Chapter Text
“What is two plus two?”
Four. What a stupid question. What an utterly ridiculous question.
“F-.”
No sound escapes my mouth. My lips don’t open and close the way I want them to. My head is pounding, and I can’t see anything. I could see - I think. If I could open my eyelids, which seem to have been sealed shut under tons of weight.
From one moment to the next, panic takes hold of me. I can’t move. I can’t breathe on my own. And when I become aware of the tube lodged deep in my trachea, I lose it completely.
Instantly, I feel like I’m going to throw up.
“What is your name?”
I don’t know. I have no idea.
My panic spreads all the way to my fingertips. At least I can feel those.
“What is two plus two?”
And when I rediscover my lost ability to make sounds, I don’t waste it trying to choke out “four.”
Instead, I try with all my strength to scream for help.
All my lungs produce are horrible gagging noises.
Then I feel the needle in the crook of my arm, and the last thing I think I feel is a cold liquid seeping into my veins.
When I wake up again, I manage to open my eyes. Even though the world beyond them is blurred, as if someone has put frosted glass over my vision, I can make out a face. At least its outline.
“Shhh.” A voice? A muffled sound?
My ears are clogged, and the only thing I seem to perceive clearly is my heartbeat.
It’s beating. It’s beating. I’m alive.
Abruptly, I gasp for air as I realize I’m even capable of doing that. The tube is gone.
“Don’t be afraid. It’s okay.”
I wasn’t hallucinating. Those are words. And they’re not coming from me.
“We’ll figure this out. Same thing happened to me.”
A man’s voice.
“Just blink and breathe.”
I do what he says before I even know whether I should trust him.
Instinctively, I know I only trust people whose faces seem trustworthy. Instinctively, I know my mother had one of those faces. And brown curls. With a warm smile.
Instinctively, I know I’m safe here.
And when I blink one last time, my vision clears.
It’s a man. His beard is long. His hair even longer. Both greasy, as if he hasn’t showered in weeks. And since I have no idea what I look like, I decide to focus on his eyes. He’s afraid.
“I’m Grace. You can trust me.”
And when I manage to swallow, relieving the pressure in my ears, I gasp.
Immediately, I jerk upright, turn to the side - and throw up all over his coat.
“It’s okay. I did too,” he murmurs.
I can’t even name the liquid I’m vomiting. It’s completely clear - not stomach contents, then.
But when another wave spills into my hands, he lifts me up. Only now do I realize I’ve been lying on hard metal the entire time, with thousands of tubes hanging above me- tubes the stranger - no, wait, his name was Grace - hopefully didn’t have to pull out of too many private openings of my body.
“Okay. Okay. Relax.”
When another wave of vomit - I swear that was the last - hits the floor in front of us, he wastes no time. He hoists me up and carries me over his shoulder toward a ladder. I cling to him like he’s a lifeline. Every muscle in my body feels numb. Is that a ladder?
Where in the world am I? Where are we?
“We’ll get you into some clean clothes. And then I’ll explain.”
The last thing I see before my world slips out of place and the familiar black pulls me back into sleep is a sky full of stars.
Not the kind you knew as a child, glancing up at the night sky by a campfire, trying to find the Venus.
It’s the other way around.
As if I’m up there.
Looking back.