Turning on the Lights

Turning on the Lights

By

John L. Keller

Copyright 2013

Smashwords Edition

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

Prologue

Jenny walked briskly down the hospital hallway to the nurses’ station. The only people in sight were the cleaning crew. She was going to be just on time for her shift. She had been an RN at the Texas Institute of Mental Health in Plano, Texas, for eleven months now. The entire time she had worked the third shift.

This was an easy nursing job. This was the best one she’d had in twenty years of nursing. Most of the patients had no serious physical problems. However, they all had severe mental problems. All were on some sort of medication, and the bad ones were so doped up that they were not much of a problem. It was rare that family members came to visit the patients, so there were no issues with relatives trying to tell the staff how to run a hospital. When someone died, everyone was happy that the patient was no longer suffering.

Jenny smiled. It always irritated Carol when Jenny was only just in time. Carol thought that being on time for your shift meant reporting to work fifteen minutes early. Let Carol be irritated. She was a good nurse, but Carol had her peculiarities. When Jenny arrived at the nurses’ station Carol was looking down at the monitors. Carol looked up at Jenny, then at the two foot wall clock behind the nurses’ station desk. The clock said exactly midnight.

Oh, it’s you, Jenny, said Carol. Why, you’re just on time; great. She frowned.

Jenny set two canvas bags containing her lunch, reading material, and laptop down on the floor.

Thank you, said Jenny with a warm smile. I always try to be on time. So how is the shift looking?

Everything is fine. Everything is the same as yesterday except there is one new patient. A John Doe from Doctor Morrison’s group, said Carol.

Doctor Morrison? One of his experiments? asked Jenny.

Afraid so, said Carol. I hope this one works out. I feel sorry for the others.

Well, their minds were already gone long before Morrison and his gang got hold of them. I don’t think Morrison’s made them any worse than they already were. Still, Morrison’s tinkering did not help, said Jenny.

They had him in a medically induced coma while they did their experiments. They are now gradually bringing him out, said Carol.

When do they think he will wake up? asked Jenny.

Unclear, but soon; maybe anytime, said Carol.

That’s nice, said Jenny. Jenny remembered the last time one of of Doctor Morrison’s patients woke up on her shift. The poor man had just started screaming and pointing at the corner of the room. There was no telling what the old man was seeing in his hallucinations. Jenny had to give him a general anesthetic to knock him out. She was glad he had been transferred out the next day before her shift started.

There’s a motion detector in his room, so there will be an alarm if he starts moving in his bed. He has a restraining jacket on and the standard monitors hooked up to him, said Carol.

Sounds like a piece of cake, said Jenny.

The number for the paging service is in the computer file. If any of the alarms go off, call it, said Carol.

Oh, I will, said Jenny.

Chapter 1

The old man opened his eyes. It took him several minutes to focus on what he was looking at and to realize he was lying in a bed looking up at a ceiling. He had no idea how long he had been asleep, nor had he any memory of the previous day. He just lay perfectly still on the bed, looking at the ceiling. He lay without moving as he felt his mind becoming fully awake. The cobwebs of his mind were slowly dissolving away. He could feel the various sections of his brain slowing switching on and syncing with the other sections. He must have been asleep for a long time, he thought. He flexed his legs. They felt heavy and lethargic, almost numb. He touched his face with his right hand. His hand fell clumsily across his face, raking his nose and upper lip. His fingers were too numb to feel his face, but his face was alive enough to feel his hand and fingers move across it. He could feel that his finger nails needed to be trimmed. Oh my, he thought, what a hangover. He lay still for five more minutes, staring at the ceiling, then slowly drifted back to sleep.

That night the old man awoke to the sound of three people coming into his room. He saw them, two women and a man, stand next to his bed and look down on him. One, the man, went to the TV mounted near the ceiling in the near corner of the room and turned it on then adjusted the settings. The old man could not focus on the TV to see what was playing. The man came back to his bed and touched his arms and legs. The old man could not feel the man’s touches, but he could see the man touching him. Suddenly, to the old man, it was as if he were floating above the bed looking down on the scene. He saw himself in bed and the two women and the other man were moving his arms and legs. The other man and one woman each flexed one of his legs. They slowly moved his feet until they nearly touched his butt, then they slowly straightened his legs while keeping his feet elevated so that when his legs were straight his feet were elevated upwards at a 45 degree angle. The second woman moved his left arm. She moved his hand outward from his body while keeping his arm straight. Next she moved his hand toward his biceps to flex his elbow. She did this several times, then moved to his right arm and repeated the procedure.

All three laughed and seemed very happy. They said things to each other, but the old man could not understand what they said. The old man could hear the individual words just fine, but he could not put the words together. He could tell the words were English ones, but still his mind just could not connect one word to the next. Their sentences made no sense to him whatsoever. Somehow, the word order was all mixed up. Could they be speaking backwards? Why would they do that? This made no sense to him. Frantically, he tried to sort the words. The effort started to give him a headache. He was frustrated. He just could not put the words together in the proper order. His ears started ringing with a high-pitched squeal. The squeal caused his inner ears to ache. He started rolling his head side to side to try to suppress the ringing. The other man lifted up the sheet and raised the old man’s right leg again, then flexed his knee one more time. What are they doing? Why do they not leave me alone? the old man thought. He heard a woman out of his view giggle. He did not know what she thought was so funny. Certainly, none of this was funny to him. Were they laughing at him? He felt his anger start to rise. This was not amusing at all. She must be laughing at something else, the old man reasoned. Something must have happened out of his view. They quit touching him and left the room. The old man floated back down to his body in the bed, closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

Later that night the old man had his first dream in years. It was the first dream in ages that he could remember the next day. It was a lucid dream. He was fully aware he was asleep and dreaming. It was in the springtime in the early morning. He dreamed he was going down a suburban street looking for his house. There were no clouds in the sky. The temperature was in the 70’s. The wind was light and variable and blew pulses of warm air in his face. He smelled the fragrance of a honeysuckle growing in a nearby backyard. Mockingbirds were hopping across a freshly mowed lawn looking for insects that had been brought to the surface by the lawn mowers. They flashed their white wing stripe as they hopped around the yard. Their happy chirping filled the air. He smiled. He was happy. It was a beautiful day. The world was at peace.

He now realized he was floating vertically, three feet above the pavement. The old man felt he was traveling down the middle of the street. There were no cars or people there and that was odd, he thought. There should be many cars driving down the street. There were always many people out and about on beautiful days like this. They would be walking their dogs or jogging. People should be doing outside chores and cleaning their yards on this fine spring day, but where were they? Was everyone at work? How weird. He passed row after row of brick houses all of which looked similar to his house. He searched street after street. He paused. None of the houses looked like his house. He grew apprehensive. Just where was his house? None of the street signs made sense. The letters on the signs did not form words. They seemed random, with some written backwards. How strange, he thought. Where was he?

Why could he not find his house? He knew he was close, but he just could not pick out his house. His search became frantic and he flew down the streets faster and faster. After he was sure he had searched all the streets in the neighborhood, he paused again. Now he could not remember the name of his street or his house number. He knew he had known the house number and street name just moments before, but now they were gone from his memory. What was happening? He looked around and wondered if he was in the right city, or even in the right state. After many minutes of indecision and looking back and forth down the street he finally decided that he was indeed in the right neighborhood. The houses were all of the same style as his house. He could just not shake the feeling that his house was nearby. He felt it was so close that he could just shut his eyes and reach out and touch it. He was so close, in fact, that the hairs on his arms stood up. So he felt certain that he must be in the right area.

His daughter was coming home from school soon and he must get there before she did. He was always home to greet her when she walked into the house after school. He did not want his daughter to come back to an empty house and become alarmed because he was not there to greet her. She might think that something had happened to him. After several minutes of floating in one place, unable to decide in which direction to search for his house, he realized that this was all crazy and that he was dreaming. He told himself that his daughter no longer went to school, that she was all grown up and had already graduated. She was safe, and living on her own, in her own house and she would not be afraid just because he was not at his home.

He opened his eyes. It was morning. He could still remember the dream vividly. He was still in bed, on his back, facing up the ceiling. He did not know where he was. He could tell that this was