The Marine

Coming too again, Bill only had one thing running through his mind.

‘I’m… a baby.’

As if the knowledge were coming from the darkest place in his psyche, Bill found it challenging to initially face the truth.

And it was hard, until the so-called giant walked back in the room and it became impossible to deny. It was still frightening, but after looking at his arms Bill no longer panicked to the point of passing out. Although he was still confused, now he had a way to understand the things around him.

The room wasn’t large, and the bubble was an incubator used for babies.

‘This doesn’t make sense. This isn’t where I’m supposed to go.’

Bill had been a Christian all his life, and it simply wouldn’t do for a person to reincarnate. However, the facts were laid out in front of him. While he couldn’t move his head fully, once the doctor, or what he assumed was a doctor, came in the room he was able to see more of himself.

‘The damn Buddhists turned out to be right…’

Bill was a worldly enough person, but like most Americans, he didn’t know the specifics of eastern religions very well. To him, any time he seen a bald monk or whenever he heard of a person who wouldn’t even kill an ant, he lumped them all with the Buddhists.

Being reincarnated was a peculiar thing, Bill thought. Past the fear of his current situation, he had no inkling of being alive before his previous life, and as best as he could tell, he didn’t have anything to grow from. How was he meant to seek some enlightenment that he hadn’t already attained after living past ninety years?

‘Do I really have to be a bald head vegan to reach heaven…?’

As soon as he posed the question to himself, he began to shake his head and reasoned: ‘No, that doesn’t make sense. Every animal needs to eat something to survive. Even plants root into the ground to absorb nutrients and grow atop each other for a better place in the sun. And those Buddhists may not eat meat, but plants are life too.’

Having crossed the initial crises phase of what he had become, the only thing left to the man, or baby, was to contemplate what meaning could have brought him to a new life and observe his surroundings more closely.

‘Well, it seems to be a modern hospital so that’s good. Those doors look large, but then maybe I’m a premature infant and just small. That would explain this incubator too…’

The thought of being a premature infant was not a good one; but since he wasn’t having a hard time breathing, or anything else besides moving around, it wasn’t too alarming.

Unable to do anything else, Bill spent the rest of his waking hours thinking about his life. Particularly his wife who he had hoped he would see again in heaven. One of the main things that kept him living a good life after she had gone was the prospect that he had to do good in order to see her again.

‘Maybe this is just another test. The Lord does work in mysterious ways. Honey, I promise you I’ll do my best and make you proud.’

He had told himself such things, while in the back of his mind he wondered if he would meet her again. After all, if he reincarnated, maybe she did too.

After thinking a bit more about himself and his previous life, Bill wandered back to sleep.

******************************************************************

Waking up, Bill wondered again how long he had been here. The room he was placed in had no windows, and even though it felt like a long time, he knew that solitary confinement would play with a person’s mind. One measure of time, although he wasn’t satisfied with it, was that now he was able to hold his head up to a degree. He couldn’t roll over yet, but he knew babies could typically hold their heads up at around one month. So, he had something to go on.

During this time, he hadn’t been left unattended. Very often a woman, who was clearly dressed like a nurse, would come in to feed him and change his diaper. Mentally an old man, getting a diaper changed wasn’t pleasant, but he understood that in matters of life and death ‘modesty’ was just a word.

He couldn’t understand the language the lady spoke when she came in. He thought it sounded Japanese but besides a small bit of Spanish Bill couldn’t speak anything besides English.

One major discovery was that he was being fed with a bottle. This may seem insignificant however powdered formula, if it was actually powdered formula, didn’t come into popular use until the 1960’s. That along with the medical instruments in the room he was in made him relatively comfortable knowing he was born in modern times. It was even possible that he was born directly after his death.

Before he could continue this line of thought the door opened and in came the usual nurse. Upon seeing her Bill gave out a wide gummy smile.

People love smiling babies and perhaps due to his physical age, physical contact with another person was incredibly comforting. When he first noticed the woman, all she would do was rub his arms, legs, and belly and it was almost intoxicating.

Recently though she had been picking him up which was incredibly soothing. They never left the room, which did raise a red flag, but it wasn’t enough for him panic over. He had been kept fed and clean, any hypothesis on some medical condition would only make things worse.

“************* W****m, ****************************************?”

He thought he heard a word in the nurse’s sentence, but he couldn’t be sure, so Bill just kept smiling while slightly tilting his head back and forth.

After checking his diaper and feeding him, the nurse, to Bills gratitude, picked him up and started to walk back and forth across the room.

Or that’s what he thought she was doing.

Getting to the far end of the room, where Bill could barely see due to his limited mobility, the nurse laid him right back down into a new crib.

The crib was like the old incubator except this one had an open top and apparently had wheels, because no sooner than he was laid down, the nurse finally took him out of the room.

‘Sure enough’ Bill thought

As he was being strolled down the hallway Bill kept his eyes wide open so he wouldn’t miss a thing. To his relief, the hospital did look more-or-less modern. There were lights in the hallway, and they weren’t overly bright like the ones he had been under when he initially had woken up to this new life.

They had even crossed other rooms with machines similar to those that he knew. Although he clearly was not in a nursery ward, it did look like an ICU of sorts. One of the most amazing things was that while the nurse clearly wasn’t speaking in English there was indeed Arabic-numerals and English letters on the doors.

To top it off, the nurse, who had kept smiling and talking to him, brought him to an elevator.

To his surprise he had heard a few words that she said before. ‘Okaa-san’ was one that he did know but couldn’t put his finger on.

Only giving it a passing thought, the elevator ride took a few seconds to finish. He couldn’t tell exactly but it seemed like they either went up or down at least four stories. Which signified, to Bill, this was indeed a modern hospital.

Going through the elevator doors the look of this hallway looked much different than the previous one. Whereas before it looked like an ICU, this looked more like the hallway to a large apartment.

Passing a few doors, the nurse finally came to a halt, she opened a door labelled ‘4D’ and brought him in.

The interior of the room looked like a nursing home room, there was a large bed, and a few machines that he couldn’t quite see due to his vantage point.

Being wheeled up to the side of the bed, Bill instantly thought something was wrong.

It was hard to judge distances and sizes while laying down, but the woman on this bed seemed to be at least eight feet tall!

Gathering his courage, Bill didn’t shut his eyes as the nurse lifted him up. The woman in the bed was a sitting up and stretching out long arms, but even he as a baby could tell she was weak.

“****** W****m, ****************************************”

Of course, he couldn’t make head nor tails about what this woman was saying. Even if he could understand her, he’d doubt he’d hear it just at this moment.

With many thoughts running through his head, as he was being placed in the woman’s hands, he could only think to himself.

‘She’s so big…’

He wasn’t afraid as he had been when the doctor had first picked him up, but alarm bells were undeniably flashing.

As he started being held, he could only think of words like ‘gigantism’, but that also seemed a bit wrong. For starters, Bill had never seen a person as large as this woman, who he assumed was his new mother, as well proportioned as she was.

Most people suffering from gigantism had off-shaped heads and bent skeletons due to the strain placed on their bodies as they rapidly grew. This woman seemed to be under thirty and was quite pretty, unless the gown was hiding it, she didn’t seem to be shaped any different than normal.

She was not alright, Bill thought, although the woman’s hands were as large as his body, the nurse had been standing less than two feet away, presumably because she could see what Bill was feeling.

‘She’s shaking’

Figuring what any mother would want, Bill slightly turned his head towards the large woman and showed off his gums with a wide smile, which elicited an instant reaction.

Before he had been held in the woman’s hands, after his smile she softly smiled back and brought him to her chest. She was still shaking, but it had significantly subsided.

******************************************************************

He had been in his new mothers’ arms for only a few minutes before the nurse picked him back up, strangely, instead of wheeling him out again, there had been a small commotion where in some other women in white coats came and set up a lamp like the one that had been in the room he woke up in.

After the lamp had been set up, he was rolled towards it. The doctor in black glasses had come back into the room not long after, softly spoke to the tall woman, who Bill decided he would just call mom for now on, then came over and said something to him.

“W****m, ******************”

Not understanding a word that the man had said, Bill just flashed his gums and was gently pat on the head for his effort. Which oddly seemed more emasculating than having his diaper changed.

Doing his best not to dwell on the minor emotion, Bill shifted his head in the direction of his is supposed new mother. From his vantage he could only see his new moms head, while the rest of her body was hidden beyond his view, too high off the ground for him to see.

As he looked over, staring at her facial features, she slowly turned her head to face his. Caught in the moment Bill suddenly smiled and lifted his arms as high as he could.

At that moment he thought she smiled again.