I woke up to my body feeling like led, not quite remembering how I got here, but just knowing that my door had opened a few seconds after I looked at the clock the night before. The paper was still in my hand when I had heard the boots stomping in my direction, with no other solution I shoved the paper in my mouth and waited until it was soft enough to swallow it. That was when someone busted through the door and a translucent gas filled the air around me rendering me unconscious.
The air around me now however was stale, and the walls are much closer than they used to be. I sit up from the mattress that I am on realizing how close I am to the floor, until I realize the mattress is actually very much on the floor.
I look around me to see a room that can be no larger than a 6x6 feet cell. It literally resembled a prison with just a bed stuffed in the corner and a sheet atop it, but there were no windows, no desks, no chairs, no clocks or any amenities that would typically be seen in a patient's room. I looked more like a subject than anything, shabby hospital gown, no doubt an even shabbier appearance.
Even just looking down at myself I could see that I was even more thin than my already slender frame. I was around 135 pounds before with a height of 5 feet and 8 inches, a very healthy place boasting a slender and delicate frame. My auburn curls would fall mid-back, a soft bounce with every step that I took.
But just yesterday I had looked in the mirror of the bathroom and a gaunt, malnourished woman stared back at me. Paper thin, blanch white skin, hair sticking out in multiple directions from my days old ponytail, sunken eyes with permanently attached purple bags under her eyes, skeletal like appearance, a walking cadaver.
I had been awake for what felt like hours when a nurse finally walked in, she was covered from head to toe, looking like she walked into a contamination center more than anything else. She ran checks without ever saying a word, but her eyes shone with vague familiarity.
Before leaving she dropped another journal on my bed, no questions, no conversation just doing what she needed to do and leaving. What had happened to the old journal? I guess I would never find that out. Opting to write immediately after she left, I wondered through my words whether they wanted to record each aspect or phase in a different journal as I find it hard to believe that they simply lost them.
Could it be that for every little thing I have detailed it was a part of one big study? It wouldn't be hard to believe considering I am a doctor, my notes though a little chaotic at times are more medically profound than the average civilian. The more I wrote it down, the more it made sense to me.
Conducting an experiment on a subject that already had the knowledge of the topic would make for a far easier experiment.
...….
Days had begun blurring into each other, between the signs of psychosis, the lack of light or sense time and the random meal drop offs, there was no way for me to determine the time anymore. I was sure that nearly three weeks had passed but I couldn't be certain of how much time exactly.
For hours I would lie, awake having conversation with the voices from the vents. They were quite funny and witty, possibly the only keeping me from actual insanity. Then I would fall asleep, wake up and realize there were no vents there to begin with.
It was madness truly, voices and faces that did not exist communicating with me even over the planes of my dreams. The ceilings and walls danced with patterns I had never seen before, spirals and geometric shapes making mandala right before my eyes. I felt overwhelmed but still oddly at peace.
Laughing to myself, with myself and oftentimes at myself became a common insert of my daily activities. I was under the impression that one of the medications being provided caused hallucinogens or I was simply delirious with a fever, I couldn't tell but for the first time I felt free.
Free from responsibilities and expectations, free from having to work for a living, free from having to live at all really.
Maybe dying wasn't such a bad thing, if this is the type of peace that came along with it, would I finally get the mysteries to the universe that everyone talks about or would I know what comes after.
I hope it will be quick, I've suffered enough pain and agony in the last month, I don't want to go through even more pain just to die. I hope it's tomorrow or hell even today. I'm too much of a coward to do anything about it, but it would be nice if I was granted this one thing and I could just die.
I keep lying there fantasizing my imminent demise as it's the only thing that I can do, when I hear the voices come out to play again, but this time they have the face of a beautiful man with neatly styled in black hair, his brown eyes intent and focused as if he was looking at me. Even with his angular features, he still managed to exude a certain air of charm about him.
As much as I liked them and wanted to listen, my eyelids were so heavy from all the drugs that I would prefer to sleep right now and talk to them when I was awake.
"It's quite rude of you to sleep when I have such important news for you Miss Azurine."
My eyes widened in shock, the hallucination called me by my name. I stared at it for a few seconds more and it smiled back at me. The voice sounded familiar to me, but I couldn't figure out just where I knew it from.
"I know you must be confused as to why I know your name or who I even am, but don't worry I'm not a hallucination, just a projection." My head twisted in all different directions searching for a projector.
"If you're looking for a projector, you won't be able to see it. Now unfortunately, I don't have much time to get this done so I will need you to listen carefully."
"Congratulations, you've passed Phase 2. You're ready for the final phase of the virus passing through your system. The world as you know it by the time you are hearing this message will have changed drastically, but for your own safety you're currently inside the contamination zone of your hospital."
He took a short pause before continuing, "By now I think you have realized that this virus is not quite regular. To break it down in simple terms, imagine you took a characteristic from multiple types of viruses to make one very bad one, that's exactly what happened. It attacks the DNA but replicates itself to mess with genetics, hence creating an Retrovirus effect of double-stranded DNA among other characteristics..."
My mind was about to implode from the amount of information being pushed on me about the virus. I had figured some of this information based on my research along with the blood samples I had tested for some of my patients.
"..in regards to the third and final phase, it is really to ensure that you are cured from the virus. Though we call them phases, it's just a label for the different stages of the virus and how the body reacts at each interval. We've come to realize through trial and error that the virus cannot be counteracted at the initial stage of contraction and the antidote has little to no effect when the symptoms just start showing."
He paused his speech for a moment, his comment on trial and error, not lost on me. This was not their first
"Finally, through phase 3 it typically takes two months which means month has passed considering we are having this talk, and you are already halfway there. Stay strong and do what needs to be done, I have faith that you'll make it." And just like that he was gone.
I reckoned it was a recording from how scripted everything was, but even more troubling that he seemed to know all the questions I intended to ask before I even had the chance to ask them. In other words, I was just like everyone else, the same mind, like a hive.
It didn't sit right with me that he was congratulating me about being sick in one moment, but then telling me it was for my own safety that they had me held prisoner. At least now I knew where I was, but was still very confused because I was never told about a contamination unit, nor was I shown one in my initial tour of the building. So while I was at the hospital, I still had no idea where the hell I was.
To top it all off, I don't know what was more upsetting, the fact that I had still a month of this hell left, or the fact that they had the audacity to play that recording to me. Telling me everything while simultaneously not saying shit, he didn't even bother saying his name.
Much too tired to even think I finally let the exhaustion consume me, a perfect example for what this virus was doing to me.
Regardless of what the pretty man said, I really was wishing for a swift death.