2
I don’t know how long I am asleep or even where I am. As my consciousness returned, I heard a beeping noise, slow and steady. A light is on wherever I am, and I am lying on my back, on I think a bed. It has been so long since I’ve laid in a bed, I can’t be sure what I am lying on, it could be anything. There is cloth draped over me and a pressure on my skin that is unfamiliar. I try to stay still and not move; I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know what will get me punished.
My thoughts spiral into complete chaos by these facts. Am I no longer HIS problem? Did he finally get rid of me like he wanted to? Will this place be better or worse? The thoughts keep coming and getting more and more desperate. The beeping noise gets faster and faster, almost like the beeping is keeping up with my heart rate.
A door opens close by, and footsteps get closer and closer to where I am. A soft female voice near me says, “It’s alright now honey, you are okay, I’m not even sure if you can hear me or not right now but if you can, I just want you to know that you are safe.”
The beeping slows down as my heart rate slows as well, just knowing that whoever this is, isn’t like HIM. She isn’t a male, and she seems nice.
“Ah well, it looks like you’ve calmed down now. Wonder what you’re dreaming about that has you so worked up. Poor thing, I hope you wake up soon so we can get you on the pathway to recovery, honey.” I hear footsteps leave the room. I fall back into unconsciousness again .
Surrounded once again by my companion darkness, I dream of their eyes. Unsure if the eyes are real or just something, I made up to make myself feel less alone. As I float through the inky blackness and see their eyes light up, giving me a beacon in my misery. I begin to feel better, less alone, and maybe a little less terrified. I feel a myriad of emotions as I float here, bouncing from one set of eyes to the next, when I am awoken by a voice near me again.
“We can’t perform any tests on our Jane Doe until she is awake to give us consent. She is stable, and we have gone through all the channels to get the word out to anyone looking for her.” A male voice says.
“I know, doctor, but what if she doesn’t have anyone, and the only way to find her people is to get a blood sample into the database?” A familiar female voice says again.
The male voice sighs, and my heart rate kicks up to a frantic beat. The beeping noise is also going crazy. “I understand, Agnes, but without her consent, we can’t do anything. Who is to say that they aren’t the ones that did this to her?”
The female gasps.
“James, I don’t think you understand all that well about the match bond, seeing as you’ve never found your own, but they could never do that to her, it would be like ripping apart their own heart to cause her any kind of pain.”
“We will just have to agree to disagree. Now you said it seems like her dreams have been causing her some distress, and judging by her heart rate, I can understand your concern. We don’t know what the cause is and I don’t want to give her any more unnecessary medication until she is awake and we can get to the source of the problem. Keep monitoring her, though, and please keep me posted.”
The footsteps leave the room and the light turns off. My eyes feel heavy as I fight to open them. The room isn’t completely dark, but the light is bearable and not painful. The room is clean and like nothing I can ever remember being in. I am not chained to a wall, and I am, in fact, lying in a bed. There is a curious square next to my bed with numbers on it and lines that keep jumping up and down, which is the source of the beeping. There is a weird black rectangle on the wall. It is shiny and black. A door that leads somewhere and another door that has a small window on it.
As I sit up in the bed to continue to look around, I notice my head feels so much lighter. I touch my hair and it feels soft and well, not quite smooth, but much more than it was before. I trail my hands through my soft hair and quietly gasp as I realize it is a lot shorter. No longer dragging on the ground through all the waste that I was in, my hair is now about my shoulders.
There don’t seem to be any torture devices in here, or places to chain me up, so I think I can move around this room okay if my legs will hold me up, I pull off the cloth and notice a tube going inside of me between my legs. My heart rate picks up and I begin to freak out. I don’t know what this is and why it is inside me; I don’t know what will happen if it remains in me, or if something bad will happen if I take it out. The beeping on the machine is starting to get really annoying. I look at it, wondering why it can make so much noise when for years any sound whatsoever from me resulted in being beaten.
Suddenly, the light turns on in the room and I shut my eyes.
“Page Doctor Owens fast! Our Jane Doe is awake! He should still be in the building!”
Fast footsteps come over to me.
“It’s okay honey, I’m Nurse Agnes and I need to check you over to make sure you are okay. You’ve been asleep for a long time and I don’t think getting out of bed right now is the best action. Can you open your eyes for me?”
She’s asking me a question and I don’t know what to do. Do I say something to her? Don’t be stupid saying things will get you beat if this is a dream. Do I shake my head at her? What should I do? My heart rate is going so fast right now, and the beeping machine is too.
“If you can’t open your eyes it is alright honey, but can you acknowledge that you understand me and can hear me? You’re safe here. Nothing bad will happen to you while you’re here.” I do a stupid thing and trust the female and nod my head at her.
“Good honey, now can you tell me if you are in any pain?”
Pain? It seems like for years I’ve lived in pain, in one form or another, but the pain I am feeling right now isn’t bad, so I shake my head at her.
“You are doing amazing, honey. While you were asleep, we stabilized you and gave you food through a GI tube. We didn’t want to leave it, in case you woke up and started to freak out. We’ve also given you fluids through an IV and, as you’ve seen, you have a catheter. Do you know where you are?”
Again, I shake my head at her. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a place this clean, even before HIM. I also have no idea what any of the things she’s talking about are.
“That’s okay honey, you are in the hospital here in Stormgrove. This is Stormgrove General Hospital. Do you know where that is?”
I shake my head at her again and feel a little hope. At least this place has a name, better than HIS room in the dark.
The door opens and fast footsteps come into the room. I hear the female walk swiftly over to the newcomer and they begin talking in whispers. I sit there, with my eyes closed, my heart rate slowly coming back down. I am free. No longer HIS problem. I don’t understand why I trust this female, but something inside me stirs and tells me that she isn’t going to hurt me. None of the people here want to hurt me.
Suddenly, something is prying my eyes open and I jerk back at the bright light that invaded my darkness. Too lost in my thoughts, I didn’t hear the people in the room with me. It feels like my heart is trying to beat itself out of my chest.
“Agnes, turn off the light, please? I want to test something,” the male voice from earlier says softly.
I don’t understand why a male would talk softly around me. Usually, they yell and scream at me, or hurt me. But the female, Agnes, said that I was safe here. Inhale, exhale. Calm down, you can do it, don’t do anything that will get you sent away. Inhale, exhale. The beeping slows down as the light outside of my shut eyelids fades away. I take another inhale and then open my eyes.
Standing in the room with me is an older woman, though I don’t know if I should say older or not, because I don’t know how old I am. I don’t know how long I was in that room, how long I had been with HIM. She has brown hair with little streaks of white in it and wrinkles around her red eyes. She is wearing a shirt with lots of flowers on it, and has a weird tube draped around the back of her neck and towards her shoulders in the front. The male in the room has orange eyes, red hair, and red hair on the top of his lip. I stare at it, wondering if everyone can grow hair there, and touch the top of my lip to see if I have hair there.
I must look confused because Agnes comes over to me slowly and, with a sad look on her face, says, “This is Doctor Owens. He’s a good man, and he wants to help you too, just like all of us do here. Do you think you could allow us to help you?”
The man in the room, Doctor Owens, looks at Agnes like he suddenly just figured something out. I nod my head at her and she smiles widely. Her teeth are so white she has two longer ones in the front, and I just stared at them for a long time.
Doctor Owens comes over to me and he smiles at me slowly. “Good. Agnes told me that she told you where you are, and that you aren’t in any pain. She also told me that you haven’t said a word yet. When we did our preliminary tests, we noticed some scar tissue on your vocal cords and, as you are fully aware, scars and burn wounds cover your entire body.”
It was really hard for me to pay attention to what he was saying because the entire time he was talking; he was moving his hands in weird ways, holding up some fingers, and moving his hands around his entire body at other times. I just watched him doing that, and Agnes gave a small chuckle at me. Was Agnes moving her hands around like that when she was talking to me while my eyes were closed?
“Doctor Owens, I don’t think she knows what sign language is. But it looks like it is amusing her so….” The doctor just chuckled an d smiled at me.
“Sorry, I wasn’t sure if you knew sign language since it seems like you cannot speak, but we didn’t know for sure or not. Sorry for assuming. Are you able to talk to us? If you’re not able to talk, we can always have a telepath come in so we can communicate with you.”
Wait. One. Second. Did a male just apologize to me? And is he really asking me to talk? To make noise? To not sit here quietly? I don’t know what to do. My eyes start darting around the room, looking for HIM. Not trusting this, it feels like he is lurking here somewhere waiting for me to say something so he can hurt me again. The beeping gets louder and faster.
“It’s okay honey, you don’t have to talk to us if you don’t want to, but it would make things a lot easier to get you better if you did. No one here is going to hurt you. We want to help you.” Agnes is now holding my hand and making shushing noises at me.
I can’t trust this fully yet, so I nod at her and try to copy her sad face. If I can be here for a while and no one hurts me, maybe I will try talking to them. I don’t even know what my voice sounds like, or even how to form words with my mouth anymore. It seems like a lifetime ago that I did that.
“We have more tests we would like to perform on you, but we can’t do them without your consent. Would you be okay with that? We need to get a vial of blood to run through the match database to see if we can find your people, we also need to do a more in-depth scan of your body to see if there are any lasting injuries that we need to tend to. We also need to get you up and walk soon, but first, we need to get some food into you.” Doctor Owens says.
When he first started his speech, I wasn’t sure what to do, but by the time he got to the food part, I started nodding my head fast.
“Okay, Agnes, go get the blood draw kit and call into the kitchen. Let’s get our Jane Doe some food into her. Start with something light and we can work her up from there, toast, broth, hot tea. For now, if she seems like she can tolerate it, we can move her up, follow post appendectomy protocols to start. I am going to go write the orders for the blood draw and the tests, stating the patient gave nonverbal consent, and you were witness to it, so you’ll also need to sign the paperwork but we should have a better idea how to help her soon.”
They both head to the door and Agnes says to him, “I’m going to post a sign outside the door that the light needs to remain off in this room, and no pen lights into her eyes.”