Chapter 21 Lucy #2
The paddles descended on my chest. My body convulsed once, lifting off the table.
They’d loosened the restraints circling my wrists and ankles.
When my form thudded back down, it was sideways.
I looked funny that way. Dressed in the thin surgical gown, pale legs nearly blending out of sight against the pale white material.
The shrill sound of me flatlining continued, unwavering.
I shimmered, as if I’d shake apart into afterlife glitter.
I peered down at my hands, and they were becoming increasingly transparent.
The out-of-body experience seemed to be ending.
Where would I go next? There had to be something beyond this pitiful existence I’d led.
A world past the confines of Brightfield House, beyond the limitations of my defective genes.
I drifted toward the unknown, curious and unafraid.
"Again! Clear!"
Another jolt. Another convulsion. The ‘after’ of living beckoned more insistently.
Just as I prepared to surrender—to the everything or the nothing after death—something yanked me back with violent force.
A fish on a hook ripped from its peaceful waters.
Agony returned with breathtaking vengeance.
My eyes flew open as I gasped, lungs expanding painfully as they remembered how to function. The continuous tone from the monitors broke, steady beeping back where it belonged.
"Sinus rhythm established," announced a voice, thick with relief.
"Blood pressure returning," added another.
"Oxygen saturation climbing back to 90... 92... 94 percent."
The room seemed to collectively exhale. Doctor Mercer stepped back from my body—my body, which I now inhabited once more—his scrubs darkened with sweat despite the room's chill.
He moved towards the monitors, checking over vitals for himself.
A nurse continued to hold the oxygen mask against my face, her eyes locked with mine, searching for recognition.
"Lucy?" she questioned softly. "Are you with us?"
I blinked rapidly up at her. I was unable to form words past the oxygen mask and the rawness in my throat. For some reason I couldn’t process how to nod my head. Everything hurt in a dull, distant way, as if my nerves were too exhausted for full-volume pain.
"That was close," the Institute doctor said, his clinical detachment momentarily fractured by genuine concern. "Your body reacted more strongly to the secondary catalyst than we anticipated. We’ll run some bloodwork, but I feel confident now that you’ve made it through this round.” He said the last as if no one else had survived this yet.
How many patients died trying this already?
Had anyone beside me made it past the second phase?
They wheeled me to recovery.
Several hours passed. When I was wide awake, prepping for transfer back to my own room, Doctor Mercer arrived with Doctor Emerson close behind. The first looked elated; the latter looked apprehensive.
“Your numbers are wonderful, Lucy, and your cells are showing remarkable adaptation. It’s finally working.
” Doctor Mercer wore a genuine smile. It warped his face in an unsettling way.
He looked me over like I was a fascinating science project.
Doctor Emerson hung back, his eyes locked on my face, his mouth slightly downturn.
I stared at the Institute doctor, my mind trying to process his words through the disorientation of having briefly departed my own body. Cells showing remarkable adaptation. Finally working.
My own words added onto his.
If I survive, it’s worth it.
My brush with death hadn't been for nothing. I could do this. I could live.
My gaze shifted to Doctor Emerson. I wanted him to be next to me. I wanted him to hold my hand. I wanted him to give me one of his patented bear hugs. I’d died today, but maybe it was so I could be reborn.
“Doc?” I whispered, but before Doctor Emerson could respond, Mercer butted in.
"We'll monitor you closely for the next twenty-four hours,” he said in a clinical voice. "If stability continues, we'll initiate the necessary between-treatment stabilizers, gene stimulators, and anti-rejection drugs. Ideally, we’ll proceed with session three five days from now.”
Two down. Three more to go. Would my luck hold next time, or would I flatline permanently? I tried to push back the thought that I’d merely postponed the inevitable, trading a slow decline for a spectacular flameout.
After that second treatment, days bled into one another, each marked not by sunrises or meals but by injections every four hours, handfuls of pills, and intense periods of full body aching followed by utter exhaustion that left me feeling like an emptied suitcase.
Nothing left on the inside, my outsides caving into the hollowness.
Time became fluid, measured in episodes of excruciating aliveness rather than seconds or minutes or hours.
I'd wake to find another IV bag hanging, another yellow-suited stranger noting my vital signs, another round of fire being pumped into my veins. I knew days had passed, but that didn’t matter.
For all I knew, yesterday, today, and tomorrow were imaginary things.
Because for me? There was only before pain and during pain, with the spaces between growing shorter each time.
In the quiet moments when the drugs left me lucid enough to comprehend my surroundings, I began to notice the whispers. Medical staff in my room, voices lowered and muffled by their suits and helmets. Yet not muffled enough to prevent snippets from reaching me.
"Third one this week—"
"—an allergic reaction on that scale… we couldn’t have expected—"
"—complete organ failure within hours—"
"—might need to reconsider test subject parameters—"
“We can’t lose her. If we do—”
I pieced together their meaning like a jigsaw puzzle I didn't want to complete.
Other patients weren't surviving the treatment that coursed through my own veins.
The experimental protocol was killing them faster than their diseases would have.
Each whispered conversation carried the weight of names I would never know, lives erased in the pursuit of the same miracle I was desperate for.
Confirmation came on a particularly sunny day; the little window of my room let in so much brilliant light that I thought for a moment I was dead. That heaven was a shining, blinding thing that had welcomed me home.
Then I realized I was alive.
Alive. That was how my mind worded it now. In the past, I’d realize I wasn’t dead.
Being alive and being not dead were too very different things.
I sat up, brain registering shouts and the telltale sound of a patient coding. Had someone left the intercom on or were the yells of the medical staff that loud? Were they that urgent? Who was dying?
Standing up, holding the edge of my hospital table as my head swum and my vision blurred, I slowly moved towards the double airlock.
Each time I blinked, another body dashed by, heading towards that sound we all knew too well in this place.
The hallway was empty by the time I finished the short journey from the bed.
Through the pristine glass, I stood transfixed for what must have been a half hour, waiting to see who would run past my room next. When the doctors and nurses came back into view, retreating from whatever had happened, I knew the worst had happened.
Several nurses, Doctor Mercer, and Doctor Emerson were all pale as ghosts. The latter, Brightfield’s finest, locked eyes with me, but he couldn’t hold my gaze for long. He looked like he was grieving for me even though I stood on two feet, very much breathing and vital.
So, I wasn’t even surprised when two male orderlies in green scrubs guided a gurney down the hallway past my room.
The shape under the white sheet was small, childlike in its dimensions.
The men moved with the quiet efficiency of those accustomed to death, faces set in expressions carefully void of emotion.
I couldn’t rip my eyes away from the tiny body hidden by thin cotton.
Then the intercom crackled and I realized that it hadn’t been somehow left on; the panic earlier was just so loud it permeated into my room.
“Lucy, you need to be resting.”
Ever so slowly, I shifted my focus toward the speaker.
I padded over, pressing the talk button. “Were they doing the treatment too?”
I’m sure they had been… otherwise why did Doctor Mercy take interest.
“Just focus on your own healing, Lucy.” Doctor Emerson offered me a gentle smile, then shooed me away from the glass.
I nodded, unable to speak. As I shuffled back to bed, I tried hard to erase the truth.
But it was too late. It was already seared into my brain.
I understood now. I wasn't the only one who signed up for these treatments. I wasn’t the only one suffering through lava in my veins.
Yet I might be the only one still breathing.
Third phase of treatment.
Everything hurts. The only place I exist now is in a town called Agony. I keep trying to tell myself this will be worth it, yet today I find myself wondering… wondering if I even want to survive.
Fourth phase of treatment.
I died again today.
The intravenous medicine had burned through my veins, no cooler than the last three treatments. And then, I’d died. For a full five minutes.
In the fog of discomfort after they’d revived me, I’d jokingly asked if I could go around telling people I was a zombie now.
“What do you call a zombie that dies a second time?” I’d mumbled.
“You didn’t die, Lucy. You’re fine. You did amazing today.”
But… I did die. That’s what you call it when your world stops, even if it’s only for a heartbeat or two.
Fifth phase of treatment.
“You did it, Lucy. The next few days will be rough, but you did it.” Doctor Emerson’s eyes were damp. He blinked rapidly, as if fighting back tears.
His words tried to push into my brain and take root. It was hard to let them. Because I survived.
It was worth it.
As the team began disconnecting various monitors and preparing me for transfer to recovery, I fixed my gaze on the ceiling.
Thirty-two by twenty-one tiles. That’s how wide the room was.
The tile directly above me had one hundred and fifteen divots.
I'd been aware enough to focus on my surroundings. The pain, though wildly uncomfortable, hadn’t made me lose consciousness this time. Or thank God, die on the table again.
The strangest thought occurred to me as they wheeled me out of the procedure room: I had cheated death today.
After a lifetime of merely surviving, I had fought for my freedom and won.
Whatever happened in the future, I had proven something to myself in this sterile room—that I wanted to live, truly live, not just exist in sterile isolation.
I’d walked through the proverbial and literal fire, and my veins were now a highway of burn scars.
I knew logically that I had weeks of follow-up care and anti-rejection protocol before I was truly on the other side of the agony.
Yet, once I was, I’d never let anyone decide what I could or couldn’t do.
No limitation would ever define me again.