The Chime of Bluebells

5

I stared at the man in front of me. "Is this a joke?" I asked, unable to gather my thoughts to coherent content. Everything that had happened within the last twenty-something hours seemed like a surrealistic dream, or rather a nightmare I desperately tried waking up from.

"I'm afraid not," said Doroweigh with the stereotypical emotionless calmness. "I need to ask if you have any idea of what this object is or might be?"

"No, I- I've never seen anything... I don't know what it is." My throat felt dried, as if I'd been walking through Sahara's desert for days without the slightest sight of water or any kind of liquid for that matter—not even a cactus. "It...looks a little like a gemstone."

"We are gonna send this to the lab for identification. My guess is that it might be a stone or aggregated mass of some sort of minerals or mineraloid. Have you been to the beach lately?"

It was March and this far up north, sun didn't give any warmth until late April or May. "No."

He nodded, slightly disappointed, but his mind was still trying to put the pieces together. "There has been cases where people have stepped on a piece of glass, sometimes obliviously, and a small fraction of the material has gotten inside and journeyed through the body. This happens more often than one might think, but often people don't even know of it since it usually finds its own way out—the body is an amazing defender of itself. But in some cases, of course, you have to help the body to get rid of what shouldn't be there in the first place. Like I said, I've heard this has happened with glass before, and gravel is not uncommon when children fall and scrape their hands and knees—it, too, gets pushed out of the body by the body itself."

I restrained a shiver. "Sounds painful."

"Sometimes it is, when the punctuation of skin occurs, but you barely notice it afterwards. This"—he nodded towards the container in my hand—"might be something similar. What I don't get," he added, "is how something of this size could have ended up where it did without your knowing."

"Could I have swallowed something?" It was more of a question directed toward me.

"It's possible...if it had been sharp. It could have damaged its path somewhere in the digestive process, made a hole and ended up in a vessel...but I'm not positive about this theory. It seems unlikely considering the circumstances of it seeming smooth—no edges—and with its size it would probably not have gotten to your leg. I'd have assumed it got stuck somewhere around your lower torso."

Seeing my gaze falter, Doctor Doroweigh reassured me he'd gotten the whole thing out—since it was opal shaped with no sharp edges, no pieces were left in my body. He couldn't say he was 100 percent certain, but he gave me the percentage of 99,9% chance there were no remains still flowing through my circulation system.

"No worries Miss Langner, the object has been removed and we will soon know more of this object." The doctor smiled convincingly. "In the mean time, you can relax here under supervision—for precautions of cou—"

"Alright!" The door swung open and through it, Quinn came bursting in with three bags of food. "All we need now is an oven and then we'll be all set to make our famous exotic tac—" She cut herself off, blinking at Doroweigh. "Oh... I'm sorry... I'll wait in the hallway."

"No need," the doctor smiled and rose. "We were just finishing off." His gaze met mine. "Get some rest and let your body recover. Although, it's functioning normally, it's still exhausting to go through a surgery. I will be checking in on you."

"Okay," I nodded. "Thanks."

He replied with a smile and left the room with the small tube, leaving a gazing Quinn watching him with a small smile tugging in the corner of her mouth.