Once Again

We’d all agree here that facing imminent doom head-on would make you do crazy things, right? So if, say, I had my hand wrapped around someone’s neck when I had almost died the same way two weeks prior, would that be considered hypocritical? Or would it just be a bad case of the jitters?

“I’m- Okay, I’m just going to put you down.” While my attacker (and now victim) couldn’t respond because of his current loss of airflow, I let him fall from my grip and onto the floor below where he started coughing. With a merciful chop to the back of his neck, he went limp, no longer worrying about if he’d be able to breathe right for however long.

As his face lay on top of a pile of rubble, I patted him lightly on the back with my foot in a sort of... comforting gesture. It was too bad he was too unconscious to feel it. To gain any happiness from it.

“I know you just took part in a terrible scheme to blow up a hospital, but… you might’ve just been following orders, trying to pay bills. Sweet dreams, buddy.”

Then, with sweet sorrow, I moved on. Like an action movie that you don’t actually get to see, I began dealing with other bad guys and evil grunts, all of whom somehow knew that I wasn’t just trying to leave the building. Maybe seeing a short woman emerge from dust, fire, and debris dressed in a hospital gown and jeans that were too big on her was somewhat intimidating and a threat that needed to be neutralized immediately.

Or maybe from the loud smacks, bangs, and crunches, they realized that I wasn’t just trying to ask for directions on the closest way out and was actually serving their asses like I was hosting a brunch for me and the ladies in the local book club later. While I did have my hiccups every so often in the constant fight I was in, taking down weirdly huge men with muscles that could suffocate a fully grown adult, I fared pretty damn well for someone of my stature and state of injury.

Although, in the midst of delivering a punch to another large man, I felt fire blaze across my chest.

“What the hell?” The large man, while clearly not the brightest for being caught in the situation of performing incredibly illegal activities, saw what I saw. When I looked down, I could see the blood forming not just through my bandages but also through my hospital gown. Placing a hand gently atop of the wound, I winced.

“I could say the same thing. If you could do me a favor and just tell me why you’re blowing up a hospital, I can leave. I’ll only report you to the local authorities.” I coughed into my hand suddenly, looking at it afterward to see that I did, indeed, spit blood. I tilted my head back up to the guy I was fighting, only to see a couple of other men run up to him from the destroyed hallway, stopping only when they noticed me. “I’ll leave out the part where all of you managed to wear shirts that are just… way too tight. Your arms seriously look like there’s no circulation going on by the sleeves. Are you okay?”

I coughed again, wobbling a bit on my feet just before the man I was talking to walked up to me, delivering a hard blow to the center of my stomach. Reeling from the pain I felt, I grunted and before I could stand up straight again, he knocked his fist into my back, sending me down onto the floor with all the dirt and rocks.

Roughly, he grabbed the back of my hair and pulled my head up. As he kneeled and leaned close to my face, he sneered, revealing a set of yellow teeth and horrible dragon breath.

“Why the hell should I tell you a damn thing?”

“Oh,” I paused a moment to spit some more blood out, and luckily for me some of it splattered on his face. “Just the same reason why you should brush your teeth in the morning. To be a decent human being.”

The ambient light of the fires that surrounded us gave him a nice, sinister look as he glared at me before slamming my face into the ground, just shy of having it come into contact with a large piece of concrete.

“If I was a decent human being, I wouldn’t be here, now would I?!” He lifted my head up again, taking delight in the damage he was doing to me. While it wasn’t necessarily a situation I wanted to be in, the pain he was giving me was nothing in comparison to the leaking gash on my chest. I could practically feel more blood leaving my body as the seconds ticked by.

As my world became just a little more distorted and wavy, I couldn’t take the time to respond to his question, and because of that, my face met the ground again. At this point, the pain didn’t even register.

“Now who are you, and why did you think you were hot shit taking down my men left and right?!”

I muffled out my answer, and while my words were slurred likely due to the fact that I was probably dying again, the idiot still had my face pressed to the floor, so it didn’t help matters. He lifted my head once more, giving me a forceful ‘what’, telling me to repeat myself.

“I don’t know who I am.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? You don’t know?” I gave him an incredulous look, hoping that while most of my face was probably swollen at this point and I was having a hard time breathing, he could still see that I thought he was a dumbass.

“You blew up a hospital... Is finding an amnesiac so hard to believe?”

The first thing I learned about myself was that I had a penchant for sticking my foot in my mouth. To say that I was surprised that I didn’t get my face bashed in again by the world’s top humanitarian was an understatement. Instead, he hoisted me up by my arm and threw me over his shoulder, bellowing out to his fellow gang members.

“We’re taking the girl back! Let’s move out, we’re done in this area!”

“What do you mean you’re taking me back?” I couldn’t see much as he started walking down the hallway and towards some sort of exit, but I could tell by his gait and casualness that he didn’t feel like he was in much of a hurry to leave. Which was strange, considering that he just did something that you were supposed to get in a lot of trouble for.

“You’re the girl that they found in the woods a few weeks ago, right? The one that should’ve been dead?”

“So I’ve heard.”

“We’ve got orders to take you in.”

“As much as I like having a ride out of here, I don’t think I want to go with you. Do you mind dropping me off at the nearest bus st-” I cried in pain as he dug his knuckles into my side.

“No more talking from you, or I’ll make sure you can’t say anything for the rest of your life.” Again, with the intimidating voice, trying to act cool and suave when in reality you were just a slob who did illegal activities in his spare time for fun! Go to hell!

If I wasn’t aware that I didn’t have the upper hand at the moment, I would’ve spoken those words out into existence, but instead, I kept my mouth shut and just let myself get carried. Now would be a great time to fill you in on how I even ended up in the hospital in the first place.

Should I rewind? Let’s rewind.

If we backtrack to the night before I wound up in the hospital, you’d see that it was still intact. You’d see the nurses and doctors going about, doing their normal business. You’d also see that the small town it was centered in was just like any other. Bustling streets, neighbors that had known each other for years, who probably grew up together. Kids that played out in everyone’s front yards and at the local playground, safe from any threat of a local stranger danger. Normal stuff, nothing bad. Just a growing place with people who led happy lives.

However, if you looked just beyond the outskirts of the town, where the buildings ended and the forest began, you’d possibly be able to find me. I would be waiting patiently, knocked unconscious and leaning against a tree, bleeding out profusely from a huge gash on my chest. If it were up to me, I’d offer you a drink, maybe a water or tea. But I wouldn’t. Because I’m not awake. And I’m dying.

It’s exactly what I would’ve done to the teenagers who ended up finding me too because as far as I knew, it didn’t take them long to freak out once they noticed me. Having your life rest in the hands of a few kids who snuck out of their parent’s home in the middle of the night wasn’t exactly ideal, but at least I wasn’t aware enough to really complain about it at the time.

When these same kids visited me in the hospital a few days later - which was incredibly sweet of them to do, by the way - they told me that it actually didn’t take them long to run and call the ambulance. By the time the EMTs arrived, the police had done so too and the kids were rendered an even worse, horrible, crying mess because they were being grilled with questions that they had no answers to.

That didn’t stop them from grilling me, however! After about three or four days and some nice treatment from Helena and the gang of nurses, I woke up in a tremendous amount of pain, cursing my very existence. And when word went out to the local police station that I was up, the officers found themselves right next to my bed, stumped and frustrated.

Who did this? Why were you attacked? Are you part of a gang of some sorts?

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. Hell, I didn’t even know my own name, so when they asked me who I was and what I was doing there, I had no idea. The nurses had been calling me Patient A since I got there, and it seemed like it wasn’t going to stop anytime soon.

I didn’t know my name or my age or my family. I couldn’t recall a single memory about my past nor could I figure out what was familiar to me and what wasn’t. For all I knew, the personality that I had the moment I woke up was just something I managed to develop on the fly. Was I always too sarcastic and deflective of serious situations? Maybe, but I had no evidence to support that statement! The only thing I had going for me was that I still had basic skills down, and hopefully even more. Could I speak other languages? I can’t remember being taught, but possibly.

Even though I couldn’t help out the officers with the strange case of the ‘dead girl in the forest’, they were kind enough to offer to get my face out into the open on the internet and in the newspapers. I didn’t know how much power they held to try and get any potential family members to claim me, but they sure did help a hospital-destroying gang to recognize me.

It made me wonder if I was somehow in this particular town for a reason. Did I have a purpose for being here? Was there a plan of some sort? Was I just… really unlucky?

Now, if we were to do a timelapse on my hospital room from the moment I was brought in to the point where I pretty much got kidnapped, you’d see me sleeping in my bed a lot. You’d also see me hunched over in pain sometimes, and the nurses changing my bandages at other times. I don’t like mentioning it, but you’d also probably see me doing stupid stuff, like chatting to people outside the room window or just dancing around after Helena let me borrow her phone to listen to music. I wasn’t supposed to be doing these things, but I… had a lot of energy after being cooped up in a room for two weeks, and I needed to let it out.

And the moment before the wall towards the center of the hospital blew in and nearly finished the job that my almost killer didn’t, I was standing once again by the window, noticing how nice of a winter day it was and how, despite the fact that things weren’t looking up for me right then and there, by Jove it could and would get better! I’d get out of the hospital as soon as I could, maybe hit up the local library, learn about the city, see if anything seemed familiar, and then hopefully not worry about the fact that a huge chunk of debris would be careening towards my back in the next five seconds.

It was strange, how fast everything happened. I wouldn’t even be able to tell you how I managed to get out of the way fast enough to not get hit by flying concrete and other projectiles, or how I even stumbled out of the room with no idea what was happening. All I could see around me was smoke, fire, and the screams of people who were just trying to get out as fast as they could with as little injuries as possible.

I do remember the look on everyone’s faces as they finally understood what was going on around them and if they were going to survive or not. I remember doing my best to try and get others out of there and lead them out the safest way possible. If anything, I learned something about myself that I hadn’t previously known, and it was that I was good at giving directions and making people feel calm. It was almost as if it was something that I did all the time before I almost died.

And when one of those big burly men came out of nowhere to try and stop me from helping out one of the nurses who had fallen down, it was pure instinct that took over me when I twisted his arm and kneed him in the stomach, bringing him down to the ground.

After that, I realized that maybe I wasn’t just a normal person who knew normal things. I ended up sending the nurse on her way and made my way back inside, determined to try and get to the bottom of things, like as if it was any of my business. It wasn’t long after that I ended up stealing another guy’s jeans. I felt bad for removing someone else’s pants, but I was in desperate need of them, and I wasn’t the one knocked out at the moment.

In hindsight, I’m not really sure why I did it. Helping out in the hospital, I mean. I felt like since it was something I could possibly accomplish, then I should. Like as if I was a local hero who had a city to protect, because they were my people, and I’d lay down my life for them! Or something.

And that eventually brings us back to where we are now, with me hoisted onto the shoulder of the meanest person I’ve known so far, post-amnesia.

Things are going great so far.