THEY — Chapter 23 — Surprise
This is chapter 23 of my book “THEY”. If you are finding it for the first time, please begin with Chapter 1 (or check the INDEX )! When you’re done, check out more of my stories on my MEDIUM profile: Caralynn Scott — Medium
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CHAPTER 23 — Surprise
Jennic awoke lying on her back staring up at a stark white ceiling. At first she thought she had left the lights on and her eyes had simply not adjusted to the brightness yet after the darkness of sleep, but she began to realize that they were actually much brighter than usual. Perhaps it wasn’t real, and she was still dreaming somehow. Perhaps her Arti was trying to gently rouse her even now as she was still slumbering.
She lifted her right hand to shield her eyes as they slowly adjusted to the brightness, or at least she would have lifted it if it were not tied down to the bed. She tried her left hand, but it too was held tightly in place, unable to rise more than an inch or two. Suddenly alert, she looked from side to side and realized quickly that this was not her room, and she was bound to the bed — no, not a bed, but some sort of lightly padded table that did not conform to the shape of her body. It was very uncomfortable.
Panic began to set in. Perhaps this really was a dream? But she knew she had never had such a lucid dream before. It all felt so real. It had to be real. So where was she? What had happened to her own room and how had she ended up in this place, wherever it was?
Squinting against the bright light which seemed to emanate from the entire ceiling and shone relentlessly down on her face, she tried to look around her to find clues about her location. She was in the middle of a plain white room. On her left, in the middle of the wall was a recessed shelf with a single green plant on it, and above her and to the right — was a single door. The rest of what she could see was starkly bare. There were no clues to give her any idea where she had been taken.
Panic continued to grow as that sank in. She had been taken. And she knew of only one reason people were taken from the facility. But she had no recollection of having been brought here. They must have taken her in her sleep! She had obviously been abducted and removed from the population, but why had they abandoned her in this room? Was she trapped indefinitely? Would she … Die here?
“Help!” Jennic shouted as loudly as she could. “Help me!” She doubted anyone could hear her or would even answer if they did. Wherever she was, the people who put her here had no intention of letting her escaping. They had likely also taken measures so her screams would not be heard either. She tried to calm herself, breathing more slowly and with deeper breaths. As she began thinking more clearly, the realization dawned on her that this was probably the event she had been warned about. Somehow, in the middle of the night, they had taken her from her own room and placed her in this sterile area of the facility. Apart from being confined, and a slight headache though, she felt fine. She couldn’t be sure, but she reasoned the surgery must not have happened yet. So, this must be the place where she would be made ready. Panic began to rise again, and it took significant effort to lay still and steady her breathing as she settled her nerves.
“Panicking will not help.” She told herself aloud. “You’re not going to get any help from outside. The only one who can help you right now is lying on the table, so what can you do?”
She looked around the room one more time. It was impossible to see much from the position she was in. Her arms were bound at the wrists and upper arms so efficiently she could not sit up more than a few inches, barely enough to see her hands and toes, which she could glimpse peaking above the horizon of the gown she wore, completely bare at the other end of the table. She assumed the white surgical gown she was wearing was all she had on. Certainly, she could feel no other clothing underneath, but it was difficult to tell. She tried fruitlessly to slip her hands and feet clear of the bindings, but she could not get the ankle bindings past her heels, and although the wrist straps were not so restricting, they were just tight enough to keep her hands from slipping through them, even if the arm restraints had allowed enough of an angle to pull on them, which they did not.
A few inches of chain attaching each strap to the table, so Jennic tried to pull with as much pressure on the chain as she could manage. They showed no signs of fatigue. She tried short rapid yanks and kicks, hoping the briefer, more forceful pull would work more effectively. Still, nothing happened. She could not build enough momentum in her movement to affect them any differently than simply pulling.
Jennic could not see below the height of the table from her limited range of motion but guessed the tabletop could be no more than three feet from the floor. She thought hard about rocking the bed to try and somehow tip it over, but she assumed it would be an extremely solid surface to fall on. It would be painful. Especially since she would still be hanging from the restraints. But then, perhaps the sudden fall would break her free. She began to gently rock back and forth to test the stability of the bed. All of her deliberations became purely academic, however, when she discovered that the bed would not move at all. It must have been fastened to the floor and it was going nowhere.
With a deep sigh, she resigned herself to the fact that she was not going to escape these bonds. She accepted her fate and lay quietly, trying to listen carefully for any clues about where she was, or what was going to happen to her, but her efforts were only rewarded with an eery stone cold silence.
Minutes passed like hours. To say her life flashed before her eyes would be overly dramatic, but she found herself reviewing the events leading up to this moment, over and over again; How she had felt so different from everyone else growing up, and all of the things that she had been taught about who, or what, she was. Her parents had always been supportive, neither encouraging or discouraging the things that had made her unique among their friends, but whether out of ignorance or shame, they had not encouraged her to find and accept herself. She thought about the fateful day the Enforcers had taken her from her family — how she had left willingly, blindly accepting the lie that they could help her — even that she needed to be helped in the first place! She had learned so much these weeks at the Facility, but not the things the white coats had tried to teach her. She had changed, and yet she was very much the same. She realized she was not really different, but she had become more honest with herself about who she really was. And now? What was going to become of her now?
After what was chronologically only ten minutes but days in Jennic’s mind, the door opened with a rubbing, peeling sound as the seal slipped out of the frame. Three individuals dressed in sterile surgical gear entered the room, their faces covered with masks. They pushed large carts of equipment, which they set up at various locations around the bed, they ignored Jennic’s pleas of “Why am I hear?”, “What are you doing?”, “What is going on?”, and “Why won’t you help me?”
To Jennic’s right, they placed a complicated machine — a surgical robot used in most hospitals to perform delicate work. On her left side they set up a bank of monitoring equipment with holo-displays that began to come to life as the white coats turned them on one by one. They monitored and reported her various vital systems, which unsurprisingly were currently in an elevated state of anxiety.
One of the medical personnel gently pulled Jennic’s head back down on the table and a mask appeared from behind her. It was attached by a long hose to a pump and a tank. She struggled for a moment as the mask covered her mouth and nose, but this was as futile as pulling her hands free and she resigned herself to the bitter-sweet taste of the nitrous oxide filling her lungs.
The world around her began to swirl and then faded to black.
