite refined his craft yet. It was a drawing of Batman, slugging Two-Face right in his bifurcated mouth. Emmit grinned, a warm tingling sensation spreading through his chest. The superheroes were a dead giveaway.
Deacon had been here.
Emmit sat up fast enough to irritate his incisions, but his smile was too solid to be corrupted by something as minuscule as a gunshot wound. He was surprised to see that it wasn't morning at all; he'd slept past dawn, snoozed throughout the length of the day and night was now falling again. The second shock came when he looked at the chairs beneath the window, checking them as always, and saw that they were no longer empty.
Oh my God please don't let me be dreaming, please don't be a dream.
Kelly and Deek were there, each of them curled uncomfortably between the curved wooden arms and snoring silently. Deek's slack and outstretched hand was loosely clutching a backpack that had been left partially unzipped, various plastic arms and legs poking out of the zipper. He wore a baggy hoodie that had a picture of a Velociraptor on
