Okay, so I know it's been awhile, what with my traumatic encounter with the creepy, crawly roof dancing junkie last week and all, but I'm finally back with the second part!
Shadows and Light Part Two
Rated: PG
MacGyver stared with horrified fascination at the ghastly tableau on display before him, his badly damaged, twisted, and broken body being tended to by the mountain rescue team, his dark blood pooling around him, making him look pale and fragile. Even though he couldn’t feel pain in his current state as a spirit, he still grimaced when he saw them working to free him from the thin, spiked tree trunk that had pierced his thigh, using a saw to cut it clear from the ground. Gingerly, they tugged at it, trying to loosen it from where it was burrowed deeply into his flesh, creating a gaping, gushing wound.
“We need to stop the bleeding,” one of the rescue workers said, talking to the others as well as Pete, trying to keep him informed as he stood there in complete shock. “I’m afraid we might cause too much tissue damage or cause more hemorrhaging if we attempt to remove the trunk from his thigh on our own. It might have to be removed through surgery. It is just embedded too far.”
“It looks like he has skull fractures as well, possibly intracranial pressure,” another rescue worker examining him said. “He could have other internal injuries, but remarkably he has no other broken bones. His pulse is weak, but he is still alive.”
“All right, let’s load him up and prepare to move him,” another rescue worker said.
Even though MacGyver was aware that he was looking at his own body, watching it get strapped to a stretcher, at times it seemed as if he was looking at a complete stranger, that it was someone else who was severely injured, not him. His mind just couldn’t believe, couldn’t fully process or understand what he was looking at. He shouldn’t have been able to see his own body. He shouldn’t have been separate from it at all. That body was
his, or what he understood was him. It was how he existed. That he could have an experience beyond it completely baffled him. At times, watching them work on him, he felt violated; the only thing he could equate it with was watching the destruction of his personal property. Still, this was not his jeep, beloved as it was. This was not some inanimate object or easily replaceable material possession. This was his body, and it was living albeit barely clinging to that life at the moment. He found himself desperately wanting to return to it, even though that would mean eventual pain and suffering. He hated feeling disconnected from it, unable to feel. If he could only feel again, he would know he was real, that he was still alive.
“Your friend is rather fortunate,” one of the rescue workers said to Pete as the rest of the team worked on moving MacGyver’s body out of the canyon. “How did you know where to locate him?”
Pete glanced at the wispy, translucent, ghost-like form of MacGyver, still materialized beside him. Sunlight filtered right through him, making his apparition glow even brighter than it had before. It almost seemed that his vision would be bright and conspicuous enough for the rescuers to notice, but of course they continued operating in an urgent yet professional manner, noticing nothing unusual. It seemed only he could see his friend, and he knew their closeness had to be the reason. He struggled to provide the rescuer that had asked him the question with a satisfying answer, one that would not make him sound like a certifiable lunatic.
“Tell him you were with me,” MacGyver said, his voice small, distant, and distorted, carried gently in the air. He was still staring transfixed at his own body as they lifted it.
“I was…hiking, with him,” Pete said. MacGyver nodded in approval, encouraging him to continue the fabricated story. “I saw him fall. I marked the location mentally, just as I had memorized the trail. I made my way back and got your assistance.”
Pete’s answer seemed to convince the rescue worker, even though he had seen the heavyset man huffing and wheezing, his round face red and soaked in sweat as they navigated through the rugged terrain to get to MacGyver, obviously unused to such exertions. The rescue worker looked around the hostile, unforgiving, yet strikingly beautiful location.
“He’s lucky to have brought you along with him, even if he is an expert hiker,” he said.
“Yeah, well, he was acting as my guide. He said this would be fun.”
The rescue worker grinned. “He obviously didn’t realize this wasn’t your version of fun,” he said.
Pete glanced once again at the ghost of MacGyver, who smiled teasingly at him, knowing how correct the rescue worker was in his assumptions.
“Next time he takes you on a hike, Mr. Thornton, I’d recommend you suggest something a little less challenging, even if that might bore him,” the rescue worker said in a sober tone. “Devil’s Bend is a suicide hike, one reserved exclusively for experts. Now, no doubt your friend is an expert, but he still fell, and both of you could have been seriously hurt. We’ve lost many hikers out here who failed to heed all the warnings. We don’t know the full extent of the damage your friend sustained in his fall, but he is in serious condition and will have to battle to survive. His recovery will most likely take some time. Try to remember that the next time he wants to take you on a hike somewhere.”
“I will,” Pete said, glancing once again at the smiling ghost of his friend. “Still, I don’t think even a fall like this is going to stop him.”
“Falls like this seldom do to those who seek extreme challenges and adventure,” the rescue worker said. “I would still advise caution next time, nevertheless.”
“Believe me, I completely understand,” Pete said, thinking about the countless injuries his friend had suffered over the years. If only he would just be more careful…he looked at MacGyver’s ghost again, wishing he could chide him directly for his latest mishap, but he knew he couldn’t talk to something that the rescue worker couldn’t see, something that quite possibly not really be there standing near him, considering he could still perhaps be a hallucination.
MacGyver could feel himself fading. It wasn’t painful, but it felt as if he was getting sucked back into oblivion, darkness encroaching, his thoughts growing dim. Something was pulling at him, dragging him away…
“Pete!” He shouted, his voice echoing. “Pete, something’s happening to me! What’s going on?”
Pete noticed the concerned expression on his friend’s face. Already faint, his presence grew fainter, his voice weaker, his lips moving but no audible sound escaping from them. Seconds later, he vanished, evaporating into nothingness. Pete gasped, struggling not to cry out, not to show how stunned and helpless he felt, revealing nothing of his inner turmoil to the rescue worker who would never believe his true account of what he saw, of how they were led there by the ghost of his friend. The man noticed his distress anyway, seeing how saddened and confused he looked. As if sensing that someone was looking at him, Pete turned and glanced over his shoulder at the man, tears in his eyes.
“MacGyver…is he…going to be all right?” He asked.
Where…where could you have gone, dear friend? Are you back in your body now? Oh God, I hope so… The rescue worker placed a reassuring hand on Pete’s shoulder, firmly squeezing it. “I’m sure the hospital staff will do all they can for him,” he said in a comforting tone.
***
The blackness was gone. MacGyver once again found himself standing over his body, this time bandaged and cleaned, resting sedately on a hospital bed, a heart monitor beeping steadily in the background.
“Where…? How did I get here?” He wondered aloud.
He stared down at his unconscious body, still not able to get used to the sight of it. Absently, he reached out to touch it, thinking his ghostly hand would go right through it the way it did with every other solid object. Surprise registered on his face when he realized he could touch his body, feel its skin and bone as if he were touching someone else’s arm. Somehow, he had become two different entities, his living body and his spirit divided, split into separate beings. When he tried to touch other items in the hospital room, his hand went right through them, but not his body. He could touch his body, feel it…this notion began to disconcert him. If he couldn’t go through his body, that meant he couldn’t reenter it. The solidness of the body was acting as a barrier, preventing him from returning, from restoring himself fully to life. Several times he tried to penetrate the skin, to re-inhabit the shell that was his body, but the barrier remained firmly in place, denying him entry.
“No…” he whispered. “This is impossible. Why can’t I get back?”
For the first time he was aware of others in the hospital room with him and his body. Pete, a doctor, and a nurse stood on the other side of the bed, monitoring his vital signs.
“Oh Pete, thank God,” MacGyver said, walking around the hospital bed that contained his body instead of walking through it as if to show it proper respect, standing right beside his distraught, confused friend who was weeping quietly by his bedside, peering over the doctor’s shoulder at him. “Pete, it’s incredible…for some reason I can’t seem to get back inside my body. I must’ve tried, because for awhile everything went blank and I was lost…next thing I know, I’m standing here, in the hospital. Pete, when I touch my body, I can’t go through it the way I go through everything else, as if I’m touching somebody else. I can’t get in, Pete, and I’ve tried. I’m scared and worried. I know there’s not much you can do, but I need help. I need to get back in somehow…what’s going on? Am I dying? Is that why? What’s my current condition? What are the doctors telling you?”
He questions remained unanswered. Unlike the last time he found himself in that state, MacGyver noticed that Pete seemed unaware of his presence, completely ignoring him, his focus entirely on the unconscious body on the bed. He began to panic, thinking Pete couldn’t hear or see him as he could the last time.
“Look, it’s okay,” he said gently into Pete’s ear. “I know you can’t say much to me because there are other people and the room and you don’t want to appear crazy to them, talking to nothing, but just give me a sign, anything. Pete…please show me that you can hear me, that you can still see me. Give me a sign…please…”
Pete didn’t respond, not even with the slightest gesture. Slowly, MacGyver began to realize he was alone, lost in that state of nonbeing with no one to talk to, now even severed from his closest friend where before he had been his only contact with the living world. He began to understand and feel the loneliness and isolation that other spirits such as him must’ve felt, lending credence to the maudlin image of the forlorn ghost forever wandering the earth, lost in eternity with no one to relate their discomfiting experience to. He didn’t even have the comforting presence of his other relatives who had passed away to help him orient himself. He was completely alone, and while he normally desired solitude, this time it frightened and overwhelmed him.
“So, this is what it’s like to be dead,” he said, “cut off from everything and everybody. At least I could communicate with you to get help, but now you can’t even hear me. Maybe I can talk to you in your dreams, the way my mom did, and my dad…I am dying, aren’t I? I know you can’t hear me, any of you, but tell me…what’s the diagnosis? I am, aren’t I?”
“He’s stable, but I’m afraid due to his severe head trauma he has lapsed into a deep comatose state,” the doctor said. “He could have brain damage, but we won’t know for sure the extent of it until he regains consciousness. His other injuries will heal, but recovery will be slow I’m afraid.”
“That’s why I can’t get back in my body,” MacGyver said. “It’s fighting to survive, but it hasn’t decided whether it wants me back or not.” Reaching out beyond Pete and the doctor, he touched his body again as if to soothe it. “Come on,” he said to it, tears in his eyes as if he were speaking to an ailing friend. He realized in a sense that he was, that his body was a friend, even if it had not always been merciful to him, allowing him to feel intense pain more times than he cared to remember. Yet even that was an act of trying to preserve him, to alert him that something was wrong, that he needed to take better care of himself. His body and mind had an incredible human partnership, one that he wanted back; one he knew he needed back. “You can get out of this. You’ve gotten me out of much worse. I know you can make it. Don’t fail on me yet.”
Pete and the doctor remained standing over him, still unaware of MacGyver’s spirit.
“When will he wake?” Pete asked, his voice tremulous with tears, emotions catching raw in his constricted throat.
“There’s no way of determining that,” the doctor said. “We’ll continue to closely monitor him for any changes.”
“I have to get better. I have to. I can’t leave you in misery like this, Pete. God, I wish you could hear me again, that you could see me and know that I’m still here. I guess the only assurance I have is that you did see me, no matter how briefly that was. You have to believe I’m still here, that I’m going to stay here and keep you company no matter what happens.”
Pete couldn’t be sure, but a part of him felt that MacGyver’s presence was clearly in the room once again beyond the physical body. He couldn’t see him or hear anything, but he knew his friend was somewhere in that room. Then again, he still wondered if any of the extraordinary occurrences he had seen were real or pure fantasy of the mind. He did find MacGyver’s body, supposedly with the assistance of his ghost, but how? It couldn’t have been a mere hallucination or a coincidence. He knew where MacGyver had gone hiking, but he wasn’t the fool he had portrayed himself as to the rescuers. He had never been anywhere near that trail. He didn’t even know what it looked like until that day or its exact location. MacGyver had led him there, but where was he now? He still couldn’t overcome watching him disappear the way he had so abruptly, as if some powerful invisible force was yanking him away into complete nonexistence. Yet, his heart was beating. He might have been in a coma, but he was still alive. If his ghost was not still somewhere unseen in that room, then it had returned to Mac’s body. Pete hoped it had, that he was at peace now that he had been saved. He attempted a smile, his lips quivering as more tears threatened.
“Hang in there,” he whispered, touching his hand and squeezing it, never once noticing that his hand went through the ghostly hand of MacGyver, who was also touching his body, standing right beside him in the emptiness of his own strange new existence.
***
Outside the hospital room where Pete was standing over MacGyver’s body and the doctor was doing his best to console him, two mysterious men stood, watching, one of them with a self-satisfied grin on his face.
“So, MacGyver is injured and unconscious,” he said. “That makes Mr. Thornton more vulnerable than ever. Now is the perfect opportunity. We can grab him, and MacGyver can do nothing to help him this time.”
To be continued…
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."
--Henry David Thoreau
brains+brawn+beauty+personality=MacGyver
Poor Mac! Now Pete can't see him! And two evil guys after Pete is NOT good! Ack! Mac should learn to listen to Pete now and then >_< He's so stubborn he's gonna give Pete green hair (just imagine how much stress he gives his poor bald friend that he's gonna cause him to grow green hair!) 
)I always wondered, if a person has an out of body experience, how do they get back in...?
