Blood from Nowhere

"A stranger tells you that you have your father's eyes, and suddenly you're the medical miracle who shouldn't have any blood. Just another Thursday, really."

As we trudged on, the sound of another voice calling out to us broke through the heavy silence.

"Jamie!" it called from the direction we were heading. "Is that Joel?"

The voice was male. Australian, by the accent—not quite the same as Jamie's, but familiar in its cadence. Someone who knew both our names.

Jamie, still supporting me, waved his free arm at the man approaching us.

"Come and help us," he called out.

The man hurried down the dusty incline towards us, his movements quick and sure.

He was roughly the same age as Jamie—mid-thirties, perhaps, with the kind of weathered look that came from days in harsh sun. Dark hair. Broad shoulders. Something familiar about him that I couldn't quite place.

As he reached us, he slid under my free arm, taking on much of my weight.

The relief was immediate. With two people supporting me instead of one, the pressure on my trembling legs decreased dramatically. I could focus on movement rather than balance.

His assistance was a relief, easing the strain on both Jamie and me.

"Thought I'd better get him back to camp before dark," Jamie explained, urging us forward.

Before dark.

The phrase carried weight I didn't understand. What happened after dark? What made sunset a deadline?

"Good idea," the man agreed.

As we resumed our journey, I found myself trying to sneak glances at this new companion.

There was something familiar about his face, a nagging sense that I had seen him before, though I couldn't recall where or when.

Had I seen him in the lagoon? In the blur of faces above me during my paralysis? Or somewhere else—somewhere before all this, in my old life?

"Hurt your foot?" the man inquired, looking at Jamie.

"Yeah," Jamie grunted, his focus on the path ahead. "The hill where you found us was a bit tough."

Found us.

So this was someone who knew we had fallen. Who had perhaps been watching, or had seen the dust cloud, or had come looking when we didn't arrive on schedule.

"Has he spoken yet?" the man then asked, turning his attention to me.

"Not really," Jamie responded, casting a brief glance my way.

I felt a surge of desire to speak, to prove that I could, but my throat was parched, rendering me silent.

The words were there—yes, I can speak, I said "home" and "okay" and "sorry"—but my throat refused to produce them. The brief exertions had exhausted whatever reserves I had, leaving me mute and disheartened.

My forehead creased in frustration at my inability to communicate.

"You've got your father's eyes," the man suddenly said to me. "Let's get you home."

The observation startled me.

My father's eyes.

I had my father's eyes. This stranger could see the resemblance—could see the genetic connection that I had never known existed, that my mother had hidden from me for nineteen years.

His words struck a chord, and I managed a slight nod in response.

However, his comment only served to amplify the burning question in my mind.

Why does everyone keep calling this home?

The word 'home' conjured images and feelings that were starkly different from the barren, dusty landscape that surrounded us.

Home was my house in Glenorchy. Home was with my mother. Home was Tasmania, with its grey skies and green hills and the familiar smell of eucalyptus after rain.

Yet here I was, being told that this was home, a concept that felt both alien and unsettling.

As we continued on, the uncertainty and confusion only grew, leaving me with more questions than answers about this strange place and my place within it.

Continuing our arduous journey, the world around me blurred into a palette of endless reds and oranges, the landscape monotonous and unchanging.

The colours were beautiful in their way—sunset hues spread across the ground rather than the sky. But they were also relentless. Unbroken. Without the variety of trees or buildings or any landmark to mark progress.

Finally, after what seemed like an endless trek, a small camp emerged into view, breaking the monotony of the dusty landscape.

The camp was small—a handful of tents, some makeshift structures, what looked like a fire pit with actual flames flickering in the afternoon light. People moved between the structures, going about tasks I couldn't identify.

"Glenda!" the man supporting me—whose name I still didn't know—called out as we approached the camp.

Glenda.

The name 'Glenda' struck a chord of recognition in me.

She was the woman with golden hair who had leaned over me when I was in the water. The one with the European accent—Swiss or German, I still couldn't tell. The one who had examined me and declared that I had no blood.

She, along with the man I now recognised as Luke, quickly came toward us.

Luke.

Luke Smith. Partner to my father. The man I had called yesterday morning—was it only yesterday?—to confirm a delivery. The man who had walked into a swirling portal like it was the most natural thing in the world.

He was here too.

"He's bleeding!" cried Glenda. "Luke, get me some tissue from the medical tent," she directed.

Bleeding?

I was bleeding?

I hadn't felt anything. Hadn't noticed any wound or cut or injury from the fall.

Luke, however, seemed momentarily frozen, his gaze fixed on me with an unreadable expression.

Something passed across his face—guilt? Recognition? Fear? I couldn't tell. But he didn't move, didn't respond to Glenda's instruction. Just stared at me as if seeing a ghost.

Which, I supposed, I might be.

"I got it!" Another young man I didn't recognise emerged from a nearby tent, responding with urgency.

He was young—perhaps a little older than me, early twenties maybe. Moving quickly, efficiently, clearly accustomed to medical emergencies in this place.

"Ta," Glenda said, taking a wad of tissue from him and pressing it against my nose, which I hadn't even realised was bleeding.

My nose.

I was having a nosebleed. The fall must have caused it, though I hadn't felt the impact. The blood I couldn't feel was dripping down my face, and I hadn't even known.

"Let's get him sitting," she instructed, guiding me to a log beside the campfire.

The log was rough beneath me, the bark pressing into my thighs through the fabric of my work trousers. But it was solid. Stable. After so long being carried and supported, the simple act of sitting felt like an achievement.

The warmth from the flickering flames was a stark contrast to the harsh sun, soothing and not as overpowering. I found myself leaning toward it slightly, drawn by the primal reassurance of flame.

"Not too close," Glenda cautioned, her concern evident. "Is it just his nose?" she inquired.

"I think so," came Jamie's response.

"I didn't even notice it was bleeding," the first unknown man admitted.

I focused my gaze on him, confused.

But his nose isn't bleeding.

The realisation that they were talking about me was slow to dawn on me.

Of course they were talking about me. I was the one who had been dead. The one who had been carried. The one Glenda was pressing tissues against.

My sense of self was still fragmented, scattered across the experiences of the past hours or days or however long it had been.

Glenda knelt in front of me, her expression one of puzzlement.

Her face was close to mine now—close enough to see the fine lines around her eyes, the intelligence in her gaze, the clinical assessment that accompanied her concern.

"I don't understand how he can be bleeding. I'm certain there was no blood in him earlier," she said, her voice laced with confusion.

Shit! She's talking about me, I realised with a start.

No blood.

They had looked at me—examined me, assessed me—and determined that I had no blood. That my veins were empty. That whatever had arrived in the lagoon wasn't a functioning human body but something else entirely.

And now I was bleeding.

The revelation that I was bleeding, and yet unaware of it, added another layer of surrealism to my already bizarre experience.

I sat there, trying to piece together the disparate elements of my current situation, feeling both detached and deeply ensconced in the unfolding drama.

My mind struggled to reconcile the myriad of confusing and contradictory sensations and information, leaving me feeling more lost and disoriented than ever.

Jamie's disbelief was evident as he shook his head.

"I didn't give him any. But he seems to have plenty of blood now," he said, his gaze fixed on the blood-stained tissues in his hand.

The tissues were red. Vividly, undeniably red. Whatever had been missing from my body was now present, flowing through my veins, dripping from my nose.

"Yes," Glenda concurred, her voice laced with a mix of awe and confusion.

She began to poke at various spots on my arms and legs, assessing my condition.

The pokes were professional, methodical—checking pulse points, pressing against veins, looking for the signs that would tell a doctor whether blood was present. Each touch registered now, where hours ago I might have felt nothing.

"There is definitely blood in his veins now. It's a medical anomaly!" she exclaimed.

These people are all fucking nuts!

The thought screamed in my mind.

How the hell could they think I didn't have blood before, but now I do? That doesn't make any sense at all.

The absurdity of the situation was overwhelming.

People didn't just... get blood. Blood didn't appear from nowhere. The human body required a functioning circulatory system from the moment of conception, maintained by bone marrow and diet and all the complex processes I half-remembered from biology class.

And yet, here I was, a living example of whatever impossible thing they were talking about.

A medical anomaly.

A boy who had died, who had been resurrected, who had somehow regenerated the blood he had lost in a delivery truck half a world—half a dimension—away.

Glenda stood up and accepted a whiskey bottle from Luke.

"You better lie him down again once the bleeding stops," she advised, then took a swig from the bottle, the action seeming oddly nonchalant given the circumstances.

The whiskey disappeared down her throat with ease. A doctor drinking on duty would have seemed inappropriate in Tasmania. Here, in this camp in this alien world, it seemed almost reasonable.

What else could you do when your patient had impossible blood?

The unknown man gazed up at the sky.

The light was changing—the harsh brightness of earlier softening into something amber, the shadows lengthening across the red-orange dust.

"Nightfall can't be too far away. I'll prepare us some food," he said.

Nightfall.

There was that urgency again. The same tone Jamie had used when he said they needed to get me back before dark. The same implication that darkness brought something more than simple absence of light.

"I'll help you," the man who had brought the tissues offered eagerly.

As they walked away, their footsteps kicking up dust, I sat there, staring at the ground.

The dust was fine, almost powdery. Individual grains caught the firelight, glinting like tiny stars. And scattered among them—

Small drops of blood continued to escape from the tissue, each one a bright red spot against the dry earth.

My blood.

Proof of my existence. Proof of my impossible resurrection. Proof that I was alive, whatever that meant now.

Camp, the word echoed in my mind.

This is camp, not home, I told myself firmly as I made a resolution that I would stay at this camp only long enough to regain my full strength.

And then I'm going home. Mum will be worried.

The thought of my mother—alone in our house, not knowing where I was, perhaps already searching or calling police or sitting by the phone waiting for news—gave me purpose.

I had to get better.

I had to get stronger.

I had to find a way back.

Whatever it took. However long it took. Whatever impossible barriers stood between me and the life I had known.

I was going home.