Aria

Chapter 3

A bright light shone in my face. Again, it was the strange hospital. They had monitors on my forehead and heart. I couldn't tell if I was breathing, only that I was paralyzed. I heard a heart monitor. It was slow but steady. A different nurse saw that I was awake and went pale. She said something to an older man that I couldn't make out. The heart monitor started beeping rapidly. My eyes rolled back into my head.

I woke up, arms bandaged, uniform ripped. I had a breathing tube strapped on my smoke covered face. I tried to sit up but my IV was pulled tightly to my vein in my arm.

I heard voices coming from all around me. "She's up! Taya!"

It was Lyona.

She ran over to me and took my hand in both of hers. "Are you ok? What on earth happened? You scared me half to death! How are you feeling?"

"I feel fine, really. I just want to get cleaned up and some answers." My voice sounded so raspy but it didn't really hurt. A nurse walked in briskly. She was young. Probably still a student. She peeled off my bandages and my arms felt cold and exposed. She took out the IV and the breathing tube. I slowly sat up and rubbed my arms with my hands in an effort to warm them up. When I looked up, Taya was standing with her arms crossed. Her eyes looked angry and her eyebrows were lowered slightly. Her mouth formed a straight line and she was pushing her lips together.

"What happened?" She didn't look concerned in the slightest.

"I guess the simulation malfunctioned."

"And you just sat and called for help?"

"Um," I bit my bottom lip, "I tried to follow the protocols for an attack." I hoped that she couldn't hear my voice shaking. I never wanted to disappoint Taya. She was always the tougher one out of the two of us.

She walked towards me. I almost trembled in fear of how she would punish me for my weakness. I held my breath. She extended her hands and hugged me. I just sat. Confused. After I exhaled I reached my arms around her back as well. She whispered, "I'm glad you are ok." She didn't smile. She only made brief eye contact and left.

I sat. Confused about the whole situation that recently occurred. Taya never acted scared, I could tell though, that she was right then.

An older nurse walked in. Her once blonde hair is now a wispy silver. She told me that I was going to be ok but I would have drowned in the smoke if not for the complete destruction of the outer wall. She was about to leave but she stopped, "I do have one question though, we found a clumsily bandaged cut on your hand. It was pretty deep, what happened?"

I hastily wracked my brain for any excuse that wouldn't get me sent to a psychiatric ward. "A training accident," I breathed convincingly. I had been trained to lie from a young age when I kept sneaking out to explore areas that were regularly locked (the same situations taught me to lock pick as well).

"If you have a wound no matter how insignificant it seems, you are obligated to get it tended to at our facility. We need our students in peak conditions." Her voice steadily decreased in volume and it was a whisper at the end.

I quietly apologized and stood up to leave. The doors opened and a groaning patient was rushed in on a stretcher. People started yelling orders to the lower level medics. I was caught in the middle of a battlefield with every available soldier fighting to save this person's life. My curiosity was fighting against my better judgment to turn and walk away. I took a few steps closer and saw a girl older than me, her deep brown eyes squeezed almost shut, wavy chocolate hair cushioned her head on the medical table. Her fists were clenched and I could tell that she was digging her nails into her skin to reduce the pain.

There was no obvious bodily damage that I could see from peering over the seven or more nurses. When I tried to get a closer look, one of the nurses remembered that I was still there and yelled for me to get out. I quickly turned on my heels and walked through the automatic door; not, however before getting one more look at the patient and seeing that her blood was blue.