Chapter 2.

It was dark. Very dark. I don’t know how long it stayed that way. There was no time. No “here” and no “there”. There was nothing to hold on to. One day? One year? Even those things had no meaning. Then came the warmth. It had no place. It was everywhere. In what could have been an ephemeral eternity, it started to form discernible patterns, and I was now able to realize it was coming from a region that would have been known to me in the past as my back. That is all I was for a long time. My back. With effort, I learned to sense it spreading toward directions where my legs and arms could have been before. Could. I wasn’t sure. It was like waves of energy flowing back and forth through my body, and with each wave a little part of me was brought back to existence. I was now able to understand I was laid in some sort of soft substance, and although I could not move my arms or legs, I knew they were there. There was no pain. Not yet. But it would come soon. I learned it in the worst of ways. It was like parts of me were being disassembled at cellular level to be rebuilt again. I was changing. Changing back to whatever I was.

During the process, I couldn’t really think. Everything happened at subconscious level. Whatever it was that was fixing my body, it was also numbing my mind. And when numbness ended, I was too confused to form any coherent thoughts. I was nobody. I didn’t know what I was doing there, wherever it was. Or how did I get there to begin with. But slowly things started to fall into place. I started to remember small bits of information, and given time, still with basically no sensory input, I could already make out that the soft substance was probably a bed and the wounds I had suffered on that night were healing painfully, slowly, but steadily. I still didn’t know how that night ended. But now I was sure it was just a question of time. I was myself again. I think, therefore I am. Thank you, René.