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1032 Words
A bright light awoke a pair of dark green eyes and a gurgling choking noise broke the monotonous sound of the heart monitor. A pale raven-haired girl sat up straight, her wild eyes searching the bright white room.
She could still feel the anticipation of the women in her dreams, and a sense of danger. The girl looked down at herself only to be disgusted by the heavy sweat that clung to her now sticky skin and what looked to be a hospital gown.
She could not recall how she got there, she only knew she should not have woken up there. She threw the covers off her and swung her feet over the bed. Her fingers subconsciously found the needles that probed her soft warm sticky skin and then began to pull at the intruders. She grunted as she pulled the last one, feeling pain at last.
This was not where she should be, this was not where she belonged. An unknown instinct kicked in and she forced herself to breath slowly and calm her heart beat. It was much easier said than done, of course. She proceeded to take a step but her legs gave out and she fell hard onto the cold white floor.
Why weren't her legs working? No. No, these aren't my legs, she thought.
She punched and slapped her legs but she did not feel any of it. Her legs were paralyzed. A long time spent in a bed not moving would explain it. She had no idea how long it had been or why she had slept for so long.
An alarm suddenly sounded with a shrill loud noise echoing through the room. She wanted to smash whatever was making the noise, it was giving her location away. Before she could react, the door swung open and a nurse and a doctor walked in.
Their eyes widened as they observed the raven-haired girl on the floor. She wasn't supposed to wake up, not now and probably never should have woken up. The diagnosis was severe and without the machines helping her she would be nothing more than a vegetable.
Yet here she was, wide awake with a cold and souless glare. The doctor rushed to her and and between him and the nurse they managed to lift the girl up.
The girl didn't resist. There wasn't much she could do in her condition. She studied their faces, memorizing their features and saving them in her memory. She was an observer, it came natural to her. Decades of training had made her into the calculating creature she was.
Creature......She contemplated the word. She was human, wasn't she? She asked herself, but those thoughts were the ones of the white-haired women in her dreams. That woman wasn't human, she was a type of nocturnal creature.
" Where am I?" The girl demanded. Time was being wasted.
" You're currently hospitalized at the Carnege Hospital. You were in a terrible accident resulting in critical head trauma." The doctor spoke slowly and evenly. Patients like the young girl were his specialty. After the comas always came a cloud of confusion for the patients.
"What accident?" The girl asked in a firm tone. Her eyes narrowed on the greying doctor's shrunken and tired eyes. She observed his wrinkled features carefully for any signs of deception.
" What is the last thing you remember?" the doctor asked cautiously.
"If I remembered what happened to me I wouldn't be asking. Tell me how I came to be here" the girl said, unwavering.
The young nurse approached her with an IV, "You will need to have this in order to stay hydrated. We have to slowly introduce liquids and solids, but not just yet." The nurse smiled at the girl, something the girl wasn't very used to. She had a feeling the people she was surrounded by never smiled and neither did she.
" I want to know what happened. My legs don't work." The girl's green eyes flared at the nurse and the nurse took a step back, caught off guard.
" You're an avid hiker, a well seasoned one at that. On one of your excursions you fell 100 feet and you banged up your body pretty badly, including your head. You broke your skull on a rock." The doctor pursed his lips and after a few seconds let out a small sigh. His soulful brown eyes wavered and looked away for a moment. He was trying to hide the dread behind them.
"And my legs?" The girl asked, itching for all the answers.
" We had to induce a coma. It was the only option we had to keep you alive given your critical condition. This will not be easy to hear, but you have been in a coma for a year." The doctor padded her shoulder softly trying to comfort her as he did with all his other patients.
"Who brought me here?" The girl was getting more restless. She was being treated like a child, she needed answers now.
"Another hiker. If it wasn't for him, you would never have been found. Not many people trek down where you fell. You're a very lucky girl." The nurse chimed in. She gave the girl a small smile, careful not to upset the confused girl.
"Girl? I haven't been a girl for a few decades." She didn't have any memories, but one thing she was certain about was her womanhood. She had earned it, she was a woman, not a child.
The nurse and the doctor exchanged knowing glances. Memory loss is a terrible thing, but false memories are worse. Her brain was clearly coping with the trauma by making up another life in another time.
"You had major head trauma. We don't expect you to remember everything. But can you tell us anything, if at all, that you remember?" The doctor spoke to her while jotting down notes on his clipboard. The tapping of the pen was swift and fast, it irked the girl for an unknown reason.
" No. I remember nothing. I can't even seem to remember my name. What is it?" The girl asked bitterly.
- Writer
