Ice Angels

As he emerged from the blank hollow emptiness of his coma, Michael Ellsworth could not move his limbs. He wriggled inside the warm, soft cocoon. He was unable to see but he could hear as the aids shuffled around the room. Consciousness gradually seeped back into his head through a fog of recollections. The constant whir from the fan and the gentle breeze reassured him that he was still alive. When he heard the attendant’s steps close to his bedside, he tried to clear the knot from his throat, but he couldn’t speak. Another person entered the room, and began a quiet conversation with someone in the room. Michael could not understand their jumbled syllables and assumed that he had been saved from the Antarctic Ocean by foreigners, angels, for he was sure that he should not be alive.
Gradually he organized his memories, often forcing the jigsaw puzzle pieces into positions that somehow didn’t seem to fit. He remembered the attack on the Vigilant by pirates off the West coast of Australia. He remembered, with horror, the vicious and terrifying murder and shooting spree by three thin, Japanese men wearing hooded camo--jackets and carrying machine guns. The memories began to flow-- more rapidly than he cared to remember. He tried not to think about it. He tried to convince himself that it was all just a horrible nightmare and that soon he would open his eyes and emerge into the sunshine. But the dream was too real. He remembered too, that he had been shot. He remembered a bullet had entered his abdomen, and another one hit him in his shoulder. Then…. he had fallen into the freezing ocean. He remembered the stabbing pain of the icy water, but after that he remembered nothing. How could he have been saved? He should not be alive, and yet he was. And where was he? Clearly he was in a hospital somewhere, but where? And were there any other survivors?
Michael tried to open his eyes, and now a blanket of gray enveloped him tighter than the wrappings around him. Footsteps entered the room again and again. He tried to speak, but only managed to produce a guttural moan. However, that was enough to create quite a stir around him, and the attendants began to move in and out and talk among themselves in quiet voices. He felt warm feminine hands on his cheeks, and he saw a shadow move across his face. He tried to focus his eyes on the shadow and the voice as it hovered above him. As she came into view, he briefly considered that he had indeed died and gone to heaven because the image that unfolded in front of him was like none he had ever seen. It was the face of an angel. She radiated an aura of blue and to Michael, as he adjusted to consciousness, it was like seeing the aurora borealis within the whiter-than-white hospital room. Her pleasant face calmed him, and he drank in the comforting image and dove in to the beautiful green eyes of his captor.