UNREACHABLE

It wasn't quite a conscious thought, more a feeling that kept growing and as it grew, his fingers moved, grasping for something, an instinctual reaching out. Finding warmth and softness, they curled around it, seeking some anchorage in a vast sea of lostness. The feeling that all was not right, that a terrible wrongness, a thing that had no name but lay on him, in him, expanded until its very unbearableness forced his mind into a vague semblance of thinking. He hurt. His chest, his throat, his head. Pain, that's what it was. No, more. More than that. Something...some thing...that didn't belong. Panic began to rise, blind, nameless panic arcing through a fog-laden mind. His other hand rose with heavy, weighted effort to his face, finding the thing that had invaded him, had filled his throat and mouth. Feebly, he grasped at it, trying to make it go away.

"No, Reverend Harris! NO!" a voice said firmly, pushing his hand away. "You must leave it alone."

The words, the voice...none of it made any sense. The thing was taking him over, swallowing him alive, overwhelming him. He struggled to get his hand back up, to make the thing go away.

"Alistair, darling! Stop! Please, darling, please stop!"

More words, words that flowed over him, not stopping by long enough to be sensed as words. He had to get the thing out of his mouth, out of his throat. The need of that was all there was. Pulling hard, he managed to free his hand, grabbing for the thing, unaware that a doctor had been summoned, was injecting something into his IV. His hand grew too heavy to lift and fell back beside him. It had won. Whatever it was, it had won, and he had no more strength to fight for his freedom from it. The fog grew thicker and his ability to think at all was lost in its cloudy folds.

"What happened?" Ahnna moaned. "I thought he was just going to wake up."

"He was waking up, Mrs. Harris. Sometimes there's a reaction like that to being on a ventilator. He doesn't know what happened to him. You've got to remember that," the doctor explained. "He was just becoming aware and then the sensations of being on the ventilator were more than he could handle."

"But, what if he wakes up again? Will this happen then, too?"

"It's quite possible it might. I've given him a light sedative that will keep him just slightly out of it. We may have to maintain that while he's on the ventilator. Mechanized breathing is not always well tolerated."

"How...how long, doctor, will he have to be on the ventilator?"

"I can't say for sure just yet, Mrs. Harris. It all depends on the levels of oxygen in his blood and how quickly the swelling in his airways goes down. The hyperbaric treatments should have shortened the time he'll need this. Perhaps just a day or two more. We'll have to wait and see."

"A day...or two...," she repeated heavily.

"But it's a good sign that he was waking up, a very good sign. Don't lose sight of that."

"He...he didn't seem to know what was going on, though. I thought...."

"How could he know what is going on? You said he was probably napping when the fire started. It's likely he never woke up. The toxic gases in the smoke incapacitate their victim very quickly. I understand a polyurethane couch was involved. That produces a gas that was used in the Nazi death camps. He's very lucky he's still alive. I think it may be best if we keep him lightly sedated at this point, at least until we can wean him from the ventilator. His blood pressure spiked drastically a moment ago and what he needs right now is rest and oxygen."

"But his mind...is he...?"

"It's still too early to tell for certain. He couldn't talk while on the ventilator any way and just now he didn't wake fully enough for us to discern anything definitive. Be patient a while longer, Mrs. Harris. I don't think there's any other choice."

When the doctor had gone, she picked up Alistair's hand again. His fingers lay limply in the curve of her palm. "Oh, Alistair. You almost held my hand just now. You almost did. Did you know it was me, darling, did you know I was here?"  That brief, warm pressure had meant everything to her and now, here she was, back at the beginning, back with him in a place she couldn't reach, and once again the noises of the many machines and monitors beat a relentless tattoo against her temples.

Rev. Todd stopped by one last time for the day and she told him what had happened, how she felt about it. "He's not as far away as he was, Ahnna. He was waking up, all by himself he was waking up, coming back from very far away. Now he's just a little away, not far at all. Hold onto that, dear one."

Alone again with Alistair, she leaned close, talking softly to him. "How close are you, darling? Can you hear me? I'm right here, my love, right here. It's going to be all right. You listen to me...it's going to be all right. You're going to be all right."

And he slept, floating in the fog where the thing couldn't reach him.