The sheets were rough and the bed creaked as I sat up. Soft light trickled in through a single window and danced on the white walls and white tile flooring. The bed frame was simple. It looked like copper piping someone twisted until it was a bed.
I slid my feet off the bed and onto the floor. It was cold. I stared at my feet and wiggled my toes. It was strange. I didn't recognize them. The nails were plain and the skin was fair. They could've belonged to just about anybody. But they didn't feel like they were mine. I wiggled them some more. They behaved like they were mine, but I had no guarantee.
I reached up and ran my hands over the unfamiliar landscape of my face. I touched the back of my head and discovered and soft peach fuzz growing there.
I sat thinking for a moment when a hole opened up in one of the walls and a woman stepped through it. She was very sleek, her short blonde hair neatly swept backwards from her face. "Hello, Ingrid." She smiled at me, then looked down at the device in her hand. She stepped closer, still looking down, her shoes clacking on the floor. "How are we feeling today?" Our eyes met. I didn't answer her. I didn't feel a need to. Her eyes, a clear, frosty blue, seemed to pierce my very soul. Saying, "I'm fine, thanks." seemed irrelevant.
She stayed there, staring at me. She seemed to be waiting for me to do something, but what that might be I had no idea.
"Well," she sighed, and turned to leave.
"Wait," I croaked. She nearly dropped whatever it was in her hands. It looked expensive. "Sorry." Coughs racked my body and when they subsided I realized other people had swarmed into the room, armed with more expensive looking things that I was scared I would break. "Um," I warbled. "Excuse me?" The words were slowly beginning to fit in my mouth better. The first woman just stood there staring and the other people continued hurriedly pressing on their screens and talking to each other in hushed tones. "Miss?" I was the focus of their flurry but still no one paid me any attention.
The room felt like it was getting smaller, or that more and more people were filling it up. The whispers grew louder and louder in my ears, but I still couldn't understand any of them. It was deafening.
"Stop it!" I finally screeched. Everything was suddenly so still and quiet that the pain of the cacophony was quickly forgotten and I almost wished it'd come back.
"Our apologies," the woman said. "We'll leave you to yourself." She smiled again and they were all gone.
