From Bunkers to Palaces

Part 5 - Doubt

Kate suffered the worst night since she had woken in that first bunker prison.

It started when she threw up the hot-pot meal and the apple pie with the ice-cream on top, but not in that order. It was like a massive shower of guck because she had downed a canteen of water after the meal having added a spoonful of brown sugar to it as it had the citrus taste which was rather sour after the sweet pie.

She'd gone for a shower and change of clothes after the meal, and not feeling tired, entered the monitoring room, sitting on a chair by the empty bed, watching in wonder at the many screens which were focused on moon-lit trees and areas in the woods. How beautiful it appeared. Other cameras were monitoring the sky beyond the woods and Kate wanted to ask why this was. Did they think someone might come in a plane —or a helicopter as she had?

Without warning, the feeling of faintness had come and she had stood, not sure what was happening to her —then came the vomit.

The food chuck-ups spewed out across the floor of the monitoring room, some of it landing on the chair and the bed. Bits and pieces flew to the desk and even  the screens, the floor and the walls. How disgraced and wretched she felt.

After being ordered, by a man she didn't know who had been sitting watching the screens, "Clean up your mess!"— she had endeavoured to do just this while retching without anything in her stomach to vomit, but the retching continued. Diana, who had not yet gone to sleep, heard a commotion in the corridor, buckets and bowls of water being taken to the monitoring room by the man with cloths and cleaning fluid carried by Kate in a large two-handled bowl.  The latter had to stop and lean on the wall because the retching caused her to double over from the violence of it.

Relieving Kate of her bowl, saying, "Go and lie down in your room if you can make it that far. Try to be quiet as two others are sleeping in there tonight..."

Stumbling along, she stopped at the bathroom and entered to wash her face and pull off the sweater she wore because it was soiled by her vomit. Feeling faint again, she took a step back from the bench before doubling up forward, bashing her face, across her eyes on the marble edge. She slumped to the floor and her eyes closed. A state of semi-unconsciousness possessed her.

*****

Two hours later, she woke in a bed with a cold compress on her head. A hand lifted the compress and Diana's concerned face appeared. Kate moaned, saying, "You're... out of focus..." Then, "Where am I?" The walls were of marble, unlike the concrete of the bedchambers and they seemed to be pulsating, in and out, in and out as though breathing...

"You're in the infirmary and you'll be here overnight."

"I'm very thirsty... my head aches, like it pounds with my heartbeat... perhaps I could have some paracetamol? "

"The nurse her doesn't want to give you anything for it in case you are allergic. Do you remember what allergies you had, Kate?"

"Peanut-butter and valium in any anaesthetic... and..."

"Yes?"

"I went unconscious at the dentist once when he gave me something for pain before I had a tooth out..."

Diana kept her question about, 'returning memories', and said, "The nurse has taken a blood sample and will send it out tomorrow to have it analysed. It might provide some answers for us and for you, Kate. You did hit your head, across your forehead at your eyes as you have bruising there. Just try and rest..."

Kate's body convulsed and she suffered a slight seizure. The nurse rushed to the bedside, taking Kate's pulse, shaking her head.

She asked that a doctor be paged and fetched.

An hour later, the team doctor who was 'on-call' had no answers to Kate's condition other than that she could be suffering some concussion from falling. "We might have some answers when we get the results of the blood test. "I doubt that she will survive the night if her blood pressure doesn't come down."

"Richard is coming as soon as he can," Diana said. "He's known her for ten years and might know of some condition she has."

"Has her family been informed?"

"We're working on that one because she has no memory as to who she is or where they live but we think it is as far aways as North America."

"If Richard's known her for ten years, he should know the family, surely?"

"It's complicated," Dianna said.