Borrowed Time

Prologue

PROLOGUE:

I am running. My feet move under me, as if by second nature. I am running so fast, even the wind stops to watch me in the darkness. I am running away from the night. I am running away from the past, away from the present. I am running towards the future, a thing I fear will never come. But most importantly, I am running out of time.

My eyes burst open, like the way a villain’s in a scary movie might, just when you thought they were dead. The first thing I register is that it is cold. I once read somewhere that you're more likely to have nightmares when it's cold. That's what it was, I think, a nightmare. My eyes dance around in their sockets, taking in the space. The walls are a pale blue, and I know it's not the hospital room in which I'd fallen asleep. This room lacks the windows and the voices of the busy children's wing. This room lacks just about everything.

At that moment, the door opens. Not in the way you would think a doctor would open a door. But like a mother who thinks her child is dying on the other side. There is an urgency in the way the door swings open, the hinges creak and I immediately recoil. But the sight of elderly Dr. Barnes relaxes me. I knew him, I'd known him practically all my life. He was the doctor for every kid at the St. Augustus's Home for At Need Children, the place that I had unfortunately called “home.”

Dr. Barnes is somewhere in his late forties, but he might as well be seventy-five with the way the wrinkles crowd his face, and the way his hands shake even when he's just standing there. He glances at me and my first inclination is to pretend I'm asleep, but it's too late, he's seen me.

“Good Morning, Cecilia,” he says. It's then that I notice the cold, excited pleasure in his eyes, something I have only seen once before; when I was being put to sleep. It's this that makes me falter, makes me wish I hadn't seen, makes me wish I hadn't woken.

“You're doing much better, Cecilia,” he says, after a few minutes of my silence. I try to nod slowly, but my muscles feel as though they haven't been moved in years. I avert my eyes as he plays with the tubes connected to my arm. Suddenly, I remember that I had not been doing well before. That behind closed doors I'd heard whispers of my peril, that the other children, even those who I'd never spoken to had come to visit me. To tell me that I was one of their closest friends, that they wished they'd gotten to know me better. I shake the thought from my head, and glance back at Dr. Barnes. He looks almost giddy. It makes me sick.

After just moments, or maybe hours, Dr. Barnes leaves the room, promising that he'll be back soon, telling me not to move. I immediately break this rule, as I sit up. The air is moist and frigid. The air is not at all like the air in any hospital I've been in.

Some may call it survival instinct, some may call it insanity. But at that moment, one thought clouded my mind, and just moments later my body. It didn't matter that the hospital gown made my bare legs show and it didn't matter that I couldn't remember where the clothes I'd come in were. It didn't matter that I had no idea where I was or how to get out, or if I even could. The one thought filled me so fully that it seemed there was no room for other worries or fears or logic of any kind. There was only this one word, repeated like a mantra in the head. Over and over and over again, until nothing else existed.

Run.