44

Waking up from being unconscious yet again was disconcerting. He had no idea where he was for several minutes until he recognised that this was the same room he had been in when he had first woken up in the Heavenly City's Healing Halls and not the small courtyard.

The God Hospital. Whilst not exclusively for gods it was more amusing to refer to it in this way in his mind.

Pushing back the bed covers was just as difficult as it had been that first day he had found himself in the Heavenly City. Someone had tucked him into the bed so tightly that it was amazing that he could even feel his feet at all. Had Dax still been human he would surely have suffocated if they were on that tight.

He was thankfully still wearing the clothes that he had chosen especially to visit Elgaldir at his office.

It might be a healer's job to help people change clothes but it still made Dax uncomfortable to know that someone had done that whilst he was not aware of it happening.

His right wrist was swollen. Patchy gold splodges across the skin there, where fresh blood was pooling beneath it and more of a bronze colour where it had clotted and his body had started to break it down. When Olris had grabbed his arm, Dax hadn't noticed just how tightly their fingers had been curled around his wrist.

He brought his arm up closer to his face and saw the small crescent indentations from Olris' fingernails still prominent in his flesh.

'Great! Another injury to add to the list of injuries I already had.' Dax thought angrily to himself. It didn't matter that his assigned guard had thought they were helping him, that help was looking a lot more like hurting in the light of the healing room's expansive array of crystal lights.

The fanciness of the lighting had always struck him as an odd choice for a hospital room. The Heavenly Realm really liked being overly gaudy. This wasn't the room that he had woken up in last time, Dax realised. Though the shape and colour of it was the same, most of the decorations were different and on one wall there was a painting of a sunset that he supposed was meant to bring about feelings of calmness and tranquillity. Dax just found it to be the sort of image a business would have as a decoration in its staff break room in an attempt to prevent staff having mental breakdowns at work.

Boring.

Very boring.

He spent an untold amount of time in there waiting for someone to notice that he was still alive and now awake. There wasn't the equivalent of a 'Heavenly Nurse Call Button' so he either had to wait for someone to come and check on him or go in search of help himself.

When he finally felt like he wasn't going to immediately pass out once he stood up, Dax decided to peer around the door to his room to see if there was anyone standing in the corridor. His fear that Olris would be there was fortunately unfounded, instead a duo of friendly looking guards wearing the purple robes all the staff in the Healing Halls wore smiled at him.

They'd noticed Dax moving around and looked him over politely, no doubt assessing whether he was about to keel over in front of them. Dax was glad that they didn't make any moves to stop him from leaving the room but he didn't feel like pushing his luck with another tug of war on his limbs today.

All the bruises on his arm were enough for today and it wasn't like he was going to be able to outrun them when he felt like death warmed over.

"Are you in pain? I can go get you a healer if you would like me to." Once asked.

"Are you hungry? I can go get you some food." asked the other.

Dax hadn't realised just how hungry he was until he was asked if he wanted food. His stomach rumbled, angry at him for forgetting to feed it. Dax couldn't remember when he had last eaten. It must have been yesterday morning before he had visited Elgaldir and they had talked most of the afternoon and the entirety of the night.

He probably should have brought snacks with him. The pockets in this robe were certainly deep enough to carry a lot of things in them.

"Can I have some food please?"

The words were barely out of his mouth when the guard who had asked him was already scuttling off to get it for him. They were quickly replaced by another guard who was laughing and holding a box of coloured pencils and a colouring book.

"For you in case you get bored. There's not a lot to do here." He said with the look of someone who had spent a lot of time as a patient and a gravelly voice.

Dax took the distraction gratefully and thanked the two of them before heading back into the room. Standing was starting to make him feel dizzy.

It wasn't the same guard who had gone for his food that returned with it, instead it was Omdum who was standing at the foot of his bed with a bowl of soup on a silver platter. Dax took one spoonful of the soup before immediately spitting it out into a conveniently placed decorative bowl at his bedside.

Parsnip.

Parsnip soup.

Parsnip, the most accursed vegetable in both his home world and in this one.

The smell alone made him want to gag and he'd pushed it away taking the small bread buns covered in poppy seeds and all but inhaling them. He was hungry, very hungry but not hungry enough to eat anything that had parsnip in it.

Actually, after the shock of eating parsnip, Dax remembered Elgaldir had given him something to eat during their conversation. Some sort of granola bar looking thing when they had reached the part where Dythos had died.

That had to mean he had been unconscious for at least a day then, if not longer. Otherwise his stomach wouldn't hurt this badly.

After seeing his rather violent reaction to the offensive root vegetable containing soup Omdum had one of the guards go replace it with a simple chicken and vegetable broth that was endlessly better. Dax all but shovelled it into his face with what had to be one of the world's smallest spoons.

Once he was finished eating, Omdum examined him again. Apparently he'd checked him over when he'd been brought in but hadn't pried too deeply when Omdum had seen that he was merely exhausted. Now that Dax was awake and capable of advocating for his own care, Omdum wanted to do a more comprehensive medical examination.

When the God of Healing reached his wrist and saw how extensive the bruising was he frowned.

"How did you get this?" He asked gently, rubbing his fingers over the splotches of gold and copper that covered it, manipulating his hand to make sure that nothing was broken.

"Olris was very insistent that I not be sat next to the God of War." Dax answered wincing as the swollen flesh of his wrist protested being bent back and forth. "They grabbed my arm and tried to yank me away."

"Against your wishes?" Omdum asked pointedly looking up at his face as he wrapped a cool feeling supportive bandage around the bruised part of his wrist.

"Very much so." Dax huffed, brushing hair out of his eyes with his free non-injured hand.

The Healing God seemed to be thinking very deeply as he continued winding bandages round and round until Dax was no longer able to bend his wrist at all. "I've had a word." said the older god, finally pinning the end of the bandage in place with a small safety pin.

Now finished with this task, he sat down in one of the chairs meant for patient's visitors that had been neatly stacked in one of the corners. He'd sort of flopped into it like he'd had a really long day and was revelling in actually being able to take a break. With all the humans praying to him for healing, his workload had to be even crazier than Elgaldir's.

Dax awkwardly sat on the edge of the bed fiddling with the corner of the duvet cover. It was a pale orange and had little yellow and white ducks on it. The feeling of awkwardness only increased in the silence that lay between them. He wanted to ask a lot of things, the first being whether he could go yet and the other being what the plans were to like, actually support his health and wellbeing. If there were any. Did anyone care about making things better instead of treating him like some exotic wild animal? Can I get a walking stick, or a wheelchair or a walking frame? Are these scars meant to hurt this much? How do I use my powers safely?

But like every doctors visit he had had back in his original world, nothing came out of his mouth. He was too scared to hear the answers or to be ignored again. So he waited in silence for the other person to say something.

"I'm only going to make you stay here long enough to get a proper meal down you. Don't worry your not being held hostage in the hospital." Omdum said, from his slumped position in the hospital chair.

Dax sighed. The muscles in his throat were contracting almost painfully and his eyes were embarrassingly wet.

'Don't cry.' He told himself. 'Don't cry. Don't cry in public. Don't cry in public. Don't cry in public.'

The tears that had started to well in the corners of his eyes were soon threatening to fall so many had gathered there. He still couldn't talk, couldn't ask the things he wanted to ask, couldn't ask the things he needed to know, couldn't demand better care because he was chanting 'Don't cry in public. Don't cry in public. Don't cry in public' in his mind over and over in an increasingly harsh tone.

It proved to be pointless as the salty wet proof of his distress defied his orders and ran down the side of his nose. Then he hated himself even more for the loss of control.

Omdum stared at him in increasing horror as he held out a handkerchief for Dax to wipe his face. Dax ignored it, even as it was pressed into his hand, as if not blotting his tears with it and letting them run freely down his face would mean that he wasn't crying.

Having his tears acknowledged by the other god made him feel worse.

'I just want to go home.' Dax thought desperately wanting to leave but having no idea how he was actually going to get back home. Then he cried because he realised for the first time that he was thinking not of his home on earth with his parents, brother and friends but of the white marble palace of the Wheat God.

'That's Dythos' home not your home. Everything you have is his not yours.'

'I'm just a placeholder.'

'Something to fill the gap where Dythos was.'

'Just an echo of a memory.'

'An actor playing a part.'

'But there isn't even a script to read from.'

"I want to go home." Dax sobbed looking at the floating ball of light that marked the System. It beeped before flashing up a map graphic. (did it have this function since the beginning? If so, why hadn't it told him that there was an easier way of finding the war department?)

Home is 1.2km from this location. Would you like directions?

Home was marked as Dythos' palace.

Omdum offered him another handkerchief and when he didn't acknowledge it again, he started dabbing his face for him. Dax wanted nothing more than to lay on the floor in the foetal position until this feeling went away.

Until now, he hadn't really realised how lonely he'd been feeling. Sure he saw people everyday but that didn't mean that he had any close friends here.

Omdum kept wiping away his tears until they eventually dried up and Dax's face was stinging from the salt of his tears.

He folded the square of fabric neatly and placed it in his pocket before gently taking Dax's hands in his own.

"You've been through a lot and all of this must be very frustrating for you. You're used to being very busy, your socially isolated from the people you once knew and your manifested body isn't working the way that you are accustomed to." Omdum said. He was glowing a faint green colour that when his hands met Dax's own left a comforting warmth. "I don't envy you for finding out about your death the way you did that's for certain but I know, I at least wasn't going to keep it from you forever."

Dax looked at him, ready to accuse him of lying but the sincerity of his facial expression made him hold back.

"I know that I certainly haven't been as active in your care as I should have been. This isn't something that I want to use as an excuse but there was an outbreak in the south that also needed my attention and that led to... well it led to the situation that we are in now." Omdum apologised. From this close position that they were sat in, Dax could really see the bags under his eyes and he felt some sympathy for him. It was nice to get an apology but that didn't mean that one of the other healing deities couldn't have done something in his stead.

With his bandaged wrist now throbbing painfully Dax asked if something could be done about the pain and when he'd taken the pills Omdum had gladly supplied him he asked the question he really wanted to ask.

"Can I get a mobility aid? Like a wheelchair or a walking frame or a walking stick or something?"

Mini Theatre

Omdum: Welcome to the 'Patients we accidentally gave shoddy healthcare to' support group. Let me start with our traditional greeting. Please don't sue us there was something big happening in the mortal realm at the time.

Dax: I didn't expect to see you here.

Elgaldir: Yeah it took them hundreds of years to figure out how to neutralise the poison and they kept giving me stuff to sedate me because of the rage. Now I have an incredibly high tolerance to it and the last time I needed an arrow cut out they couldn't put me under because the dose needed to fully sedate me probably would have killed me and they thought that was unethical.

Deity: They forgot me in a corridor for six days the last time a maritime disaster happened.

Dax: ...