Thoughts sorted themselves under a few different headings within the man's foggy mind. The sorting was a slow and tedious process, but the fact that it was happening at all was a good thing.
First, there was pain. It seemed to echo from opposite sides of his head, first from his temple, and then the back of his head too. The pain wanted to consume him - his eyes could not focus, and even thinking seemed to hurt. But he kept slowly thinking anyway, from his position prone on the icy earth.
Second, there was a general fuzziness. It seemed to slow everything down. Perhaps that was just his blood pressure dropping, as his heart received garbled messages from his brain, unsure about whether it should keep pumping, or slow down further.
Third, the cold. With his heart rate dropping, and the icy world around him, he felt the cold - it bit and stung at him still though, numbness not yet setting in.
Then he was being poked and prodded, and his skull felt like it was being split open as even gentle pressure felt like knives. He groaned at the touch, but couldn't yet tell his hands to rise and stop it, couldn't do anything much useful really.
Something pressed against his head, cold and wet. Something else against the base of his skull - he hadn't registered the removal of the cloth from his grasp.
Then more words pierced his mind, definitive and stern. Authoritative, and yet familiar. A frown crinkled his brow in response, which was promptly followed by another sharp grimace as the expression hurt - but then, everything hurt.
He coughed as he tried to speak at first, to offer a reply.
Then he vomited.
Somehow, something in him pushed him off the ground as the gut-curdling sensation crawled through his abdomen, his survival instinct of do not aspirate your own vomit overriding all other sensibilities. He was on his side suddenly, the world spinning all around him, coming into a swimmingly blurred focus, as he retched up his half-digested breakfast on the road.
Hunched over the pile of mess now, leaning on his forehead in the snow, he managed to spit out a reply through the gasps. "Shit. I feel… like shit."
First, there was pain. It seemed to echo from opposite sides of his head, first from his temple, and then the back of his head too. The pain wanted to consume him - his eyes could not focus, and even thinking seemed to hurt. But he kept slowly thinking anyway, from his position prone on the icy earth.
Second, there was a general fuzziness. It seemed to slow everything down. Perhaps that was just his blood pressure dropping, as his heart received garbled messages from his brain, unsure about whether it should keep pumping, or slow down further.
Third, the cold. With his heart rate dropping, and the icy world around him, he felt the cold - it bit and stung at him still though, numbness not yet setting in.
Then he was being poked and prodded, and his skull felt like it was being split open as even gentle pressure felt like knives. He groaned at the touch, but couldn't yet tell his hands to rise and stop it, couldn't do anything much useful really.
Something pressed against his head, cold and wet. Something else against the base of his skull - he hadn't registered the removal of the cloth from his grasp.
Then more words pierced his mind, definitive and stern. Authoritative, and yet familiar. A frown crinkled his brow in response, which was promptly followed by another sharp grimace as the expression hurt - but then, everything hurt.
He coughed as he tried to speak at first, to offer a reply.
Then he vomited.
Somehow, something in him pushed him off the ground as the gut-curdling sensation crawled through his abdomen, his survival instinct of do not aspirate your own vomit overriding all other sensibilities. He was on his side suddenly, the world spinning all around him, coming into a swimmingly blurred focus, as he retched up his half-digested breakfast on the road.
Hunched over the pile of mess now, leaning on his forehead in the snow, he managed to spit out a reply through the gasps. "Shit. I feel… like shit."
chulane
