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 strangernoting 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 tooverydifferent 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.
