Hiding From The Listening Eel

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Written for the Second Indulgence, Prompt #8

While you got used to all sorts on the emergency care ward, Sunita had never seen a reaction quite like Adrian Carver displayed. But then, the procedure to resuscitate him had been highly experimental, and he’d been clinically dead for a whole eleven minutes. Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that the poor man was left near catatonic yet highly responsive.
In fact, any sudden noise or movement made him start, his vitals spiking. Dysregulated nervous system, for sure. They’d put him in a solo room and minimised stimulus. His family had brought in a hard drive of his comfort shows, and having those running helped a lot. As did familiar visitors. But he showed no signs of recovering.
“Good afternoon, Adrian!” Sunita said in a warm, soothing tone honed by decades of nursing. “How are you today?”
He smiled at her, a wan but welcoming expression. No attempt to speak; it seemed that he’d lost vocalisation entirely.
Which is why she was delivering this piece of kit.
“Here.” She held up the box to show him. “We signed out a spelling board for you. Mind giving it a try?”
Given that he understood people talking to him, the hope was that he hadn’t lost his ability to spell. And, while he was suffering from tremors, he should be able to point just fine.
Adrian nodded. His expression remarkably serious. But then, he generally was.
Poor man. It was such a shame. It would’ve been a shame for anyone to suffer like that, getting knocked right into a canal by a lunatic on one of those new-fangled scooters and drowning in a panic, but it was especially tragic to happen to someone so young. Who knew how much of his life he’d be able to resume?
Well, all they could do was try and help. And giving him a way to communicate was of utmost importance.
So Sunita folded down the little table and set up the board.
“Let’s see… how are you feeling?”
Though Adrian’s hand was wobbly, his motions were purposeful. “N-E-E-D”
Oh, excellent! Not only confirmation this worked for him, he was seizing empowerment right out of the gate.
“P-E-O-P-L-E T-O B-E Q-U-I-E-T.”
Sunita nodded and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Sorry. Do noises hurt?”
He could’ve developed sensory issues, or there might even be a physical problem with his ears. This was entirely new territory, after all.
Adrian shook his head. His shaking was more visible. Strain? “I-T-S L-I-S-T-E-N-I-N-G F-O-R M-E”
“Um.” Sunita’s brow furrowed, though she kept up her warm professional smile. “What is?”
She had increasing trouble keeping her expression level as she tried to piece together the words Adrian spelled out. He seemed to be insisting that some kind of… fish? Eel? Something was swimming around the hospital looking for him, and had been since he drowned.
Oh dear. Well, psychosis wasn’t unexpected. And knowing that you’d died must be difficult to wrap your head around. She still found it a tricky concept and she’d met so many ex-dead people that she’d lost count!
And your last memories could get very muddled, couldn’t they? He’d probably seen a fish as he was drowning and now his brain didn’t know what to make of it. Poor man.
So she squeezed his shoulder and sympathetically murmured “Oh, that must be very stressful. Don’t worry, I’ll go talk to the doctors and we’ll see what we can do.”
Antipsychotics, for a start. And another round of brain imaging, to see if there’d been any changes. See what else the neurologist recommended.
Adrian gave her a deeply grateful look and relaxed - with a soft, barely audible “Ah.”
His eyes widened. His hands shot to his mouth. His shaking redoubled. His vitals spiked, the numbers crisply heralding a panic attack.
“It’s alright!” Sunita whispered soothingly, resting her other hand on his arm. Maintaining a firm, gentle contact. “You’re alright, Adrian. I’m with you. Don’t worry, we-”
She wasn’t sure what made her turn her head. A flicker? A shadow? A sensation of pressure behind her eyes?
Then a giant, fanged maw burst from the wall, an immense coiling body writhing behind it, and Sunita screamed at the same time Adrian did.
~ * ~
Naturally it was disappointing for the first patient who survived the procedure to fall into severe psychosis and suffer a panic-induced heart attack, but the team was optimistic about next time.
It was, if anything, an even greater pity they’d lost Ms Sunita, but she’d taken the death of her patient very hard. Even after counselling and a mental health break, she’d been adamant that development of the resuscitation method should be halted! And seemed to have fallen prey to some manner of spiritualist nonsense.
Listening to her panicked sobbing on the recorded statement, her insistence that the ‘listening eel’ Adrian had been telling her about had come through the wall and ‘ate him!!’, was heartrending, it really was.
Stress and guilt could do terrible things to the mind. Hopefully she would be able to make a full recovery. If not enough to return to work, at least to the point where she no longer believed “There’s something on the other side, and it comes looking for people!”
In the meantime, they would take the lessons learned here onwards, to the next patient…

Prompt was “You have died for eleven minutes. Doctors manage to bring you back, and everyone calls your recovery a miracle. There is only one problem: you remember exactly what happened during those eleven minutes. And now something you met there knows you came back.”

Read other stories written for this prompt here.