the medic

ch. 1

i. after

Opening her eyes was perhaps the last thing Kelsey expected she would do again. Well, that and breathe.

And yet, her near black orbs shot open anyways, her body instantly shooting up with a gasp.

'Am I dead?' Was her first thought as she rapidly felt her hands all over her body and head, checking for a singular wound. She even dragged up the apparent hospital gown she wore to see that there were no bullet holes in her stomach.

"I'm dead. I have to be." She said out loud this time and looked at her surroundings.

They were unfamiliar. She was in some sort of hospital room, brown tiles and painted-cinder block decorating the walls. A long horizontal mirror decorated one wall which placed a sinking feeling in her stomach. Kelsey has worked for the SSR long enough to know a double-sided mirror when she saw one. An almost animalistic urge spread through her body, feeling like a tiger in a cage.

Her brain was wired and going into overload. She couldn't even grasp her situation in the moment, fear distracting her from thoughts of her possible life or death. Kelsey needed to know where she was and more importantly she needed to get the fuck out.

She ripped the blankets off of her body, tearing off various wires and tubes from her skin. Adrenaline pumped through her veins like never before and she didn't even feel the IV needle which she tore from her arm. Noises on the other side of the only door in the room sent her feral, grabbing onto the metal stand holding her IV bag and using it as a makeshift staff.

Her heartbeat sped rapidly, chest heaving up and down as the metal door was opened.

"Hello to you to Dr. Kane." His accented voice was nearly foreign to her panicked state.

"Abraham?" She got out before the brunettes eyes rolled back and her body dropped to the floor.

-

Kelsey woke up for a second time, but this time with a blistering headache and a newly formed bruise on her cheek.

"Hello? Are we awake yet?" Her eyes opened to see her colleague by her side with concern filling his kind eyes and a hand on her own.

"Dr. Erskine? What's happening? Where am I? Am I alive?" She questioned in rapid succession and moved to run a stressed hand through her hair.

Or at least she would have. Kelsey looked down to see her hands strapped to the hospital bed and as she became more aware she felt more on her legs. Panic took her lungs and she began to hyperventilate, tears pricking her eyes.

"You're okay. You are alive and safe. These are only because the staff worried you would have more violent instincts when you awoke. We are in an SSR base in New York." He explained calmly, his hand never leaving her own.

"I- the lab- I thought I-" She couldn't find a way to form coherent sentences, still hopelessly confused and terribly shaken.

"The Connecticut Lab was destroyed. You have been in a coma for nearly three months." Erskine still managed to be a level force, though Kelsey couldn't be any more freaked out.

Images of the incident filled her head, tears instantly spilling down her cheeks with all her hairs standing on edge. It was like thinking about it brought the pain back, how unimaginably terrified she felt when she knew the life would leave her body. The smell of her burning skin still fresh in her nostrils.

"I died. I- I burned the lab cause I made the serum. I got it right... and then Brennan broke in with a gun. He shot me in the stomach. I died." The words left her lips in an almost monotonous manner and she could see a sad look come over the older man's features.

"Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"Well- you see, your body was found in the rubble and ashes. There were pieces of glass in your skin, one piece had even managed to lodge itself in your spinal column. And would it be wrong for me to assume that glass once held your final product?" He seemed almost nervous now, not wanting to bring back such traumatic memories, but knowing she had to know what had happened.

"Yes.." And in an instant she was back.

Her blood spilling, how she knocked the beaker onto the floor and the shards piercing her flesh, her blood mixing with the serum on the floor below her. The surge of dull pain which followed that action, this she assumed was from the mortal wound in her torso and shock of glass in her back.

"You were the first human trial of your serum, Kelsey. And it worked." Realization hit her like a wall of bricks at his words and she felt sick to her stomach.

The girl began to retch, the need to empty the contents of her stomach taking over. Erskine quickly picked up a small bin from next to her bed, letting the woman spit up bile inside it.

"Oh god-" She continued to retch and he called for nurses.

Two nurses entered the room and tended to her while he stood to get out of their way.

"Get her some food. And please take off those straps, she's not an animal." He ordered and soon Kelsey was released with an empty stomach and a burning throat.

When she was able to stand from the bed, she did so slowly this time, not caring to listen to the nurses pleas for her to lay down and rest. Meanwhile, Erskine found himself studying her with slight marvel. Kelsey walked to the double-sided mirror, touching her cheek to find no bruise. She knew it was there only minutes ago, the pulsing on the side of her face enough to let her know of its existence. Her colleague couldn't help but watch with fascination, the vision of her injury disappearing right before his eyes.

"Gimme a pen." She held a hand out, and it was soon filled by Erskine who knew what she was about to do but couldn't bring himself to stop her.

Kelsey opened the fountain pen with a breathy sigh before forcibly stabbing its sharp tip into her wrist and dragging it upward. She let out a sharp hiss at the pain while the nurses stared at her in shock.

Blood poured from the wound instantly, dripping onto the floor in a quick succession. And yet in seconds it stopped. She wiped the crimson liquid from her arm, eyes going wide as her hypothesis became proven immediately.

There wasn't even a scar. She looked back to Erskine.

"What am I?"