Skeleton Beats the Clock

Chapter 6: Reinvention During and After the Broken Pieces

 Meron drove up shortly after just in time to see Zin being loaded into the ambulance. On the rush to the hospital, Zin remembered her own name but not what she looked like. Her own face was a stranger as it stared back at her reflection in the machines. She looked like she'd run out of time. Her eyes were sunken and her limbs too exhausted to move much. She'd felt it in her body, psyche and spirit. Whatever used her for private transport wreaked havoc before it left her body. She was incomplete like a Sudoku puzzle.

Her bones were different, forever changed. The doctrine of wisdom they had written on them was partly erased. She looked at the monitor. Her blood pressure steadily dropped only going up one degree at one point as if teetering between life and death, taunting her with both simultaneously. She was still lucid and aware talking nonstop as if it were the last time, albeit her voice tired as her body weakened.

Meron called the only other person Zin would want to see. "It's urgent. Zin's in hospital. Where are you? I'll come and get you," he hung up his phone and went back into Zin's hospital room. He took her by the hand. "I'll come back straightaway."

"Please hurry back, Meron," Zin said weakly.

He drove like a mad hatter on fire despite where he had to go was only minutes away.

The noise machine Kevyn lent to her played, set on the timer to repeat consecutively without pause. Pricilla could put it at the top of her list of sounds other than music to calm her. It didn't put her to sleep but it stopped her mind from being so wired. This was the first time she left it on at daylight.

"Are you leaving?" Meron asked noticing her open duffel partially packed.

"No, I thought a hike through Death of Adonis-14 would do me good until you phoned me about Zin. I've lost interest now," Pricilla said mentioning Camp Hypnos's fourteen-thousand-foot mountain carved in the image of Adonis dying in the arms of Aphrodite with anemone flowers growing wild. She heard the shuffling of his clothing as he stepped forward. He wore a short- sleeved striped polo shirt, Bermuda shorts with boat shoes.

"You can't enter," Mikcari's voice broke the ambience of the sounds of the ocean and the whales.

"It's me, Mikcari. Lower your shield," Meron commanded.

"It's against Camp Hypnos's security rules and regulations."

"I know. I wrote them."

"I'm not programmed to violate them not even for you, my creator."

"Right," Meron murmured, clenching his teeth.

Pricilla folded her lips to muffle her snickering.

"I'm glad you find this so amusing."

"One of your own creations disobeying your orders by following your orders, it's a bit weird, hilarious and ironic at the same time," Pricilla said laughing out loud, holding her stomach from hearty laughter.

"Good to know I can still make you laugh," Meron said with his eyes gleaming.

Pricilla choked and swallowed her laughter curtly in mid-chuckle. She broke the silence with a sigh, turning off the noise machine.

"Would you like a candle? I've gotten quite good at making them in arts and crafts therapy. I made several with and without wicks."

"Why candles without wicks?" he asked raising a curious brow.

"To train myself not to set them aflame."

"And the ones with wicks?"

"In case I fail."