Dawn Hollow

XXXI

Ella wheeled the dozed patient into room one like she was instructed. Her mind was a zombie being lulled by the rattling of syringes and medicine bottles on the bedside gurney. Her arm was throbbing in bruised pain from the doctor's metal grasp. It was like her arm was being bashed with a hammer repeatedly until her small glasses were fogging up. She cursed under her hot breath, discomfort crawling up her skin like a weed.

In a blind rage, she removed her white lab coat and threw it in the corner, rolling up the sleeves of her sweater and letting her inner arms breathe. They were bruised even more than usual from the last she remembered, but that didn't necessarily worry her because it might not have been the doctor's fault. She sighed quietly to herself as the purple and red coloring tattooed in her skin she couldn't look anyway from. Disappointment flashed her eyes. This wasn't worth it. Was it worth it? She never quite knew.

She was never like this before, though. Always the good girl, the independent who gagged at the thought of her own love life. It was useless after all. Her eyes were always set on her own success and not much else. However, it worked out well, getting her to be valedictorian in high school with the highest grades ever seen in the district. She was offered a fantastic job right out of pharmacy school, which she hopped on until her wits made her an outcast among future peers and coworkers. That was when Dr. Marston found her and asked for her hands in his life-changing project.

She thought she would never look back, that this was everything she ever wanted.

It was.

But at the cost, she continued to pay for it, maybe not. It wasn't worth going from everything to nothing. From a cute and cozy mid-city apartment to the equivalent of a boiler room where it was constantly leaking something. That wasn't worth it. And maybe trying to tell herself it would be wasn't exactly worth it either.

PJ's disgruntled stirring finally broke her away from her spell. However, his body remained still in their wrist and ankle restraints, not yet ready to come to wake. Ella took it as her queue to get everything prepared before he did awake. Doing what she did best, she grabbed an empty syringe and filled it with the medicine next to it. It was an unlabeled drug, meaning that it was still in the testing phase. But that also suggested Ella was in the dark.

As she flicked it for bubbles, her coat buzzed on the floor. Her needle nearly flopped out of her hands in fright, but it never fell. She told herself to relax, it was only her phone. Curiously, she capped the syringe and left it on the table. Her cellphone was warm in the pocket when Ella fished it out, the cracked screen lighting up brightly as it became unlocked.

There was a single text message waiting there for her. Upon opening the application to see who it was from, she nearly dropped the phone. "Erica?!" She whispered to herself, reading the message quickly before reading another thousand times over.

"E-E-Erica?" PJ groaned, officially waking up. She bolted up from her squatted point on the ground and threw her phone back onto her heap of lab coat. A panicked smile foiled around her lips as the boy awoke, slowly trying to push himself up.

"Relax! Don't move! You might hurt your neck. It's already starting to bruise," She informed him, coming closer more calmly.

"E-Erica. A-A-And Joseph. And N-Noah! My friends, w-where are my friends?" He yelled, growing antsy. "Holy shit, I-I have to have overslept, I-I-I'm gonna be so l-late for school; mom's gonna kill me, I-!"

"PJ!" Ella shouted over him, making him freeze, "Look around. You're mixing past life with reality. Your friends aren't here, there's no school, and your mom isn't going to kill you; now calm down!"

"Oh..." The boy paused, rubbing his shoulders with eyes glazed into the metal walls. "I thought it was all a nightmare."

"Believe me, I often wish it was."