Chapter 2

White. That’s all I register as my eyelids sluggishly open. So much white.

Where am I?

I struggle to dredge up a memory of any kind and panic when nothing readily springs to mind. What happened to me?

That’s when it hits me – the accident. I remember the screeching of tires, the white cab of the truck, shattered glass cutting into my face… I was hit by a truck on the highway. So where exactly am I now?

It’s quiet here. The only sound is my panicked breathing. That realization – that I’m hearing myself breathe – brings a slight relief; after all if I’m breathing, I can’t be dead. Right?

So what happened to me? If I wasn’t dead, I should have been seriously hurt in that accident. My body feels heavy, probably from sedation or something like that, but I don’t feel any pain from injuries.

I want to sit up, to see something other than the white expanse in front of my eyes which might answer my questions. Another realization: I’m lying down.

My arms are heavy and almost entirely unresponsive as I try to shift them into any sort of position that would allow me to sit upright. I struggle for a while until my hands are finally positioned under my shoulders to lift myself upright. I push – Wow this bed is really soft – with all my available strength and gain a few inches of elevation. My head, heavy on my shoulders, lolls back slightly, but I’m finally able to see more of what’s around me.

I’m in a small room with a bed and a long, tan desk which sits opposite the door. There’s no chair visible around the desk, but there could be a stool, something lower than the desk’s height. I don’t see anything on the desk, and that confuses me again. This is the cleanest room I have ever been in – no pictures on the walls, and the white sheets of my single bed are completely spotless.

In fact, this place would remind me of a hospital if only there were medical equipment scattered around my small room. But there’s nothing to suggest that I would be in a hospital. No machines to monitor my heartbeat, no IVs, no apparatuses of any kind. Maybe I’ve been healing and unconscious for so long that they’re not needed?

I stare straight ahead at the white wall as panicked thoughts creep into my mind. Everything is so pristine and perfect… maybe I am dead, and this is how you’re introduced to the afterlife. I worry about my family, friends, and colleagues. How will my death impact them? What will they do –?

That’s when the door – the same shade of tan as the desk – opens. A tall, model-thin woman with ivory skin walks through the door with a pleasant smile on her face. Her movements are very smooth and even, as if she is skating across the floor. She wears a knee-length, nondescript, light blue dress, and she isn’t carrying anything. Her hair, black and long, is straight with a white shock of hair framing the left side of her face. And her eyes! They were the most vivid shade of green I had ever seen. I couldn’t help but stare as she stopped at the foot of my bed.

“How are you feeling?” she asks in a clear and pleasant voice. It’s the voice of someone who’s repeated this dialogue many times before. I’m still taking in her looks, so it takes me a moment to register that she asked me a question.

“I feel fine, thank you.”

“Wonderful.” Genuine cheerfulness oozes from that one word, but it only makes me wary.

She crosses the room and takes a seat behind the desk. In a smooth, quick gesture she passes her right hand across the surface of the desk, and the tan wood changes into what I can only describe as a computer screen.

My mouth falls open. What is this place?

The strange woman taps away for a few moments, moving charts and text on the screen. Then her eyes snap back up to mine.

“Well, Aliya, it looks like you had quite the accident.” Not a flicker of concern or sorrow crosses her face. It seems like she’s just saying what she has to, the way I would imagine a robot conversing. But something else catches my attention.

She actually pronounced my name correctly. Anyone who ever read my name on a piece of paper would pronounce it Ally-ya, and I’d have to correct them – it’s Ally-yuh. Teachers, interviewers, doctors, they’d all say it the same way. Except for this woman.

“How did you know how to pronounce my name?” The combination of nerves and a dry mouth had me choking out the question.

Her eyes widen a tiny bit, perhaps taking in my nervous state, before her benign smile returns as she answers, “That’s how it’s listed in your chart.”

“Oh.” I’m not really sure how to respond to that. This is all becoming too weird for me, and I need to start getting answers.

“Where am I?”

She opens her mouth to answer but freezes. Her eyes dart over to the door and then back to mine. In a sudden transformation her expression breaks into a huge smile, which I assume is supposed to calm me.

“You’re recovering.” She thinks that is supposed to placate me?

“Recovering where?” I press, and her face goes blank yet again, as if she glitched.

“You’re in a healing facility on Callais, though I’m sure that only makes you more confused,” a deeper male voice cuts in from the doorway.

I whip my head to face the door, and in walks what clearly appears to be a doctor. He wears the typical white doctor’s coat, and dark blue scrubs and shoes. His hands are pushed deep into his pockets, his expression a mixture of wariness and exhaustion. He couldn’t be more than forty with a face as clear and perfect as he had, yet his hair was thoroughly salt-and-pepper colored. His light blue eyes were focused on me, but as he entered, they switched to stare at the woman.

“Who are you?” None of what he said made any sense, but he’d given me more of an answer than she did. If there was anyone I should direct my questions to, it was him.

“Jira, you may leave us now,” he brusquely addressed her while ignoring my question.

Jira, still wearing her beatific smile, immediately stands and nods before exiting the room. The man continues over to the desk and sits in the chair. He taps the screen for a few moments, and then looks my way. There’s a new level of focus apparent in his eyes.

“How do you feel?” It was more of a command than a question.

“I’ve already been asked that, and I’m fine. Now who are you?” I couldn’t hide my annoyance from him ignoring my earlier question.

“I’m Doctor Givray,” he replied in a bored tone. “Do you feel any pain? Any unpleasant sensations?”

I’m so done. Sitting upright, I slam my palms into the bed and snap, “That’s not enough! What happened to me? Why was she so weird? Where is Callais, and since when are hospitals called healing facilities?”

None of my shouted questions seem to faze him until the last one. At my mention of hospitals, his eyebrows shot up, and then he dropped his focus to the desk-screen thing and began typing.

“Quite observant,” he mumbled, more to himself than to me.

“Please,” I begged, “I’m scared and confused, and all I want are answers. Real answers.”

Paused, Doctor Givray remained staring at the screen. He sighed and closed his eyes, and then his right hand swept across the desk in the opposite direction that Jira’s had. The screen faded away, and the desk returned to normal.

Placing both palms on the desk, Doctor Givray stood and reopened his eyes to look at me.

“I’ll start with your question about Jira; it’s the easiest to answer,” he began. “She’s a robot, specifically designed to monitor those who are recovering and tend to their needs.”

“A robot?” She looked so normal aside from how smoothly she moved, how unemotional her tone was, and her hesitation in actually answering my questions. “That was the most realistic robot I’ve ever seen…”

Feeling completely normal after the accident, human-like robots, weird desk-computer things… None of it made sense, and I was starting to think that this was a hallucination from pain medication. Thankfully, a hallucination couldn’t hurt me, so I decided to play along.

“Okay, so then what happened to me?”

He sighed as his expression crumbled. There was a sadness in his look that made my stomach sink.

“You would have died had I not acted the way that I did, so please do not begrudge me for my actions.” His words came slowly and full of caution.

“I would have died?” The question came out as a squeak because there suddenly wasn’t enough air in the room. Perhaps this wasn’t a delusion after all.

“Yes,” he sighed, “the trauma from your injuries had all of your organs shutting down, and the other doctors didn’t know what to do.”

He stared me down, daring me to object, but in my gut I felt that it was the truth. The brief memory from the accident was filled with so much pain…

I remained silent out of shock. I would have – should have – died. My face was a frozen mask of horror, and I couldn’t make myself look Doctor Givray in the eye as he made his way to the foot of my bed. He stopped and clasped his hands like he was waiting for me to respond. I still couldn’t remember how to properly breathe, so I remained fixated on the white sheets.

“Are you alright?” He sounded so anxious that I had to force myself to remember how to breathe.

No, I wasn’t alright. First I thought I died, then I thought I was having drug-induced visions. But now… My crash should have killed me. I was dying in a hospital when he found me. Ignoring my mind’s question about how he found me I contemplated my new situation.

Evidently I was somewhere unknown to me where I was “recovering,” as Jira had said. My tensed muscles told me that I felt no pain and everything worked just as I remembered, so clearly I was fully healed. So then am I free to go?

Doctor Givray waited patiently at the foot of my bed while I took it all in.

“So what now?” I hesitantly asked.

“That’s entirely up to you,” he said.

“Up to me? If I’m healed, shouldn’t I be able to go home?” That’s usually the choice in any hospital – oh wait, I reminded myself, it’s called a healing facility.

He paused, and that silence – where there should have been a “yes” – had my eyes zeroing in on his face.

Doctor Givray looked confused, like he was deciding between two choices of equal difficulty. When he finally answered, it was in a whisper, but it registered in my mind like a scream.

“No.”

I felt my control shatter as the full weight of that word hit. My breathing came in gasps and my hands shook in fear.

“Am I being held captive?” I gasped at him.

His face lit up in shock as he put the pieces together.

“No! Absolutely not! You’re not a prisoner here.” He rushed through his words attempting to soothe my panic.

Because I believed the surprise on his face at my question, I accepted his answer as truth. I wasn’t being held against my will. I calmed down slightly, my breathing settling into a near-normal rhythm. But he had more to say.

“You’re just… different now.”