Work In Progress

Wisps of sunshine, lingering in anticipation of twilight, filtered softly through the cracked blinds in Chloë’s room. She shifted again in the bed. After what seemed a few days, her hips and back were complaining, loudly and long, about this forced incarceration. Had it been three days, or four? Or five? No matter the length, it had been far too long.

She flicked through one of the trash mags she had found atop her chest when she woke up from a particularly restless sleep. How long had she been asleep? The clock on the wall to her left read something like quarter past, but the hour was a blur. She didn’t really need to know; in fact, knowing had a good chance of annoying her. Still, Chloë retrieved her specs from the bedside table. “Shit!” she said, observing the crack in the right lens. She donned the glasses nonetheless only to discover the legs were awry, the left one bent upwards, forcing her to balance them on her nose as she sought the clock.

Six-fifteen it was. “Quarter past six,” as she preferred to term clock time. A.M. or P.M. she wondered, though the need to know was patently pointless. She was on vacation and, so, time was of no consequence; at least not generally. Specifically, Chloë wanted to know if this was sunset or sunrise. In her head as she thought, “That should be ‘were’, not ‘was’ because it’s a conditional clause”.

She wondered, as she always did, if she were a bit too microscopic when it came to grammar. Most people had no use for her book larnin’ as it was, admittedly, quite artsy with no practical purpose in real life. Now, Math and Science would have been so much more useful for all the things she truly wanted to do. But, as befit her usual wont, she was shite at both of them and extremely good at History, Languages, Political Science…that sort of thing. As much as she wished the Sciences had been her area of study, she knew they were beyond her capacity. She only had passed Grade 10 Math because the teacher had provided her a sample test the day before the final exam. An old exam, from years gone by. A general idea.

The day of the test, she discovered, to her relief and gratitude, the test was the exact same one the teacher had given her the day before. She finished the course with an A minus.

Still, Math and Sciences were not in her wheelhouse.

“Wheelhouse.” She contemplated the word again. What was its exact meaning? Its origin? In the end, no one but she really cared. At least not any one of her friends or family.

Some part of her brain told her, “I’m on vacation. Obviously. But where, exactly, am I?”

“Belize?” The name eventually came to mind.

That must be where she was. She’d heard about it from a childhood friend whose then-partner had spent time in the country, researching and studying the second biggest barrier reef system in the world. The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef was a phenomenal research subject, and he had studied it long and hard. And away from her friend. The relationship didn’t end well.

‘Hell,”she thought, given her opinion of him, “How else would he have made it to Belize?” He didn’t have two pennies to rub together, and it was her friend who carried the burden of single parenting, work and two youngsters while he gadded about with his research. “Quote marks on research,” she knew.

Because she had never finished her Ph.D. program, Chloë was less than supportive or laudatory of those who had soldiered on ahead, unafraid of the audience he or she hoped to find for the research. She knew this was a sin. Envy. She’d been taught it through all her Catholic life. One of the Seven Deadly Sins. Were they mortal sins, she wondered? Regardless, she knew she’d never change, though she wasn’t proud of it. Chloë had long been astonished at those who could be gracious and happy for a competitor’s – even colleague’s – success.

Dismissing the topic with a “Why?”, Chloë fought another yawn. She didn’t want to go back to sleep until she understood her bearings. Her memory.

This bed and curtain and wall clock she didn’t remember. She was too young to suspect dementia and too poor to launch an investigation, so she thought carefully.

“This is so weird,” Chloë thought to herself, as if there were anyone else to whom she could think. She thought of that, too. Hers was a mind that latched on to topics, one after the other, sometimes simultaneously. Chloë fancied herself a stream-of-consciousness thinker. In truth, she was more than she could admit to herself. Honestly like.

A pained grunt from somewhere took her unawares. What? It happened again. It sounded like it was in her room.

What room?

This was neither her room nor what she considered a hotel room.

The grunt had turned to a groan. A long and pitiful groan, with the word “Help” prominent in the exhale.

She wanted to get up, to see beyond this strange curtain and ascertain where, exactly, she was. She definitely was in foreign climes.

“Climes,” Chloë said aloud. “Who says ‘climes’? But she knew what she meant.

“Shit. Shit. What the…..?” She couldn’t get up, at least not all the way. A sudden pain in her left arm was partnered by the inability to move the arm past a limited angle.

Chloë lay back down and thought, hysteria beginning to suggest itself to her.

“Where the…, and what is happening?”

“This is definitely not familiar. I don’t remember any of it.”

She felt the usual perspiration begin to form on her forehead and sink its fingers deep into her throat. Was this serious, or was she still asleep? She’d had a lot of bad and sad dreams since both her parents had left for the heavens. Maybe that was it. When was that?

Chloë lay back and closed her eyes. Surely this was a dream? Surely she could wake up and put an end to the thoughts?

After 15 seconds of passivity, she opened her eyes with a jolt. “This is fucking real. Isn’t it?” Not a dream, not a passing fiction she’d fabricated, as she often did with her life story.

The noise seemingly beyond her feet was getting louder, and “more demanding?” she thought.

She HAD to find out what was happening, whether in nocturnal climes or stark reality.

Chloë began to elevate herself, sitting up from the uncomfortable bed that held her back and backside. To no avail. Half way, she felt a tug on her left arm. Still highly annoyed, and a bit frightened, she followed the pain.

An IV. She was hooked up to an IV?

Before this realization had completely registered, Chloë caught a glimpse of her left hand. Her breath choked in her throat.

“That’s my hand. That’s MY hand?” As she regarded what was at this moment a seemingly unfamiliar appendage, she squeezed her eyes tightly, and looked again. Her hands didn’t look anything like that, she thought . Immediately, before that thought had completely registered, Chloë felt that old horrid sensation of panic beginning to creep from the butterflies in her stomach and throat, and the nausea that had always accompanied her moments and states of anxiety. The panic gripped her brain and squeezed, often producing tears, usually of frustration or blind white rage.

This sudden anxious spell felt so familiar. It had demarcated and punctuated her life in far too many ways and times. It sucked any chance of joy in what could be an edifying and pleasurable experience from within her. She could feel the tears climbing up her throat; her ears began to echo the pulsating rhythm of her heart beating in her ears.

The familiar beat reminded Chloë of something from early childhood. Once, when she had described the goings-on in her ears to her mother, Mama had asked, “Does it sound like spiders marching?” In fact, it did, sort of. From that day hence, spiders accompanied her panic attacks. Mama had also told her to try picturing black velvet in her mind when she couldn’t get to sleep. She assured Chloë that it worked for her.

The black velvet solution, sadly, had been a resounding failure for Chloë. But the spiders were still in formation, always ready to parade from one ear to the other until, she guessed, the panic had lessened. This very real memory clung to her thoughts, inducing a reverie of sorts.

Chloë closed her eyes, straining her brain to remember how she got here, into this unfamiliar room, this strange bed. Where and when had she acquired the IV? She raised her head to see what she was wearing. That wasn’t familiar either. As she did, an intense, blinding white pain struck her left temple, so unexpected, she reacted loudly. “OW. Ow. Ow, what the hell?”

Though her anxiety attacks typically abated after minutes, sometimes hours, this one was not like those. It felt like she would explode from the top of her head, as the gravity of this apparent situation began to insinuate itself. Chloë tried to control her burgeoning sense of unease but, despite her confusion, she was clear in the thought that she must get out of this curtained prison and find out exactly where she was, and why and when had she come to be lying in a bed with an IV stuck in her hand.

“Oh! Oh please. Please…somebody. …!”

It was a woman’s voice, that much she could tell, but what age of a female she couldn’t place.

Her heart raced, around her entire body it felt. This was definitely serious.

Frantically, Chloë wracked her brain for even a vestige of a clue to her whereabouts .

She strained to try to reach the curtain for a view of what was happening and why. Again, the tubes she saw were inserted into her body restrained her.

By now, she was breathless as the inhalation caught repeatedly in her throat. Panic was waiting for its invitation into the entirety of her body.

“What, Elaine? What’s wrong this time?”spoke another voice, not in a particularly kind manner. “It’s not time yet. Just hold your knickers because we’re all too busy to deal with interruptions,” the voice bellowed. “It’ll be time soon enough. Now pipe down.”

The second voice was definitely female, with a faint accent that suggested it belonged to another country. As Chloë read the words she was hearing in her head, they didn’t seem to align with her own speech pattern. Like everyone, Chloë didn’t think she herself had an accent. She strained mentally to determine what differences there were, but she couldn’t hear how she herself sounded; her brain couldn’t conjure her own voice. But she knew it was different.

Tears of distress began to well in her eyes. Her breath didn’t seem to want to move from her throat, and terror was setting in.

“Bloody cretin nurses,” the voice from across the way nearly howled.

Nurses?