Kristina bolted upright immediately after, screaming. She swung her legs over the table and jumped down, thankful her legs worked, and started sprinting. She told herself what kind of horrible dream she must’ve just had. It felt so real though, like she legitimately died. Her thoughts scrambled like crazy as she ran to a two-way push door so fast, she didn’t even register if it moved or not as she was into a strange white hallway, which completely stole her attention.
There were white fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, but the whole scene seemed darker and hazier than it should have been. “Where even am I?” she asked aloud, taken slightly aback at how distant her voice seemed in her head. She tried to take in her surroundings, worried that her dream may not have been a dream after all. There was a gurney pushed to the side of the hall and a sign on the wall that had arrows pointed in both directions to various places like “ER” and “OR” with color coded labels that matched lines that were also lining the floor.
“Hospital...” she said slowly, gazing down at her hands and checking her body. Something was off. She knew she must’ve been in an ambulance, but she couldn’t place why she felt no pain when she distinctly remembered feeling differently before. She wasn’t the least bit sore, nor could she feel anything. She pinched her cheek, half checking for pain, half checking to see if she were still dreaming. Nothing. She raised an arm and started scratching at it with her nails, a nervous habit she could never kick, but now a useful test since it would always start to hurt if she scratched too long. Still nothing.
“They must’ve given me the good stuff. Capital M morphine!” she reasoned. It didn’t seem right, since she should be doped to hell, but it explained why her senses seemed dull and hazy and why her entire body was numb. The whole situation was beginning to get overwhelming and Kristina was pleased to see a nurse round the corner ahead and walk down a different hall.
“Excuse me!” Kristina called, but the nurse paid her no attention. “Hey, wait!” she yelled and took off after her. She wasn’t sure how smart it was to run on numb, morphine legs, but she felt a breakdown creeping up on her and needed some reassurance on where she was and what the hell happened to her. The nurse made her way to an elevator and hit the call button.
“Please, miss! Hold on!” Kristina cried as she sped up. The elevator doors opened and the nurse casually stepped aboard. “Wait!” Kristina screamed as she caught up and faced the nurse, who looked right through her. “Helllllo!” Kristina said obnoxiously “A little help here?” The nurse didn’t even react as the elevator door began to slide shut. “Are you fucking serious?” she screamed as she stuck out her arm to stop the elevator door and keep the nurse where she was.
The door didn’t heed her either as it pushed right through Kristina’s arm and into place, allowing the elevator on the other side to start its journey. Kristina gasped and instinctively pulled her arm back and out of the door. She was speechless as she stared at her hand, slowly backing away from the elevator. Did that really just happen? No. Of course not. The elevator door was going to stop, but Kristina was so doped up on the morphine that her brain imagined the door closing. A simple lag of her brain.
“But why didn’t that bitch answer me?” she asked aloud, questioning her own logic. That breakdown she felt creeping up was starting to crack through, and Kristina just wanted to roll into a ball and cry. She knew she couldn’t do that. She needed to figure out what was going on. She needed to get answers, then call mom, then she could have her breakdown.
“I need to go back to bed,” she reasoned. Perhaps the doctors and nurses didn’t think she’d wake from her morphine nap so easily. Maybe they were planning to come back and wake her, then explain everything. She began to wander back the way she came, absent mindedly scratching her arm, so sure that things would make sense but worried that what she’d been seeing wasn’t quite fitting into place. “It must be the drugs,” she tried reminding herself.
“Hi there!” a voice called out behind her “You look a little lost.” Kristina spun around, overcome with relief. She saw an older man in a white coat. A doctor! “Lost doesn’t even begin to describe it!” she said with a huge grin. Finally, some answers, or at least some direction. “Well, I can imagine after what you’ve been through, Kristina.”
“Are you my doctor?” she asked.
“Uh,” the man began, then shook his head “No. Definitely not.”
“Then, how do you know me?”.
“It’s,” the man hesitated again as he dug his hands into his coat pockets “It’s a little complicated. Tell me, what do you remember?”
The man began walking and motioned Kristina to follow. “Um,” she began “I remember some kind of accident. Then I was lying in what I hope was an ambulance. And then I woke up in this place.”
The man nodded. “That’s a pretty accurate summary,” he said while cocking his head to the side. “Car accident,” he said “They had to pull you out. Wasn’t easy.” Kristina shuddered, remembering what little she could. “And now you’re walking around no problem?” the man added.
Kristina wanted to say something quickly to that, but stopped and chose her words carefully. “Well, yes?” she said “I know you have me on some pretty strong pain killers, so I assume I’ll be in a world of hurt once they wear off...” The man raised both his eyebrows to that. “Well, what’s your fucking theory then?” she snapped, becoming both scared and annoyed at this man. “Are you even a doctor?” she demanded. He was wearing the white coat, but there were no scrubs or clean attire underneath. He was wearing wrinkly stained dress shirt and an off-color pair of slacks.
“I’m not exactly a doctor, but trust me Kristina, I’m here for you.”
Kristina slowly back away from him. “You didn’t imagine that elevator door,” he said “And that nurse didn’t notice you because she couldn’t see you.”
“Stop it,” Kristina said, trying to muster some backbone, but instead feeling that breakdown creeping back up again. The man smirked as he removed his white doctors coat and casually tossed it at her. She put up her hands to block the coat, then cried out as it easily passed through her hands, arms and torso as it fell undisturbed to the ground. The man chuckled at her response.
Kristina opened her mouth to scream, but only a tiny whimper escaped. She grasped her torso, where the coat so easily breached through, and felt to make sure she was still a solid object. That man was talking, but Kristina wasn’t hearing him, sick in her own mind what felt like beyond an invasion of privacy. He had put that coat right through her. Right fucking through her! “Magic trick!” her mind flashed in desperation “He’s playing a trick. That has to be it!”
“Kristina!” the man shouted, snapping back her attention to her “Listen to me very carefully. You were right about an accident, and the ambulance trip...”
“And?” she squeaked out, dreading what she felt was the answer.
“You didn’t make it,” he said in the most matter of fact tone Kristina ever heard.
“Nooooooo,” Kristina said as her voice dropped and held that O sound. Gesturing about herself, showing how she was very much alive, she re-found her voice and protested “I’m not dead! Here I am. Do I look dead to you?”
“You’re a ghost,” the man said as he shrugged and walked over to retrieve his coat and put it back on. “I’m not a ghost!” Kristina screamed without thinking. The man simply laughed and motioned for her to follow him down the hall.
Kristina didn’t want to follow. She didn’t want to be anywhere near this man. She wanted to run. Get home any way she could and crawl into bed and weep until this whole ordeal was repressed and she can move on in life. But instead, she followed, because she had no idea where to run anyway.
She was led back the way she had come when she tried to chase down the nurse. Back to the swinging door she thought she had opened as she ran earlier, but now she wasn’t so sure. This time she wasn’t sprinting and was able to notice the sign over the door. The sign sank her very soul into the ground as she started to shake. The man pushed the door open and held it open for her. The door had a high-pitched squeak to it that Kristina did not remember hearing before. She stopped short and the man gestured with his head for her to get moving. Kristina closed her eyes and itched her arm as she took the final few steps into the morgue.
Laying on the table Kristina woke up on was a body under a sheet. It was her size. The same short frame with a belly too large and breasts too small for her liking that she judged in front of a mirror every morning. All the rationalizing in her mind up until now suddenly had no explanations for what she was looking at. “That’s not me,” she whispered in pure denial.
The man sighed and walked to the body, putting his hand on the top of the sheet. “No,” Kristina said “I don’t wanna-” The man didn’t listen as he pulled the sheet off the face to reveal Kristina’s own face.
It looked exactly like Kristina, but it wasn’t her. Her face was different than this imposter’s. Her face wasn’t bloodied. Her eye wasn’t swollen shut. The side of her face wasn’t purple. Her face wasn’t cut up. Her hair wasn’t matted down with blood. That wasn’t her face. That face was dead. The person on the table was dead. That person on the table was supposed to be her. That wasn’t her face. That wasn’t her blood. That wasn’t her swollen eye. Those weren’t her cuts. That wasn’t her bloodied hair. That wasn’t her face. That wasn’t her corpse. That wasn’t her face. That wasn’t her face. That wasn’t her fucking face. That wasn’t her FUCKING FACE! THAT WASN’T HER FUCKING FACE!
