Xie Mingzhe had a nightmare, in which a huge beast was chasing him. He ran away wildly. As the beast opened its mouth and was about to swallow him into its belly, Xie Mingzhe opened his eyes in horror and looked around – above his head was not the ceiling of his university dormitory, and his roomate was not here. He slept alone in a strange room.
He remembered that last night he and his roommate ate out to celebrate the latter's birthday. At last, his roommate got plastered, so Xie Mingzhe carried his roommate on his back and returned to the dormitory at 3 a.m.
"Why do I wake up in a strange room?" Xie Mingzhe stiffened and looked around carefully.
It seemed he was in a hospital ward with white wall around. He was lying on a bed, beside which was a machine like a monitor apparatus. Some electrodes were placed on his skin, and the corresponding electrodes were attached to the apparatus, which was showing some numerical values he couldn't understand on its LCD panel.
—— “Is it because I got an acute illness in the middle of the night that my roommate took me to the hospital's emergency room?”
When he was pondering, suddenly a nurse in a white coat pushed the door in. After seeing him, the nurse instantly widened her eyes as if she saw a ghost.
Xie Mingzhe said on his own initiative: “h.e.l.lo, did I…”
Before the words were finished, the nurse ran out in panic and shouted: “Doctor Qin, the patient in a vegetative state in the ward 7 woke up!”
Xie Mingzhe：”????”
Vegetable? He just drank with his roommate last night. How could he be a vegetable? Did the nurse confuse him with other patients?
When he was thinking about what's going on, a middle-aged doctor in his forties, carrying a machine like an ECG monitor, hurriedly came in.
Xie Mingzhe smiled and asked in politeness: “Excuse me, what acute illness I get?”
The doctor activated the monitor and looked up at Xie Mingzhe. He said, “You have been in a coma for a month. Lie down, please. I'm going to check your physical condition.”
A month?
The nightmare, coupled with the unfamiliar surroundings, got Xie Mingzhe at a loss. So he obediently lied flat and the doctor gave him a physical exam.
The doctor quickly got a result, sighing with emotion: “You woke up after getting severe brain damage. This is a medical miracle!”
Xie Mingzhe was totally confused: “Severe brain damage?”
He had never heard that someone got in vegetative status because of drinking. Did he drink fake beer? !
The doctor looked at him in amazement: “Don't you remember? A month ago, you accidentally fell from the third floor, and your brain was seriously hurt. When you were taken to the hospital, you had been in deep coma. You received a surgery and survived, but you had been in vegetative state since then, until you woke up today.”
Xie Mingzhe：”………………”
Falling down from the third floor? His dormitory was on the seventh floor.
Xie Mingzhe forced a laugh and rub his nose: “Are you kidding? Is it because of alcoholism that I was taken to the hospital? I didn't drink too much, I think… Wait, where is my roommate?" Xie Mingzhe looked around after finishing his words.
Hearing such nonsense, the doctor looked at Xie Mingzhe in worries. The doctor said to the monitor beside him: "No.777, check his Inner Spirit. Has his Spirit Threshold recovered?"
The square therapeutic apparatus activitaed immediately and quickly turned into a robot. It stretched out his metal arms to place two electrodes on the boy's temples.
Xie Mingzhe stared at it with his eyes widened, only to see its face, a LCD panel about 20 cm wide, constantly showed strangely bouncing values. After a while, it reported the result with a mechanized sound: “Inner Spirit peak 300, EEG curve is normal.”
Doctor Qin looked back at Xie Mingzhe and said with a complicated expression: “How could it be?”
Xie Mingzhe, with his head held by the robot, was also stunned - how could it be? I also wanted to know!
Then, Dr. Qin seemed to think of something and said excitedly: “This case is really rare. I will immediately arrange you a thorough examination!”
The doctor left in a hurry and took that therapeutic apparatus away in his hands.
Left alone in the hospital bed, Xie Mingzhe was messy in the wind.
At that moment, he wanted to burst out three cla.s.sic questions – Who am I? Where I am? What should I do!!
But before he spoke, the doctor pushed the door in again. This time he took some instruments shaped like robots. After the doctor pressed their b.u.t.tons, these 'robots' began to work and then Xie Mingzhe was surrounded, just like a Guinea pig. With no force to oppose them, Xie Mingzhe could only lay flat on the bed, regardless of whatever these 'robots' did.
Xie Mingzhe suddenly noticed something different.
First, he was healthy and could drink a lot. He was sober when he returned to the dormitory. It was impossible that his roommate sent him to the hospital in the middle of the night, but didn't wake him; Secondly, the environment of this hospital was not quite the same as the hospital in his memory. The monitor beside him and the robots brought by the doctor all were very advanced, which seemed not to be the products of his time…
Xie Mingzhe's back suddenly trembled – he had watched a lot of time-travel novels, wouldn't he also travel through time?
The doctor soon finished his examination and looked at him with a smile. “You are really lucky,” he said, “there is less than 1% chance that a vegetable like you can wake up.”
Xie Mingzhe took a few deep breaths to stabilize the intense heartbeat and asked with courage: “Doctor, when is it today? What is my name? I'm in a mess and can't remember anything.”
The doctor answered with a good temper: “Your name is Xie Mingzhe. Today is August 1st, 3001. It is just your 18th birthday. It is written on the data card.” He opened the LCD card at the bed, seeming to prove that he was not deceiving.
Xie Mingzhe: “………….”