The instructor does not likewise pretend he enjoys his job. Ant's cheer is in fact kinda grating.

Yay! That's wonderful. What are they learning today. Is it maneuvers. He loves maneuvers.

(He hates maneuvers.)

How'd he guess.

Sigh.

Ant puts the vehicle into drive, checks his mirrors, then indicates and sets off.

His instructor has criticisms! They're not super constructive.

Thank you, instructor. (Maybe he should look into getting a different instructor.)

Maybe at some point when he's not driving, but for now: eyes on the road.

Of course he wouldn't dream of using his phone while driving to look up instructors with less awful records to whom he must pay an extortionate amount to learn to drive. Of course.

Mostly because of the using his phone while driving part. Later, while not driving, he will totally do that.

And he gets a sudden, splitting headache—

—a young man, in the eighteenth century, having fun drinking and whoring—

—a monster torturing a young girl into insanity—

—that man again, in the present, living on the streets, homeless—

—and pain, so much pain—

—physical, a huge migraine—

—and emotional, so much remorse, so much regret—all those lives, all those people, all that pain he caused, the horror, the understanding that he enjoyed their pain, he saw the life slowly drain out of them as they begged for death and would only be granted it when he wanted—

– and he completely loses control of the vehicle, breathing in sharply and eyes going wide and he – that's – he's –

He's completely overwhelmed.

By the time he comes to the headache is still there—and so are the echoes of the emotions, not his but somehow his—and his instructor has managed to make sure they only crashed a little bit.

He's on the phone with someone. "—he just woke up. Kid? Kid are you alive?"

He doesn't seem to pay attention, not right away, but then realizes he's being addressed: "Uh – uh, I, yes?"

"Yeah he's talking—you break anything?"

"The – vehicle? Or?"

"You, a bone, something."

Pause. "Oh."

He sits up a bit. "I don't think so?" But he starts carefully checking himself over anyway.

Nope, nothing broken.

"I don't think so," he repeats.

He repeats this to whomever he's talking to on the phone, they talk for a bit longer, and he hangs up.

"Wait here," he says, and then crosses his arms and looks straight ahead. At the wall.

"I wasn't really planning on moving."

Instructor stares resolutely at the wall.

"… Are we waiting for an ambulance?"

"Yes."

"… Do they know where we are?"

"Yes."

Pause. "Ok."

Waiting.

… Waiting.

The ambulance doesn't take too long to arrive. When they do, the instructor tells them that Ant's eyes went white and he started screaming and almost killed them both.

"… I have no recollection of this."

"What do you remember? Do you know what year it is? Who's the president?"

"Um." There's a pause, almost like he has to search up the answers to these questions. "2013? Obama. Driving a car, someone else. Not in order."

"...someone else what?"

"Someone else is what I remember? After the driving a car bit."

"You mean you crashed to avoid hitting someone?"

"… No, as in – I was driving along, and then – I don't know, I fell unconscious, it seemed like a really weird dream?"

"I see."

She proceeds to ask him a few questions about places where he's in pain and what his general physical status is.

He does not think he is particularly injured but like he fell unconscious and this is worrying and he would like to put forward that it definitely did not seem normal and he has totally eaten today so it wasn't a blood sugar thing and he does not have a known history of epilepsy and also does the fact he had that hallucination in the middle of it by any chance change things.

The car also crashed, he has probably bruised a thing or two.

Yes yes he probably does – and ow did they have to poke him like that while checking – but hallucination that caused him to crash the car doesn't that sound problematic (assuming he doesn't have internal bleeding, does he have internal bleeding, he hopes not but supposes they probably cannot immediately check…)?

They're sort of assuming he fell asleep and dreamed it.

… Did they even do a check for his neural responses here, like, he fell unconscious at the wheel and crashed the car, that's not just a regular thing and he is worried.

They're running all the basic checks, but he's going to the hospital with them anyway, he should calm down, everything is fine.

Oh.

Okay good.

More checkups reveal a contusion and a sprained wrist and something that might or might not be a couple of broken ribs. Plus his enormous headache. He is carted off to the hospital.

He goes quietly.

He thinks about the dream.

He will have time to do it while they ask Ant for emergency contact information to tell his family about the incident.

He recites the home phone number and gives them his parents' names (and wonders what was up with the dream).

So they will call them to inform them of what happened.