Era

20

The longer they kept her in that hospital, the more Era could feel her sanity slowly melt away. The small white room was walls closing in and the IV in her arm was knives beneath the skin and everything was too close and too far and smelled so strongly of chemicals that it made her sick.

Era hated hospitals. Always had. But this particular stint was all the more overwhelming for the fact that everyone always seemed to want something from her. She'd been foolish to think that there would be no more questions after that detective had left.

"Do you feel light-headed at all?"

"Are there gaps in your memory?"

And, of course, the increasingly baffling, "How are you doing today, Suzuki?"

How was she doing? Pretty fucking terrible, but she couldn't exactly say that. Apparently they'd thought she was suffering from blood loss or some nonsense, and had been all set to give her a transfusion until she started to stabilize with just a IV drip of fluids. Thank God. Even if they miraculously found a match to her blood type, Era didn't think she'd be able to explain away the violence with which her body would inevitably reject it. She supposed she should just be thankful they hadn't deemed surgery to be necessary.

Era had woken up in the middle of an emergency operation a couple times before. Though obviously the experience was unpleasant, she felt worse for the doctors that she'd definitely traumatized. It wasn't the anesthesiologist's fault that her body tore through drugs like potato chips, and the surgeons certainly didn't deserve a punch in the face for all of their efforts to save a life. The fact that she'd fallen under Midnight's quirk so easily was just a testament to how run-down she'd truly been, crippled by blood loss and the stress of healing injuries over and over again.

"We can't get in contact with your parents. Do you know where they are?"

Shit. Right. There was that, too. The well-meaning nurse smiled down at Era and carefully removed the IV needle from her arm. Finally. Any longer and she'd have ripped it out herself.

"Business trip to America," she said far too quickly. Breathe. "I think they're probably on the plane right now? I know, it's terrible timing."

She gave a pitiful little laugh. That seemed to sate the nurse, who nodded in sad understanding before leaving the room.

That situation would have to be remedied. Sooner rather than later. Her "parents" couldn't be on a flight to America forever, though it did buy her considerable time.

The day passed too slowly, in bits and pieces, and then suddenly all at once it was night. Dark. Era hated the dark.

They'd unhooked her from the heart monitor a while ago, yet another annoyance she was thankful to be relieved of. If she wanted, she could lie back against the mattress and drift off into a no doubt unpleasant sleep.

Era did not want that. The dreams she'd suffered under Midnight's quirk were enough to warn her away from the idea, and even then she'd only just begun drifting towards more dangerous thoughts when she'd awoken. She couldn't dream, not now, with the boxes in her head all scattered about and that memory of burning flesh buzzing across her arms and throat.

The hospital room itself was small, but in the darkness walls became gateways to a yawning abyss. Era knew with an unfortunate intimacy how easy it was to become lost in a five by five room. The shadows had a way of creeping up on her, and without a wall to cling to she was becoming more and more uncertain of where I am and why I'm here and the ever important who am I? Ridiculous, because she was Era. That should have been enough, but still the darkness pressed in around her and the bed was too soft, not at all like the concrete floors she was familiar with. Yet another change in the dizzying dance that was her life.