It took Kurtz two more tries and several groggy seconds of mental effort and the pain of opening his eyes again before he realized why his right arm wouldn't work; he was handcuffed to the metal frame of the hospital bed.

It took him another minute or two before he realized that his left hand and arm were free. Slowly, laboriously, Kurtz reached that hand across his face—eyes squinted to keep the nausea at bay—and touched the right side of his head, just above his ear, where the pain was broadcasting like the concentric radio-wave ripples in the beginning of one of those old RKO films.

He could feel that the right side of his head was a mass of bandages and tape. But when he saw that there were only two IV's visible punched into his body and only one monitoring machine beeping a few feet away, and no doctors or nurses huddled around with their resuscitation crash cart, he figured he wasn't on the verge of checking out yet. Either that, or they'd already given up on him, issued a Do Not Resuscitate order, and gone off for coffee to leave him to die here in the dark.

"Fuck it," said Kurtz and winced as the pain went from 7.8 to 8.6 on his own private Agony Richter Scale. He was used to pain, but this was… silly.

He dropped his hand on his chest, closed his eyes, and allowed himself to float out of the line of fire.

"Mr. Kurtz? Mr. Kurtz?"

Kurtz awoke with the same blurred vision, same nausea, but different pain. It was worse. Some fool was pulling his eyelids back and shining a light in his eyes.

"Mr. Kurtz?" The face making the sound was brown, male, middle-aged and mild-looking behind black-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a white coat. "I'm Dr. Singh, Mr. Kurtz. I dealt with your injuries in the ER and just came from surgery on your friend."

Kurtz got the face into focus. He wanted to say "What friend?" but it wasn't worth trying to speak yet. Not yet.