The Normals | ✓

T E N

Arden helps me to a door on one side, where Gwen is waiting. We travel out of the room, which I'm guessing is some sort of garage, and into a long hallway lined with doors. None of them are distinguishable from each other except for a bold number and a name stuck on each one. Gwen leads us through the quiet hallway, making turns that seem random to me but that are obviously familiar to her. After climbing a couple of staircases and making enough turns to make my head spin, we arrive in a bright room, even without the overhead lights. Daylight floods in through the windows, which span an entire wall overlooking the street. Gwen tosses her bag on a table in the middle of the room and flicks a few switches, turning on a few more lights. "Here we are."

Arden sits me down on what looks like a table with a sheet of thin fabric draped over it. He lets Gwen explain that when the hospitals actually get patients, this is where they would lie while the doctors were working on them.

I watch as Gwen flits around the room, filling a bowl with water, spraying tools with a strong-smelling liquid, taking a strange blue-white flower out of the cupboard. "Why do you work here if no one ever comes?" I ask her.

"I want to help people," she says through a mask she's put over her nose and mouth. "And even though people rarely need it here, someone's gotta do it. Plus, I have very steady hands." She picks up the flower she took from the cupboard and hands it to Arden.

"You should see her in action," Arden speaks up, taking the flower and crushing it into a bowl. "Her incisions are always so neat and precise."

"You have to cut people?" I look at her.

"Sometimes. Not very often. Usually all that I have to fix are broken bones and things like that. Okay, show me your leg again." I lie down on the table-thing and she comes over, a new pair of gloves on her hands. "If my Instructor were here, we would have access to better tools, but he's not so we're just going to have to use what we have. Arden, you know how to help."

After handing Gwen the bowl with the flower, Arden leans over me and puts some sort of mask over my nose and mouth. It feels weird, but after a few breaths of whatever air is injected into it, my head feels foggy and I have to fight to keep my eyes open. I try to bring my hands up and rip the mask off, but Arden holds them in place against the table.

"Don't fight it. It will be a lot easier if you don't fight it," He says, looking as if he enjoys seeing me struggle against this strange technology. Guess he's still mad at me.

Eventually I do give in and let my eyes close and my muscles relax. I can still feel things, can still hear things, but the feelings are faint and painless and the sounds feel far away. I know when Gwen starts on my leg, but instead of the pain I expect, it just feels weird. I don't even know how to explain it. It's like I'm feeling without feeling pain. I vaguely hear her talk about the blue-white flower, calling it a moonflower and saying it's good for healing. Her words eventually lull me into a half-conscious type of state.

About a third of the way through, she lets go and I open my eyes wide enough to see her wiping blood-stained hands on a towel before reaching for a keyboard behind her. She presses a few buttons, bringing up a projection that I can only see in my peripheral vision, and then goes back to work. I don't know how long she takes, but I manage to catch snippets of conversation while I fade in and out of consciousness. At one point I roll my head to the side to see Gwen and Arden deep in conversation. They seem to be disagreeing, but she seems to be winning the argument because he throws his hands into the air and she turns back to the keyboard and its projection with a smug grin. I look at Arden, who's now leaning against the wall with his jaw set and his arms crossed. It seems he is quite incapable of agreeing with someone for more than five minutes.