Restart - An Original Novella

Chapter V {Lights} Part 2

Saturday, April 2nd

I open my eyes to see the female doctor looming over me, and an overwhelming feeling of déjà vu washes over me. My chest rises and falls. I'm surprised I can breathe so easily after the difficulty I had with this act earlier. There is still a sting, but it is dimmer to my senses. In fact, now that I think about it, my pain feels muted. Controlled. Dampened. So much better. I feel better. It's so relieving.

"Sweetie, how are you?" Casey asks. That was her name. Casey.

"Better." My voice isn't exactly perfect, but I can talk without too much energy directed to the task, although my tongue is thick in my mouth and my cheeks feel swollen. I moan and try to raise my hands to wipe the fatigue from my heavy eyelids, but one is still hooked to a machine I won't bother to look at. The other feels unmovable. So heavy. I yawn loudly.

But I can feel the fatigue falling away from me. I shake my head to clear it. "I think I'm fine." I feel funny, though. Not like myself. Like a phantom of myself.

"Just close your eyes, sweetie. If you're tired, you can still sleep."

I shake my head. "I need to stay awake." My tongue wriggles in my mouth to form these words.

"Whatever you say, love." When Casey takes a hold of my wrist for a pulse, I can feel the slight resistance of her plastic gloves. "Is everything okay, in this very second?" I nod. She taps my wrist. "Can you feel this?"

"Yes."

"Does anything hurt?"

"No. I feel...stamped."

"What do you mean?" Her voice is so nice, soft and gentle, with an underlying brightness. Calm crawls through me. I can answer, and she would know what I was talking about.

"The spectrum has grown smaller. The extremes aren't extreme anymore, they're normalized."

"I think I'm beginning to understand. Tell me more."

"The spectrum of feelings? Of pain? Like a light spectrum chart or something. Instead of it starting at red and ending at purple, it starts more at yellow and ends at turquoise. It's concentrated in the middle. Before, I was at purple — this blinding agony. Now I'm at green." I don't know how I'm suddenly able to recall all this and tell her, but it makes perfect sense. At least to me.

Her eyes light up, as if rays of light had found her way there and are illuminating her brown irises. "I've never heard of it described that way. You are such a smart young woman."

"Never heard of what described that way?"

"Well, I'd—" A beep beep beep interrupts her. She turns to a speaker above my head and presses a button. "Nurse Maurey, room 104."

Static is a white noise that frames the voice of the person that replies. "Doctor Bayford, assistance in room 216."

"Okay, hold on a second, Phil." Casey turns to me. "Stephanie, if I left right now, would you need anything from me?"

"I don't think so."

"If you have any problems, press this button." She points to a red button on a remote that she thrusts in my hand. "I'll be right back."

I watch her leave. I close my eyes. I try to remember.

What am I trying to remember?

Okay, backtracking. Casey here with me, falling asleep, waking up seeing Casey and Aidan, blacking out...

...what happened before?

Unfazed by sleep now, I glance around the room. White walls, pale blue curtains, a huge machine next to my bed. What is it? I focus onto it. Jagged lines cross it. There is a number next to the lines. 121. Something about this is familiar.