19- Stranger Things Fanfic

19

Eleven: How will I know what I like?
Max: You just try things on. Let them speak to you. Not Mike. Not Hop. You.

***

The corridor was filled with dust. It tickled her nose making her sneeze. The walls, divided by beams of metal, kicked up mold too. She gagged and coughed her way down the corridor.

Water sounded so good right now. Cold, soothing, refreshing. But the telltale dust and mold wasn't promising. It told her the building was abandoned. If it had been occupied, it would be clean. 

Alone.

She shivered at the thought. Was she really alone? That meant she had been abandoned. Forgotten. They had forgotten her. Left her to die. These nameless, faceless people hadn't cared enough about her to take her with them. 

Chilled through and through, she wondered why. Why had they left her behind? Had it been some calamity, some attack? A fire perhaps, that left people scurrying for the doors thinking about themselves. About their own safety. Not giving a single thought for her safety.

As near as she could figure, the building was a hospital. The bed with the rails, the tubes in her body all spoke to an undefined illness that had her recuperating for an undisclosed amount of time. Memories lost to her in a haze of fog as solid as the walls in this building. 

What about her parents? Family? Someone must have brought her here. Someone must have stayed with her, watching over while sick. Offering comfort to her. She sought her mind for those kind of memories but came up blank.

She pressed on, water foremost on her mind. A drinking fountain, a kitchen or even bathroom water would be good right now. She wouldn't care if there were germs, she'd drink it anyway. Desperate, she held onto that hope. Had little else to cling to. 

The corridor extended for what seemed like miles, the light she kept her eyes on getting further away. She stumbled along, shoulder leaning heavily against the wall. Surely she must be getting closer to the light source. She couldn't be hallucinating it could she?

Not surprising considering how weak she felt. Her vision was almost gone. Only a pinprick of sight at the end of a narrow tunnel. She didn't care. She would keep going until her body dropped. 

She began counting the beams her hand touched to keep her mind off the dizziness. Counting kept her awake, kept her in the here and now. If she succumbed to the darkness now, all would be lost. At the one hundred and thirtieth beam, she'd reached the light source.

It flickered overhead, a source of comfort in the gaping maw of darkness. Her vision cleared, her eyes adjusted to the light. It was not bright but it was lighter than the dark. With it, she scanned the area around her. Up ahead, the corridor split three ways, each branching corridor leading off into an unknown direction.

Next, she searched for signs, some way of knowing what level she was on. Nothing but grimy dirty brown/gray walls. Each corridor appeared to be rounded in shape, more tunnel than corridor. No numbers, no directions to tell her which way to go. Odd that there was any electricity left at all. The building operated under low power, too low to be registered by the power company that must have run the place. Unless there was a generator still working after all this time.

She peered down the corridor to her right. Dark. Left, the same. Up ahead, the corridor stretched further. She hesitated to leave what might be the only source of light in the building. It comforted her, gave her the tangible hope she so desperately needed. 

But which way? Left, right or straight? How was she to know the corridor she chose would lead her to water? She didn't. She closed her eyes, allowing her instincts to take over. For some reason, she felt compelled to keep going straight.