gloomy November (Revised)

         “Will he be OK?”
         “Yes. But when he’ll awaken I can’t say. He shows signs of life, and then it’s like something drags him backs into the depths of unconsciousness. Hopefully it won’t be too long before you two can be happy again.”

         “How has been the past week? I had to make sure my family was still safe.”
         “Not a problem, Brigid. As far as I know, the virus hasn’t reached this area yet and we might have some vaccines by the time it gets here. And he’s been doing quite well. Much more stable, and his brain activity has increased. But he still hasn’t awoken from the dreamless death.”

         “When will it just end, Brigid?”
         “I’m supposed to be asking you the medical questions, doc. At least there are some of us left to make it more comfortable on those who won’t make it.”
         “If this is the work of some angry god, I just wish he’d have done it faster.”
         “It’s not God, we’ve brought around our own doom. I saw the last reports, they proved this was a man-made biological weapon. It was developed and released from some lab near Phoenix. Maybe some of us will survive, and we can get back to life. I just wish Greg would wake up…”

“          Dear heavenly father, please let Greg wake up. I can’t handle this on my own. There’s no one left around here. Life was so terrible before without him. I never knew it could be this bad, and I never dreamed something like all of this would ever happen. Please, let him wake up tomorrow, on the day of rest. I need him back.”

         It was a gloomy Saturday in November when Gregory awoke from his coma. Immediately after he realized he was in a hospital, the memories came back like a deluge of information, and none of it was wanted. He remembered the fateful crash that landed him in this horrid blank room, and the bottles of Guinness that led to the collision. Of course, after Brigid had been forced to leave him, he no longer wanted to live, but he expected to die rather than suffer in an uncomfortable, dismal grey room.
Greg started crying, since the pain of Brigid’s father forbidding their relationship was just multiplied by the broken bones in his left arm. Once he regained his composure, Greg started to examine his unpleasant surroundings. He realized there was dust covering almost everything in the room, except for him. Considering his height, this was quite a feat, and one that required someone’s assistance. He also noticed there was no noise coming from the hallways, no machines beeping or people walking or patients shouting.
         Once he swung his legs off of the bed, Greg started walking out of the room when he literally ran into a nurse. He began to apologize before he realized that he passed right through her. On second look, the nurse didn’t seem as solid as he thought he appeared. After reaching the hallway, Greg saw that there were people everywhere, doing their regular business, but he couldn’t interact with them.
         “HEY!”
         No response from anyone.
         Greg tried slamming books, throwing chairs, and tossing papers around the lobby, but to no avail. He realized that it must be that he was actually dead, trapped in Limbo until Judgment Day. Deciding that there must be someone else here in his situation, Greg started to search the building for some other accursed soul.
He wandered from floor to floor, looking for anyone at all, when he heard footsteps running up the stairs behind him. At that point, he wondered if he wanted to find out who, or what, was behind. Deciding he didn’t want to know yet, Greg jogged up the stairs and went down another hall.
         Unfortunately, he couldn’t run for long after having been comatose for some unknown time. Surrendering to fate, Greg turned to the source of the noise, and was overjoyed by what he saw: another human, a female. When she got closer, he realized that it was Brigid, his love.
         “What are you doing here? I was afraid I’d never see you again… Are we dead?”
         “Oh, I’m so happy you’re alive. I thought you wouldn’t wake up. Of course I paid no attention to my father, and once I heard you were in a crash, I came immediately to the hospital. I’ve been here almost the whole time, but I’ve had to leave sometimes this past week. And no, we’re not dead. But I’ll get to that later.”
         So together they walked back to the room next to Greg’s, where Brigid had a make-shift kitchenette set up. She fixed some Earl Grey tea while explaining what had happened since Greg slipped into a coma.
         “I take that back. I’ll answer the dead question first. You asked if we were dead. If you haven’t guessed, we’re not. It’s the others that are dead. Their spirits just continue about what they would usually do, but never notice that they never accomplish anything. They look like some ethereal tape recording, repeating the same actions hour after hour. I hope they can get rest one day soon.”
         “Of course they will. Otherwise, everyone that had died would still float around.”
         “Now I’ll enlighten you on the rest of the lot that’s happened while you’ve been “asleep.” In case you don’t know, you’ve been unconscious for around three weeks. Once I found out and got here, you’d already been in intensive care around two days and they were ready to downgrade you to a standard room. I stayed here night and day, praying that you would wake up and then we could go back to our apartment together. At the beginning of your second week, there was some alarming news… oh!”
         The whistling teapot interrupted her explanation, so she stopped to fix two mugs of tea.
         “Here, let me get that,’ Greg said. “You’ve done more than enough.”
         After they got their tea and honey, Greg started to walk down the hallway while she continued her story.
         “I hope the tea’s good. The honey tasted a little old. Well, back to the tale. There at the second week, a breaking news story on CNN described a new virus, similar to Hantavirus but at a 95% death rate within two days. It was also spreading at an exponential rate. The newscast was on Sunday. By Wednesday, it had spread from a little island near Venezuela to South America and Europe and had killed half of a billion people. By that Saturday, it had spread through the rest of Europe and started to infect North America, but appeared to be slowing greatly. At the time CNN went off the air, it was estimated around one half of a billion people were still alive, scattered across the globe, and that only 200 million would be left when the virus finished.”
         “Then why are we still alive?”
         “All that I can guess is we’re living right, considering we are two of the so-called lucky ones that are immune to the horrifying disease.”
         Brigid stopped at a window to look out at the forest, and to wipe away tears. Greg stood at her side, holding her hand, and letting his own tears fall since he refused to let go of her again. Once the memories stopped resurfacing, they continued on their walk, hand in hand.
         “So, I’m guessing we don’t know anyone else that survived?”
         Brigid’s silence was too strong of an answer to handle, and this time it was Greg who had to stop. Once he was ready, Brigid embarked on a new path, this time towards the door. She never let go of Greg’s hand.
         “That’s why I had to leave this week; I couldn’t stand knowing whether or not our families had….” She stopped talking again but continued to walk towards the outside.
         “Well, you can guess what I found at the houses. It wasn’t pleasant.”
         “At least we have each other.”
         “Yes, there is that.” Brigid pulled Greg’s hand so he would stop and, and then she stood on the tips of her toes to kiss him. Greg leaned his head to hers and smelled the scent of the shampoo she used on her long dark hair before she started to speak again.
         “We’ll always have each other.”
         “Always? Won’t we just die one day?”
         “I suppose we will. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be together in the next life. We’ve got eternity to spend with each other.”
         “That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day, or any day for that matter.”
         Together they walked out into a beautiful November day, without a cloud in the sky. Hand in hand, they headed out towards a new life, as one forever.