Great.
I liked doing a good job.
“Rise and shine,” the woman said in a relentlessly cheerful voice. “You’ve got a treatment today, but we’re going to get you some sunshine.”
Sure.
Whatever.
“How are we feeling today?” the doctor glanced at me as they settled me on the bed. “We’ve been able to remove the stitches.”
“Okay.”
That was an answer, right?
I was pretty sure he asked me something else, but I drifted. Anchorless, I floated back out to sea. The beach was growing further and further away.
“Again,” the doctor ordered.
I didn’t have time to ask what when the buzzing flooded me and the static wiped out the beach, the water, everything.
The sun spilled through the criss-cross grating on the window. It made a hive pattern on the floor. On my hands. On my legs. Oh, were those my legs? I moved my toes and the slipper in my line of sight shifted.
Cool.
Music played somewhere. The buzzing wasn’t just under my skin. There were other sounds. A scraping sound. Paper crinkled. I lifted my head, it weighed a thousand pounds and took forever. I wasn’t in a bed, I was in a chair.
The room—the room was different. A man sat in another chair a few feet away, he stared off into space. I didn’t know him.
He wasn’t the only person there. A girl was on the floor, coloring in a coloring book. That looked like fun. A bell jangled and I couldn’t find it.
Oh. There it was.
The television.
I didn’t know the show, but they were trying to spell something.
A shock ripped through me and I jerked with each convulsion. It didn’t “hurt” but it was unsettling. The static had grown persistent. No more water.
No more beach.
No more… birds?
Why weren’t there birds?
“Good morning, Emersyn,” the woman greeted me as she opened the door. “Time to shower. I thought we might braid your hair today.”
I was still in the bed, staring at the window. It was raining, like the sky shed tears for the day. At first, I’d stared at the rain because the light hadn’t come in through the windows and I didn’t know what time it was. Then, I just stared because I couldn’t get up. The velcro straps kept me in the bed until they came for me.
The nurse didn’t waste any time. She hummed as she pulled the strips free. Then she took my temperature and looked in my eyes. I guess I’d been sick for a while if we had to do this every day. My wrists ached, but the bandages were gone.
I studied the row of stitches. They’d oozed at one point, or maybe I’d imagined that.
“Don’t worry, those are coming out today,” the nurse told me as she helped me sit up and then swung my legs off the bed. I really didn’t have to do anything. She did it all. Easier than trying to focus, I supposed.
On my feet, I shuffle stepped into the bathroom. I could do most of this without her. Still, she stayed right there just chattering away about—something. I stopped listening. The routine of washing my hair was almost mechanical. The shower seemed weird though. It was—wrong for some reason.
Maybe it was the fact it was just a skinny stall, or the white and pale green patterned tile didn’t match the curtain. Maybe I was in a different room? I debated asking the nurse, but when I asked her about birds before—it had gotten cold and I had to go back to the white static.
I didn’t like the static.
So, I didn’t ask. Not even if the birds were on my stomach. I liked the pattern. I didn’t touch it either. That got me more ice in my veins.
After I finished showering, she wrapped my hair in a towel, then ran a towel over me briskly. I could do this, but she didn’t give me the option. The towels weren’t soft. They were rough and a little coarse. It sent a sensation dancing over the top of my skin, along with under it. She tugged me back into another gown, it was painfully thin considering I had nothing else on.
In my room, the doctor waited for us.
Oh, I didn’t like him.
I’d never liked this doctor.
“Good morning,” he said as he gave me a once over. “Let’s have a look at those arms.”
I didn’t take any steps to him.
My skin crawled.
“Come along, sweetheart,” the nurse said as she wrapped an arm around me. Even locking my legs wouldn’t save me from the forward momentum. She could, and had, lift me on her own. The doctor didn’t wait for me to hold out my arms, he just took each wrist and examined them.
“All right, we’re going to go ahead and remove these. Janice, can you…”
“Right away.”
Then I was alone with the doctor. He turned the light on my eyes and then tilted my head this way and that. I swore it felt like he was going to open my mouth and check my teeth in a minute. “Janice” wasn’t long. I sat on the edge of the bed as he donned gloves then began to snip through the stitches at speed. I swore each one stung a little and it was like pins and needles interrupted under each clip of the scissors.
Still didn’t know what I’d done to hurt my arms like that. How deep were they? Could I still fly?
Profound sadness suffocated me.
“You will need to take it easy still and therapy sessions will begin in earnest.” He kept talking but the white noise hum buzzed back into my ears, and I forgot I was supposed to be listening. I just wanted him to stop touching me.
They both stared at me. I guess they were waiting for an answer, so I nodded.
“Good girl,” the doctor said. He brushed his knuckles down my cheek. “Such a good girl for us.” Then he glanced at the nurse. “Morning room, we’ll do her first therapy session after lunch and then see if she needs a treatment after that.”
“Of course, Doctor.”
They didn’t need me for this part. I ate the food she gave me, though at least I got to hold my own spoon this time. My hand shook a lot, but I managed to get most of the food in my mouth. When she wheeled me out to the morning room, I hoped for sunshine or birds.
The only thing waiting for me was more rain. Janice parked me near the windows then wandered off. I zoned out. There were other people here. There were always other people. Instead, I just traced the water sliding down the windows.
It made me think of the ocean. Water sliding up onto a beach and…
A shadow cut off my view and I frowned. It was hard to focus. I wasn’t even sure why it was hard to focus, but…
“Hey,” the shadow said as it—wait, not it—he, sat down. Where had the chair come from? I didn’t remember there being a chair there. “Fuck, how much juice are you on?”
Juice. “No juice,” I said, but it was really hard to make the words work and my voice rasped. “Water. I peed so not a lot.”
“Okay.” Quiet invaded after that or maybe I stopped listening. It was so hard to focus. “C’mon, Boo-Boo, I know you’re in there.”
Boo-Boo? I fought to lift my gaze and stared into blue eyes. They were blue. Not the ones I kept seeing, but they were…
“What happened to your arms?” Heat licked those words. So hot it threatened to melt the ice in my veins.