Read Racers of the Night: Science Fiction Stories by Brad R. Torgersen for Free Online

woke up trying to gasp, and couldn’t.
    She’d been in and out of the hospital a few times during her racing years, replete with scuffs and broken bones from spills on the junior tracks.
    But nothing could have prepared her to be seeing the inside of the coffin-like full-metabolic support unit that housed her now. A small window showed her the ceiling, while warm fluid gurgled around her ears. Several tubes felt like they fed into her mouth and down her throat—they were horribly uncomfortable.
    Jane lifted a hand weakly and scratched at the window with her fingertips.
    Quickly, several faces appeared in succession, each of them examining hers.
    Then, a hissing noise, and all the fluid began to drain away from around Jane’s prone body. The coffin came open, and several surgically-suited medical people were extracting the tubes from her esophagus. She coughed and sputtered, hacking violently, which caused tremendous pain in her ribs, until she was shaking like a leaf and breathing in huge gulps of air.
    Too disoriented to wave the medical people away, she let them towel her off and sit her up—which also hurt. But at least she was in one piece, or so things seemed. When she tried to talk, she croaked like a frog—her vocal cords soggy. Someone who had the officious demeanor of a physician began poking and prodding, shining his light into her eyes and asking her questions to which she answered by holding up either one finger, or two.
    Once they got her into a proper medical gown, they tucked her between the sheets of a rolling gurney which spirited her away from the critical care ward with its rows of identical, human-sized immersion capsules.
    Jane went through several brightly-lit hallways, her hand weakly raised to shield her eyes from the harsh glare. Then she was deposited in a softly-lit intensive care room. She felt them plug her into the monitoring and life support station that sat like a pillar in the room’s center. A pepper-haired male nurse spoke comforting words, then disappeared. Leaving Jane in a fuzzy stupor that could have lasted minutes, hours, or days.
    Clarity was achingly gradual. Staff came, and staff went. Always, they murmured encouragingly to her as they checked her connections to the monitor, and adjusted the intravenous tubes that snaked away from the tops of both wrists. Jane’s mouth became dry, and they let her drink water. When her stomach grumbled, they gave her soup. When her bowels complained, they ushered her delicately to the lavatory and back, her tubes and wires trailing behind her.
    Finally, the floor physician disconnected her from the ICU tower, and she was again whisked by gurney through a series of brightly-lit hallways, until she was left in a simpler, less mechanized room.
    She weakly depressed the stud on the gurney that would call the nurse, and was surprised when a familiar face poked through her sliding glass door.
    Bill wouldn’t look her in the eyes when he hesitantly entered her patient room.
    “I’m glad you came to see me,” she said, her voice soft and breathy.
    “I’ve been in and out of this hospital at least a dozen times since they brought you in,” Bill replied, hand wrapped tightly around the cup of coffee he’d brought. “I almost couldn’t take seeing you comatose in the critical ward. You looked as good as dead. The medics said your heart and lungs had stopped. That the machines were doing all the work, at least for awhile.”
    Jane nodded, and let her head fall back on her pillow while she closed her eyes, remembering the final instant before she hit ground.
    When she opened her eyes again, Bill was still there. Seated in the recliner at the gurney’s side. Watching attentively.
    “It’s a miracle that you landed where you did,” Bill said. “All that regolith they dug up and piled on the edges of the track, it’s like slushy snow. And meters deep. You soft landed. Or at least you landed and didn’t turn to insta-jelly. The other drivers,