Timepiece (tentative title)

Timepiece

“Is she—?” A male, awed voice filtered through a flurry of rushed hysteria. Commanding voices, yelling, and a stream of steady, fast beats echoed in my ears.

“She’s waking up, but her heart rate is elevated,” another spoke.

 “Well, don’t just stand there! Give her the IV!” a third commanded. “She’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Should we order a transfusion?”

“She’s not that far gone, I don’t think. Give her the meds instead; I think we can get her body to compensate for the loss.”

Sudden silence from the voices lent to the takeover of a steady stream of ominous beeps and pulses, and the shuffling of metal objects clicking against each other. “A hospital. Right. Right? Where else would people want to give me blood? Oh God…I’m dying, aren’t I? Or I’m going to die, right? Please don’t let me die.”

Another sudden exchange of frantic cries and the somber beeping of the machines echoed around me and filled my ears with panicked sound. Nurses were calling for 300 ccs of some medication I couldn’t even pronounce. My eyes were clamped tight against the bright, blinding white lights straining through my eyelids. Cold, rough hands touched, grabbed, and prodded my arm and chilled my spine, while my back ached and my neck twisted into knots.

Where in the world was I? Okay, obviously, a hospital, I thought first as I tried to fight back a flood of horrid emotions. But where? Was I in London? I’d have to be, right? How did I get here? Did someone attack me? I’d regained consciousness only a moment ago, or so it felt like it. But I wanted to fight back, free myself, and go on my way; this place scared me already. My body tensed. I didn’t like hospitals to begin with. Visiting people in them was bad enough. But knowing that I was on the other side of the looking glass, unaware of what was even wrong with myself, and lying helplessly at the mercy of largely ignorant men in white clothing that were content with performing experiments on my body and acting like gods…it was terrifying. Technology wasn’t advanced enough. Most people that went into hospitals never came out alive to talk about the horrors. I was convinced that I was dead. Or dying. Or about to start dying. None of those sounded too great.

“Come on…don’t think about that. You’ll go into a panic attack. You have to breathe; you’ll be okay,” I thought, trying to coach myself. My heart raced and my throat tightened with anxiety, but I forced myself to breathe.

Desperately, one of the men next to me cried out. “Her heart rate is rising! Get the hell over here with the drugs!”

Okay. Block it out. How did I get here again? Beyond the memories I had in that moment, everything else before was a complete blur; my memory had been wiped clean like none of the buildup to this scene had ever happened at all. The last thing I could fully remember was walking from my flat in Camden, looking specifically for the local clockmaker in Westminster. He was Elijah Miller, a quiet, thoughtful man of twenty-four. He’d been in the business seriously ever since he was sixteen, and he was the only person I’d ever trust to fix my tiny, antique gold pocket watch, which I kept tied around my neck. It had suddenly stopped keeping time, so I decided to take the day off from work to take it over there. Going to Elijah’s shop wasn’t a quick errand. We always ended up talking for hours on end. He was a good friend. I intended to go to his shop and return home a few hours later with a fixed watch, but, as fate would have it, that never happened.

Suddenly, I was lying on my back in this hospital, hearing the desperate cries and orders of the men around me, feeling them prod my arms roughly and forcefully. I must’ve never made it into downtown London. Or maybe I had, and I just never made it to Westminster to Elijah’s shop. I just wished my memory was better…