Gyrus

Chapter Seventeen: The Recap

"Wake up!"

I felt fingers slap against my cheek thrice in quick succession. I wanted to open my eyes but my lids felt heavy, like they'd been sealed shut over my pupils. I spread my hands out, trying to get a bearing on my surroundings with my secondary senses. I couldn't feel anything under my feet and the constriction of laces against my foot was absent, so the only explanation my mind could come up with was that I was on my back. On some sort of plastic covered surface, if what my fingers were feeling was accurate.

"Finally." The disembodied voice said close to my ear. I felt my head handled and held firm and the eyelids of my right eye forcefully pulled open, the soothing darkness I had been in suddenly replaced with a scorching yellow light.

It all came back to me in a torrent, my name, the factory, getting caught by the guards and taken to the factory's work pit, the cloud of gun oil that knocked me out. Instinctively I slapped in the direction of the light, the flat of my palm connecting with the hand holding the light and drawing a yowl in a response. My eyes flew open and I rolled out, falling to the floor from the surface I was laid on. I scrambled off my butt into a crouch and shielded my face from his view, my first instinct to hide.

"Oh wow. You're a lively one."

I ignored his gravelly voice and the headache it was exacerbating in my head. "Where am I? Who are you?"

The owner of the hand stepped into view. He was a middle aged man in a white medical coat, sleeves rolled up and the front covered with black, yellow and red stains. The buttons of his coat strained against his shirt and his shaggy brown hairs fell into layered locks around his jowls and pudgy neck, the ends settling on his shoulders. He pushed a hand forward.

"You're in my office and I'm Dr. J, the one with the fanciful job of factory medic."

I took his hand and let him help me up. Edwin had told me once that the force of a person's grip was proportional to their reflexes, and the doctor's grip was weak and half hearted. I immediately catalogued that, my mind already strategizing the best possible ways out of my current dilemma. He barely paid any attention to me once I was on my feet. He turned away and began to fiddle with the medical equipment on his table, content instead to ramble, oblivious to whether I was listening to him or not.

"That gun oil cloud did a nasty piece on you. You were barely moving when the guards brought you to me. Today's been a really hectic day for me. What with the teenage terrorists who tried to nuke this place."

"Huh?" I asked as I edged towards my shoes and started to pull them on. I felt something hit my chest and I looked down. The medallion was still hung around my neck. I'd almost forgotten about it, but I was relieved that it hadn't been taken off me. I looked up and regarded Dr. J and my surroundings. His office was little more than a rectangular cubicle with a hospital pallet wedged in one corner and mahogany desk forced into the other. There was barely any room for sudden movement which worked for and against me. The doctor couldn't make any covert movements without me noticing but I couldn't sneak an attack on him without him noticing. I was going to have to find a way to get out of the room before whoever brought me here came back to check on Doctor J's progress in reviving me.

Dr. J looked back at me and shouted. "Hey! What do you think you're doing?"

He slid his hand behind me and prodded me towards the pallet. "Lie down; we need to at least get some fluid into you. What with you being severely allergic to gun oil…all that vomiting must have made you dehydrated."

I looked down at the front of shirt and winced. The smell suddenly hit me. All the contents of our dinner the previous night had made its own collage on the front of my shirt, now dried and sticking to my chest. The doctor poked at what was the only part of my torso not covered in stale vomit and pointed at the bed. I obliged quietly and sat. I could see his forehead creasing and I needed him calm if I was going to have any hope of getting out of there unnoticed. He stalked back to his desk and painstakingly reached over the top to the drawer on the other side. He pulled out a saline drip, some tubing and a syringe and heaved as he stepped away from the desk and the pressure against his beer gut eased. I edged towards the other end of the pallet close to him and his desk and the equipment on it. He prepped the drip with surprising dexterity and turned away from the desk and gasped when he saw I had moved.