Time Seizure

Chapter 11 - Déjà Vu

When consciousness returned to Max like a long-forgotten friend, her eyes opened, only to be blinded by a white light. When her vision steadily adjusted to this brightness, she began to trace blurred outlines of where she was.

Her body was swaying on a moving surface, which meant that she had to be inside a vehicle. Blinking a bit more, she took note of the surroundings and could piece together what they were with minimal details. She was lying inside an ambulance, being tended to by the medical team in white suits who had her hooked to all these machines to stabilize her. The rhythmic hissing she could hear was the sound of her breaths inside an oxygen mask strapped to her mouth.

Her eyes shifted all around the room, hoping to spot traces of blue and black, only to find no such thing here.

"C—Chl—Chloe..." Her first word since waking from her nightmare came out as a feeble moan. She wanted her so badly to be with her right now, not to be alone here with all these unknowns.

Max let her eyes close, as she printed the image of her glorious smile behind the shade of her eyelids. Soon enough, she was out again.

*****

As soon as she was laid on the operating table, flooded under the surgical light, one nurse ran her scissors through the girl's shirt and bra to have them removed easily. But as soon as she exposed the young girl's chest, she reeled back, astounded by what she then saw.

"Doctor, you should come see this."

The doctor he motioned to, clearly entangled with partaking in multiple tasks at once, nonetheless came over and paused mid-motion once he saw for himself what she was fussing over.

"Do you know how to... explain this?"

The doctor withheld his answer as he leaned closer to examine this rare spectacle. He instructed another nurse to dim the light just a little bit to get a better view.

There was an amber luminescence pulsating deep from within her chest in the shape of what was her own heart.

Some of the others gather round to marvel as well, whilst looking to one another for answers, and then to the doctor leading this procedure.

"I can't explain this." He finally answered.

"So what should we do, then?"

"Proceed with what we can for now."

With that statement, the team dispersed once more to fulfil their respective roles.

*****

The dark clouds had long cleared since the incident at the Two Whales, yet it didn't like the storm was yet behind them.

After Max was taken away, everyone was taken to a field hospital that was set up in the middle of an open grass field, also outside of town. A mass of medical tents were set up there just hours after the storm. One section was where they kept they held injured survivors while the other was where they contained all the recovered casualties.

In some morbid fascination, Chloe had wandered over to the latter section to look over all the dead bodies with her cigarette in hand to numb her nerves.

At that moment, she was observing a girl that she recognized to be Dana from a distance away, weeping over Juliet's unmoving form. From the way she always saw these two together during her time in Blackwell, she knew they were close.

Chloe coughed when she puffed out her next intake of smoke, something that rarely happened. She hadn't been able to focus or relax for hours which felt like days. Her mind couldn't stop wrenching over Max, even though her life rested in the hands of the paramedics now. She regretted not getting into the ambulance with her when she had the chance, and now her friend was all alone, fighting for her life while she was here, chilling under the fresh air, alive but broken.