***
Time held no meaning as my mind darted in and out of memories. Past and present collided to create a full-sensory collage out of my life: playing hide-n-seek with my best friends Luke—who always cheated by walking through walls when he was about to be caught—and Lucy; Mr. Caldrin critiquing my sketches and offering ideas to make them more realistic; targets changing faces, blending into the same person, their thoughts rippling through my mind like waves. Through it all, a demon stalked me from the shadows of my memories, never quite showing its face, but crouching, waiting.
And then I dreamed....
***
The needle plunges into me, tearing through skin in one small, sharp poke. Yellow fluid drains from the vial and into my veins.
I float outside my body, above a younger version of myself sitting on the hospital bed. My brown hair is longer, a child's cut with blunted bangs and pigtails. My blue eyes look brighter, more innocent. "Why do I have to get this all the time? What does it do?"
Dr. Sato also looks younger, though very old to my child-self, her Asian features smooth and pronounced, her white coat and stilted accent forever the same. "You not get it all the time. Only every three months. It vitamin. It make you strong and healthy. Make you feel good."
I struggle to slip into her thoughts, but they're all mumbo-jumbo, the sounds foreign and harsh to my young mind. I haven't yet learned many other languages, just one or two common ones. Her Japanese dialect is not common, and no amount of mind reading will change the fact that I cannot understand her words. Trying only gives me a headache.
Then it's okay. I don't mind not knowing, not hearing her thoughts. All is well.
Time slips forward and again I'm in a hospital bed, only this time I'm older... and unconscious. My legs are spread. My sleeping form does not move.
A male doctor I've never seen sticks something inside me—
I scream. And scream. And scream.
No one hears.
***
"Sam. Sam!"
Fingers dug into my shoulders, pulling me from my dream fragments. Ghostly hands clawed at my mind and tried to carry me back into my nightmares, but Drake's hold on me didn't waver. His mind probed mine; my consciousness had no choice but to wake up and take control.
My throat cracked when I spoke. "How long have I been asleep?"
He sat at the edge of the bed and kissed my head. "A few hours."
"I feel worse than before I slept, like I ran a marathon with a hangover."
The right side of his lips curved up in his signature half grin. "You've never had a hangover, so how would you know?"
I smirked. "I don't have to get drunk to know the aftermath doesn't feel so great. Intelligent people learn lessons without having to make all the mistakes. Unlike some, who think that chugging beer through—what do you call those things? Beer hats?—is a genius thing to do."
"That's the last time I tell you any of my secrets."
"Uh... I can read your mind."
"True. Speaking of reading minds... yours was screaming at me while you slept. Then you actually screamed. What were you dreaming, Hon?"
Only bits and pieces of my dream remained–the terror, the invasiveness–but no real details. Something nudged at the back of my memory, though, an important piece of the puzzle that my subconscious mind needed me to remember.
"I think I'm hungry. Or thirsty. Or... something." What? What did I need to feel better? I resisted the urge to scratch the skin off my restless legs, but it was so hard. Everything ached. Everything had a wrongness about it.
Drake left to get me food. I forced myself out of our Queen-sized bed and made my way to the bathroom we shared with Brad. Sharing a bathroom with two men was not the highlight of my new life, but we were lucky Brad had a place for us at all. He'd even kept all of Drake's stuff when he left their old apartment and rented this one. I would forever be grateful to Brad for standing by Drake the way he had all these years.
I wiped down the sink with a piece of toilet paper, erasing evidence of men who brushed their teeth like children, and splashed warm water over my face. My symptoms were all so muddled—pregnancy and illness duking it out for supremacy in my miserable body. Dizziness. Restless legs. Nausea. Anxiety. Shakiness. Those all seemed new. Well, not the nausea, but what had once been run-of-the-mill had turned into a Code Red vomit fest. Not normal.
Time for Google.
When Drake returned with a turkey sandwich, a salad and water, I sat propped-up in bed with the laptop on my legs.
My search results revealed a lot of random diagnoses. Adrenal insufficiency. Environmental allergy. Hormone imbalance—very likely, all things considered. Unknown pathogen—thank you, Google, that's very useful.
The one diagnosis that kept popping up again and again was the one that scared me the most, and made the most sense.