Chapter Five - That was Unexpected

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“AHHH! Son of a bitch! What the hell was THAT!?” Lilly cursed as she was flung into cold tile.  Her ears rang painfully.  It felt like a massive brain freeze. She rolled around on the ground, noticing the tile sticking to her bare back. Her hands went up to her head instantly pressing against her ears while, grinding her teeth, she silently cursed, “Oh my God my head hurts, make it stop… make it stop!”

She bent over on the tile and squeezed her hands harder her ears to try and halt the ringing. Slowly the extraordinary stinging disappeared, dizziness overtook its wrath. Lilly’s body locked up, the tile stuck to her bare legs and stomach as she squeezed her eyes shut to make it all go away.  After about ten minutes she felt like she wasn’t moving anymore, she opened her eyes.

The tile ground was just shy of a hospital-like bed, and she took note of a pair of large windows currently covered with heavy blinds. She wondered where she was, and what the hell just happened. The lights in the room were currently off.  It was fairly dark, but the lack of light didn’t bother her much.

After another minute she felt a bit more confident and decided to try and stand up to figure out where she was.  She hoped the pain and dizziness wouldn’t come back. She stood up carefully. The room looked way too familiar—she was in the hospital again, back in her room. It was at that moment she noticed an elderly gentlemen trying to peer into the room via the tiny portion of the window that wasn’t covered. He looked like another patient. She looked down at herself.

Yep, she was naked, her pale smooth skin exposed in its full glory to anyone who happened to come across that window.  Panicked, she dropped down and sped around to the backside of the bed so she couldn’t be seen. Then she snagged the fresh blanket off the bed and fumbled around until she was sure it was locked over her nude chest. Once hidden beneath the blanket she strode confidently over to the window and yanked the blinds the rest of the way shut, even though the patient wasn’t there anymore anyways.

She turned around and headed back to the bed, pushing the small call button on the side of it before sitting down confidently to wait for the nurse to arrive. A nurse slipped into the dark room thirty seconds later. She was a fairly short girl with long brown hair.  As she entered she flicked the lights on and saw Lilly with her hands and legs crossed buried under the blanket.  It was fairly obvious she was nude underneath it—the white blanket hardly covered anything.

“Do you happen to have a pair of clothes lying around? I seemed to have misplaced mine.” “Uh huh…” the nurse said, surprised.

“Also, do you have Dr. Hemaz’s phone number? I think he’s looking for me...”

***

A pair of itchy hospital clothes later she finally got her hands on a phone off one of the doctor’s desks near her room. She dialed the number that was given to her.

“Dr. Hemaz speaking; how can I help you?” he sounded out of breath.

“Uhm, Hemaz, this is Lilly. I’m at the hospital.”

“Hospital? How did you end up there? One moment you were dashing around the track at speeds I’ve never seen before, the next, you vanished,” she could hear his deep breathing.

“Yes well, I just appeared here, in my room,” she decided not to tell him the naked part—that was a bit embarrassing.

“I’ll be there in a bit,” he hung up the phone.

It took ten minutes for Dr. Hemaz to walk back to the hospital, baffled.   Apparently he had run around the park several times trying to figure out where she’d vanished to, and it wasn’t until his third, and as he said final, lap around the large green expanse that he finally got the call.  Once back he went into Lilly’s were she was waiting room and started, “Okay! Tell me exactly what happened. What did you feel right before and after it happened? I know I saw smoke, a thin cloud of thick stringy black smoke on the track after you disappeared. But it was gone in a few seconds so I was unable to collect any of it. Not that that was on the top of my mind at the moment.”

“I was running really fast.  My legs felt extremely light and breathing was easy.  I felt calm, relaxed, as if I could run forever.  Then I started to feel warm, kind of like you do when you sweat a lot on a hot day.  I thought of coldness, then came to a revelation, when was I last cold?  Just then I  realized that I hadn’t felt any temperature at all for several days.  Well. I was a bit cold in the hospital, when I was waking up but that was it. Then I felt cold—REAL cold. Next thing I know I was in the hospital, my head burned like when you hold it under cold water for too long, like a frozen migraine. After the pain of the migraine left there was a heavy case of dizziness. Once it passed all the feeling was gone again and I felt normal again.”

“So, you felt warm, then cold—and pain was the aftershock?”

“I don’t think the warmth had anything to do with it.  But I got really cold right before I ended up in the hospital.”

“Can you do it again?”

She smiled at his question.  As much as it hurt she wanted to try it again. – Teleportation, now that was a neat trick. “Yeah, sure,” she decided she would have to sneak a pair of clothes into her room for the second attempt.  Maybe if she tried she could take the clothes with her on the next attempt?  But, just in case, she wanted an extra pair.

Day turned into night as the doctors cleared out an empty room a few halls down in the main portion of the hospital.  During this time Lilly had an opportunity to eat at the hospital’s cafeteria, explore the rehab wing more, and get more familiar with her surroundings.  It was nice how everyone left her alone.  For some reason despite their previous interest in her everyone rushed around the hospital doing their job; without a slightest hint of interest in her.

A few hours later she ended up in an empty room.  She was told that the mirror on one wall was really one sided glass and the doctors would be monitoring everything from her actions right down to room temperature and humidity.

Okay, she was ready. This time she didn’t want to have to run for it to happen, so she just tried to imagine it, to think of being very cold. Everyone was watching her; well, at least it felt like everyone.  There was pressure for it to work.

She thought: cold, cold, very cold. Her room was very cold. She felt a sensation tingle through her body, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. But nothing happened. She looked around, she thought of what she was wearing, underwear, black slacks supplied by the hospital, and a grey t-shirt. She felt the shirt and tried to remember everything about it. She imagined what the pants looked like when she wasn’t wearing them, the exact shape of her underwear.

She had it all on, she wanted it to disappear, to travel somewhere and come back. To travel with her body. She forced herself to breathe even slower; she tried to steady her pulse, listening to her own heartbeats.  Thud……thud……thud.  It was a peaceful sound—quiet, slow, and constant. She let all her breath go and tried once more. Cold, cold, cold, very, very cold, snow. Her body temperature plummeted. She frantically memorized the clothing as she felt herself shiver.

A rush.

She was back in her room again. The brain freeze quickly followed. She tried her best to endure it, to block it out. Despite the powerful icy shock to her head it wasn’t nearly as strong as the magnitude of her previous attempt. She forced herself to stay standing. This time no dizziness came as she forced back the pain.  She was able to better control it. She looked down, hoping her clothes were still intact. “YES!” Her trick worked, she wasn’t naked! She smiled just discovering an interesting ability.

It was time to try it yet again. She thought of cold again, no, she thought of shivers. Once again she thought of her clothing, to make sure she wouldn’t somehow lose it on the return trip, and this time, instead of her room, she thought of the empty room she was in before.

A rush.

She looked around.  Black cool smoke was in her face, but it started to vanish quickly. The brain freeze came again. This time it wasn’t bad at all, and she forced back the pain, trying her best to show no discomfort to the  shocked doctors behind the one way glass. She was starting to adapt to the odd sensation, making herself think that the pain was nothing. She smiled.

Lilly admired the last strands of the smoke, noticing it’s bitter, dry taste in her mouth. Once it all evaporated she decided that show and tell was over.  There was no need to show the doctors more.  She walked out of the examination room satisfied, and in sudden need of a sweet snack.

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