Nat came back to consciousness, still blind and deaf, like usual after an episode. Proprioception — his sense of self position — always came back first, and what it was telling him was confusing. He was absolutely not sitting down or laying in bed, for instance. It felt like he was face-down against a wall?

  Great. Just great, Nat thought — giving his internal voice a sarcastic tone somehow helped lessen the fear that still rose up when he awoke like this, even after so many years of it.

  He could be anywhere or have been in the middle of doing anything when an episode struck. Once he'd awoken to an overprotective parent yelling at his unconscious body. They'd thought he was pulling a prank, and had been trying to get him to stop fooling around.

  Nat hadn't been aware of it at the time — literally. But the profusely apologetic parent had confessed to the misunderstanding some time later. Nat had told them not to worry, and that it didn't bother him. After all, he hadn't heard it.

  The second of his senses to return was hearing — it started with a rush of garbled sound, like ocean waves crashing against a rocky shore. It would be a few seconds before he could distinguish anything meaningful in the discordant noise, but it meant the episode was drawing to a close.

  Vision returned next; a dim patterned haze of blacks and grays became a central pinpoint of light. That then rapidly expanded into a sparsely lit tunnel effect. As that ended, the light broadened out to the edges of his vision. That did not mean normal vision was restored yet — just as the distorted ocean wave noise slowly evolved into distinct sounds, it similarly took a few moments for the light to resolve into images, instead of just brightness.

  Nat did the only thing he could do at this point — he waited.

  More than anything at that moment, though, he wished the nauseating feeling would stop. It was like being on a swing, with your eyes closed, after eating too much. And what was worse, the nausea could sometimes last for hours afterward.

  While he waited to be able to see well enough to move, some feeling had started to return. There was a pressure on his chest and one side of his face — it was distinctly uncomfortable.

  His vision seemed like it was mostly restored, but what he was looking at didn't make any sense yet. The usual black and white overexposed effect that lingered after an episode was lasting longer than usual; everything was still aglow.

  Ah, not a wall. I face-planted into the door. He sighed. This was his life, such as it was.

  The stone was still warm — this must have been a particularly nasty episode. Heat generation was an effect of whatever was wrong with him, and the worse it was, the hotter it could get. He had vague memories of waking up amidst smoldering embers from when he was young. His system-granted environmental adaptation dealt well with heat though, a trait shared with many of the residents of the majority-desert planet, so by itself it wasn't usually dangerous — to him at least.

  It took him a few more moments of sitting before his balance started to come back. At least he wasn't dizzy this time. Still, no point risking another fall; -he pulled himself into a sitting position first, then stood.

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  It was time to run the list. Something he'd been taught early on that helped him avoid a fall turning into a medical emergency. Assess, establish, orient.

  Assess injuries. No pooled blood on the floor, no feeling of running fluid. He wasn't bleeding out, good. Once he'd taken the tip of his thumb off and hadn't even realized it till he'd spattered blood on some passers-by with a gesture. Clothes were also blood-free, and he hadn't lost bladder control. That was only an injury to his pride, but in truth he hated it more than being physically hurt, so he'd change or cover up before dealing with a minor injury.

  Oddly, his clothes were dusty though, where he'd touched the floor. He'd just swept his room last week, though. Strange.

  He went back to taking stock of his situation. Establish impact. Nothing around him was broken or on fire — especially not the thick stone door. There wasn't anything out on shelves, so that wasn't a concern. The book he'd been reading wasn't on his desk though. One of the librarians had snuck in and taken it back in the night. Who even did that? Those guys were so strange.

  A glance out what could be called a window if one was feeling particularly generous told him it was still early morning, since the sun was still on this side of the building, even if he couldn't see it.

  Hmm. It just occurred to Nat that he was dressed, but did not remember waking up. That meant he'd had memory loss again. He wondered what time it was — he wasn't waking up to orderlies or someone watching over him, so he probably hadn't missed breakfast. Bell House was a hospital, after all, so someone would have been by to check on him if he'd not come out for roll call.

  At least, he hoped he hadn't missed breakfast. He was absolutely ravenous, he felt like he hadn't eaten in years.

  Levering himself off the floor while holding himself steady with the — still warm — metal doorknob, Nat finally made it to his feet. So much effort for such a basic thing. He kept hold of the doorknob in case dizziness hit when he stood — it happened a lot after an episode. Though it would only last a few seconds, he sometimes took a second fall, though at least he stayed conscious for those.

  Since he was standing, he finished looking around, just to be sure he hadn't dropped anything he was carrying, or fallen on something and broken it. The answer seemed no to both of those, so the damage count for the day remained a reassuring zero. He'd take the small wins.

  His desk and simple platform bed weren't in danger from falls or heat, being stone and fire-resistant fabric. They were the same as always, familiar constants in a sea of oft-jumbled memories. So many things around him seemed to change incessantly, but these remained constant, if nothing else did.

  That took care of establishing impact. Nothing broken, that he could tell.

  All that was left was orient. He knew who he was — that was not a given, sometimes it took a while to recall — and where he was, so that left only when. Easy.

  Significant memory loss was always irritating. He had it every time, but he didn't count it as such if it was only few minutes. It could be a real problem, losing hours, or sometimes days. A few minutes might be disorienting, but with longer durations meant people angry that their requests were being ignored, from their point of view. Or worse, that they'd been forgotten entirely. He'd been yelled at in the street a few times over that.

  Either way, he needed to go check what time it was. That meant a quick visit to the grandfather clock in the common room. He didn't have a personal clock — it was hard to fireproof something so delicate.

  Bell House was a nice place, but it was out in the edges of the somewhat newly colonized Human lands. Electricity and other luxuries that might be found in larger cities had not yet made it here. Even Gravlin, two kilometers to the east and the largest town in over sixty kilometers had just a few water wheel generators. Mostly for the refrigerated warehouses that handled the fresh fish from the freshwater lake they extended out over.

  He twisted the thick metal lock and strained to open the door, the hinges protesting with a high-pitched noise that grated on his nerves.

  They really should oil this thing or something. He guessed the heat must not be good for it — it always stuck for a few days after an episode.

  With that thought he pulled open the door and prepared to step out into the daily reality of his life as a long-term patient in Bell House.