When they found him his skin was snow white and patchy. He had dirt under his fingernails, and his long blond hair was brittle as straw. He was hiding inside a hole in the cave, covering his ears with his bonny hands. He flinched when they pointed the light at him, and his eyes got watery. He didn't weight much, all those years inside the cave had stripped it from him. He was undernourished, but he was alive.
They waited until nightfall to take him out of the cave. Sunshine would hurt his eyes, they knew, also they wanted to avoid as much noise as they could. When the time came he didn't offer much resistance, he had little energy, and all of it worked towards maintaining his basal metabolism. It made them wonder how was he even able to sneak out of the cave to get food, they knew he did because a hiker who got lost saw him once and alerted the authorities about him, but still, he could barely walk.
During the first days at the hospital he had to be constantly sedated, he had gotten used to the wild life and all those new things would make him anxious. The doctors took profit to make him regain some weight through parenteral nutrition, as his stomach was too weak to hold anything. His recovery would be long, they told the media who was eager to feast on the story of the men who lived for 6 years in the woods.
He started eating a week after he was rescued, soft things at first, while they kept the parenteral nutrition, and then they increased the range of food he could eat. He started a physio program too, his muscles had been misused for too long. But he wasn't allowed visits, not yet. He would need psychiatric treatment to avoid the shock being lost for six years could produce.
The psychiatrist looked at the man sitting on the bed. His skin was still snow white, but they had rubbed off all the callous parts, his hair was still strawy, but it wasn't long anymore. The most impressive thing where his eyes. They were ice blue, the doctor wondered if they had ever been that color too, or if they had changed during his year in the cave, and they felt like bottomless pits. There was a deep intelligence down there, one that knew that something hard was happening, and one that was shielded behind a wall of silence. He decided to take a chance.
-Do you know your name?- the doctor asked.
He stared at him as if he were trying to find his answer on him, on his eyes, on his mouth, written all over on his white labcoat. He swallowed, his white thin neck bulging as he did.
-Mike.
No comments:
Post a Comment