Sister Skaði Wrenwinter - Apocrypha
Apocrypha, Book IV
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00m00s__Hospital Eyes flutter open , itchy with sand and heavy . Can·t move . Can·t swallow . Electrodes, tubes, breathing, feeding, suction . The monitor beeps along with the steady in and out of controlled breathing . The memory of being human isn·t the first thing that registers .
04m00s__Hospital Nurses make the rounds , taking patients· temperatures . Has it been four hours yet? . The pain of surgery is a distant and forgotten memory , one that creeps back in every four hours , when the nurses come by with tiny pills of hydromorphone and lorazepam . The clock ticks , tick, tock, tick, tock , as the seconds turn one-by-one into minutes, and then hours, and then more hours , and then more hours .
06m25s__Hospital A hissing sound fills the room . The air is translucent with water vapor . What is in the paste that they serve down the feeding tubes? . What are they doing with all that blood? . What·s in the air that i·m breathing? . The nurses might as well be wearing clay masks .
07m52s__Dreamscape To sleep , perchance to dream . And dream . And dream . Gigantic megastructures of identical hospital rooms on cables or rails . Teams of scientists taking fastidious notes . A descent into the very depths of Hell itself , and the perfect order of Heaven . Dreams of being forced to solve puzzles plainly meant for multiple people , of repeating the same iterations thousands and then millions of times .
10m40s__Void Something . Something wide . Wide, and yawning, and far away . Dull, and rounded , its edges worn off by unconsciousness . If there is no consciousness inside the body , does it remember the pain? . If there was no conscious register , did memory even form? . By the time the painkillers begin to level out , the sting of scalpel·s bite is already in the background . Breathe in . Breathe out . Tick . Tock .
15m00s__Dreamscape Within a few short hours , memory of the event roils to and from the surface . Was there any pressure? . Did anything happen back there? . Consciousness comes and goes in small islands amidst a vast inky sea . Shaky hands can barely pick up a piece of paper . The attempts at recording the experience are written in atrocious, atrophied handwriting .
18m00s__Hospital After the first 72 hours , it dawns on us that recovery is going to take more than a few days .
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