Some data to work with.

Shane recognized hospital smell. He recognized hospital sheets, and he recognized hospital sounds. And awakening in a hospital after seeing that dream... He called over a nurse, who called over a doctor, who called over another doctor. She asked what happened to him.

"Before we get to that, I'm Dr. Simmons, can you tell me your name?" Asked his physician, an attractive woman in her 30's who seemed to be as confused as he was.

"Yeah, I'm Shane Matthews," Shane responded, maybe a little more sharply than he should have. But he felt patronized by what was already a bewildering situation, and sat up, cracking his neck as he did so.

"Do you know what day it is? What date?" She asked, adjusting her glasses and marking her clipboard.

"Yes, it's Tuesday, November 14th 2023, I'm 27 years old, work at Dunham High School, and the first 6 digits of Euler's Number are 2, 7, 1, 8, 2, and 8. Can you pretty please with a cherry on top tell me what happened to me now?" He asked, his annoyance (and his desire to investigate that dream) having boiled over. It seemed like mere seconds before he awoke he was still in those woods, as real to him as this room was.

Dr. Simmons sighed, took off her glasses, and pulled up a chair to sit down. She looked into Shane's defiant eyes, and leveled with him. "Fine. We don't know what happened to you," she said plainly, annoyed herself. "but from what we were told by the paramedics that found you, you called 9-1-1, and an officer was sent to your location." Shane nodded. That much he knew already. "When he arrived at the school, he eventually found you collapsed over your desk as if sleeping. He attempted to wake you, even smacked you in the face to check if you were faking, and then called the paramedics. They arrived, brought you back here, and we sent you to a brain scan."

"Why a brain scan?" Shane asked.

"It's hospital protocol for when a patient arrives, seemingly comatose." Shane nodded again, it made sense. "That's when things got weird. No matter how we looked at the scan, they showed a brain that was _awake. _Frankly, we thought you were just very good at faking until we performed some... embarrassing tests on you. Sorry." Shane chuckled at that. He could only imagine the embarrassing things they did to him while he was sleeping to deduce if he was really comatose or just had a good poker face.

"We then performed a few tests to find if you were experiencing Locked-in Syndrome. It's a condition that outwardly emulates a comatose or vegetative state, but in actuality the person is conscious." Shane sighed in relief that he wasn't going through that. It sounded like a special kind of hell.

"And then what?" He asked, his voice softening from the annoyance in her voice as well as finding out something of what happened to him.

"Nothing," she replied. "You woke up after seemingly being in an inexplicable conscious coma for 4 hours. That is, unless you really were faking," she qualified at the end.

"Do you think I was faking?" He asked, a hint of a smirk on his face.

"No," she said simply, matching his smirk. "You would definitely have reacted in some way."

"Then am I free to leave?" Shane asked, looking at the clock. 6:00. If he hurried, he could still make it to the school on time.

The doctor furled her brow, and put her glasses back on. "I'd prefer to keep you on observation, this kind of thing doesn't just happen, after all. But, ultimately, you're completely healthy, you're free to be discharged if you like."

Shane wasn't one to lose an opportunity, however, and since he didn't notice a ring on her finger, he decided to try and move in. "Is there a number I can call if I need to reach you specifically about my condition, Dr. Simmons?" The intent wasn't lost on her, and she rolled her eyes. Shaking her head and biting her lip, she wrote her contact information on a sticky note and handed it to him.

Shane looked at his clothes, folded on a table near his bed. The same clothes he was wearing in the dream; he was sure of it. As he got dressed, he opened his phone and found interesting data in Pokémon Go. Apparently he had walked a considerable distance last night. Curious, he confirmed that the ambulance movement was not recorded (probably an attempt to deter crazy Pokémon players from playing games while driving) and then realized... he had walked. In his dream he noticed his game was functioning and registered steps, but he didn't move until he was taken by the Ambulance. Like the walking in the dream...

Shane mentally checked himself. He was thinking like the dream was real. He didn't see the ambulance pick him up because he was comatose. The coincidence of... No. Shane believed in coincidences. Coincidences happen every day. But Shane didn't trust coincidences, as proving a negative is inherently impossible. And as Shane began considering things, he realized he had already walked outside the hospital. His car was still at the school and his classes didn't start for an hour, so he decided to walk. And Think.

He began by reviewing what he _knew. _First, he woke up in a forest. His memories were clear as day and, though he was hardly a naturalist, he initially believed he was in a North American Deciduous Forest. After examining his person, he found that his phone was telling him he was at the school and that it was 1 in the morning. Since the sun was out in the dream, he deduced that its setting was not in North America. He called the police, who sent a squad car and a paramedic to his phone's location, which was on his person and at the school after all. He was smacked, tested, prodded and nothing woke him.

But that word stuck out to him. "Smacked," he said aloud. He clearly remembered the feeling of being smacked in the dream. Between that, and the phone showing him pulling up to the hospital, one could make the supposition that they were his subconscious telling him what was happening around him. His senses were picking up these details but feeding them to him through dream logic since he was asleep.

But there were three problems with that. First, he wasn't asleep. According to the brain scan, he was awake the entire time, had an active brain. Second, he accrued walking distance in Pokémon Go. And finally... he made a phone call. He called 9-1-1 while he was supposedly _asleep. _Maybe, you could argue, that the entire dream was a kind of bizarre hallucination, but he wasn't on **** and his brain scan showed a healthy awake brain. And no matter how hard he was hallucinating, that didn't explain the progress in the game.

"Good morning Mr. Matthews!" came a cheerful voice.

Shane nearly jumped, and looked to the source of the sound. One of his students, an Amy Rivers (Senior) was there, carrying her backpack and gym bag.

"Did I scare you?" She asked with a giggle and a smirk. Shane matched it with a chuckle of his own.

"Sorry, just lost in thought. I have to go set up, I'll see you in 3rd period Amy." and walked away. He passed some other students and faculty, finishing his thoughts as he arrived at the classroom he was supposedly found in the night before. The only answers he could think of are that he had gone insane...

Or that he was in that forest AND this classroom at the same time last night.