Mind's Echo

Shelly

Shelly listened to Eva ask her questions, but her mind was a million miles away as she stared in abject horror at the photograph before her.

"No, no one in my family is a nurse, or was a nurse, Eva," Shelly replied finally to Eva's questions after the second time the other woman posed them. "This is too crazy!" she mumbled, shaking her head.

She kept staring at the faces in the picture. She kept waiting for them to change. She knew what she had seen. When she had initially looked at the photo, one of the nurses did look like her - actually, it was like looking in a mirror! But that was not the only likeness! The doctor looked a whole lot like Alex, and the woman being operated on was Eva's doppelganger! One of the male orderlies even favored Mark, albeit with shorter hair. But what really frightened her (and she did not frighten easily), was that the man standing next to the woman looked like the newcomer, Quincy!!!

It had changed, though. The faces no longer resembled anyone in the group. She kept squinting at it, willing it to look the way it had before. She wasn't crazy. She was a little stressed, yeah, but still ... Again, she shook her head violently. Whatever. Maybe it was just the stress getting to her. Or it could be hunger. She hadn't eaten anything all day. Low blood sugar levels can really mess with a person. Yeah, that was it. Had to be.

Shelly moved quickly away from the picture to the other side of the room where Alex was messing with his stuff. Her eyes were open wide, and any thoughts of sleep were long gone. She caught Alex's eye, and smiled with nervous tension.

"So, Alex, do you have anything in that pile there that you could call food?" She asked, trying to distract herself away from that damn picture.

Stealing a glance toward it, she saw Eva and Quincy talking in front of it. When Eva shot a look toward Shelly over her shoulder, Shelly averted her gaze. Looking around the room, she finally found Mark, who was studying the room, seemingly interested in doing just that. He didn't really seem all that fazed by anything going on around him. Shelly almost admired that freedom. She could feel herself growing more and more tense, more and more wary, by the minute.

Why am I really here? Why are any of us really here? She turned her attention to sorting through Alex's camping supplies in search of a snack with a sinking heart ...