I expected Alice to go into one of the surgery bays. Instead, she led me across the hall into a room with a bed, cabinets, and various medical devices. It looked like any examination room I'd ever seen.

"Not surgery?" I asked, Nia's youthful voice sounding more uncertain than I actually felt.

"This is for out-patient procedures: colonoscopies, cataract surgeries, biopsies, things like that," Alice said, gesturing toward the paper-covered bed. "Have a seat, get comfortable, lay back if you like."

I sat on the bed, paper sheeting crunchy as I did. There's always an awkwardness to going to the doctor; you're vulnerable and often unfamiliar with the room, the doctor, or both. I was familiar with—and relatively comfortable with—Alice, and the crackling rustle of that parchment paper still made me self-conscious. I had to wonder if that was intentional, or at least a bonus. I didn't want to move and bring on another thundering whisper of paper, which might go a long way to cutting down on nervous squirming when doctors need a patient to hold still.

Alice talked casually as she washed her hands, a habit likely born out of reassuring patients unnerved by the noise-maker of a bed."Things have been quiet here since you left. There aren't any more monsters in the hospital, at least if you don't count Hands, or, for that matter, Nia and myself."

"Looks like Hands finally taught you to make illusions," I replied, gesturing vaguely at her featherless appearance. "It looks good. Even knowing it's an illusion, it isn't shattering like Hands's do. There are also no obvious inconsistencies. Really good job!"

"Thanks," Alice said, flashing me a quick smile. Hands's problem is he's not human, even if he has a lot of memories of being human. It means he doesn't always understand when his illusions seem slightly off."

"Is Nia at this point too?" I asked, choosing to lay back on the bed, the paper crinkling beneath me.

"Nia's got a wider range than I do, but less control; I think it's because she's almost always stuck in that Dreamland." Alice gathered together supplies, using her badge to unlock a cabinet and remove a bottle of something and a clean needle and adding it to a tray table with the other supplies she'd gathered. "I tend to hold my glamour in place, which is part of why it's harder to break. I've gotten to the point where I can keep up my glamour without really even thinking about it, but Nia's glamours tend to shift and change. It's honestly a little unnerving, like knowing you're dreaming but being unable to wake up."

I turned my head with minimal sonorous paper wrinkling. "Honestly, either ability sounds extremely useful to me. Sori needs to get off his ass and teach me. How'd you get Hands to teach you?"

Alice sat on a rolling stool and scooted over beside the bed and tray table. "Nia's been showing me what she can do when I'm allowed visitation. Hands saw me working on it and agreed to teach me in exchange for my help checking his illusory defenses, " she said as she sanitized her hands and put on gloves.

I winced at the mention of Nia's captivity. I'd seen the dreamland village she was staying in and spoken to the other people who lived there, and it was as nice a place as you could expect to find in the apocalypse. Both Nia and Alice assured me that Hands was treating Nia well and living up to his bargain to teach her illusions and give Alice and Nia access to each other. None of that changed that Nia was being held hostage against my good behavior, behavior that included letting Sori teach me to make illusions rather than getting Alice or Nia, or even Hands, to teach me instead.

Alice dipped the needle into the bottle and drew back the plunger, "I'm going to give you a local anesthetic. You aren't human, or at least you don't appear human. It might be interesting to take some blood samples and see how close you are, but that's something to look into later. I'm telling you that because I don't know for sure how the anesthetic will affect you."

"So far, I think I've reacted normal to everything. I even gorged myself on chocolate the other day after coming across some while in a bad mood and didn't even get sick, at least not any more than if I'd been human." I offered, trying to bargain away her warning.

"That's good, I just want you to be prepared that yesterday's rules don't offer the same reassurance of consistency that they used to. Let me ask you though, when did you take that morphine?"

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"Maybe an hour ago?"

"And, how are you feeling?"

"There's still a bit of pain, but it helped a lot."

"That's great. And, what about apart from the pain. Any feelings of euphoria?"

"Hmm, no, not really. Maybe some relief?"

"That's also good. Now, people react to drugs differently, but it would be typical to experience some level of euphoria after taking morphine for a wound like this. We're also living in a new reality where we just can't expect to be as certain about things as we once were."

I didn't like the idea that I wasn't human anymore; it reinforced Hands's insistence that I wasn't Sam. I'd learned to accept that some people were always going to see me as a monster. Still, I didn't know how to feel about the idea that I was only a monster with stolen memories and sense of self.

"So, what do we do?" I asked; this time, the emotion in my words couldn't entirely be blamed on Nia's loaned voice.

"We're going to take this slow, and I'll just give you a little at first, and we'll see how it feels. We want it to numb your cheek, so if you feel any burning or any change anywhere other than your cheek, let me know, and we'll try a different anesthetic."

Alice leaned forward and poked me with the needle very briefly, "Alright, we'll give that a minute and see what happens. So what about you? You're keeping people inside the ether now?"

I stared up at the ceiling and tried not to prod my cheek with my tongue, "It was a desperate move to escape some pursuing monsters. Luke actually led several away by himself to give them the chance."

"He's a bit of an ass hat."

"Probably; he runs a bar. I imagine it comes with the territory."

"You'd think the end of the world would break people out of outdated mentalities like telling female doctors how to doctor."

"That would be nice, but I imagine that mentality was always about feeling in control. It seems like situations like this will only make that kind of behavior more common."

"Jesus, I hope not."

"If it helps, I don't think Luke meant anything by it. He remembers more than most; he knows that he's missing memories and that more time has passed than he can recall, but he doesn't remember enough to know the new rules. And... well, I can't help but notice that you washed your hands, sanitized them, and put on gloves after telling Luke you weren't concerned about infection."

Alice opened her mouth to reply and then closed it. "Hmph. Okay, so I did. Habits die hard even in the apocalypse, it seems. Well, I don't take it personally—I've seen it often enough—but I'll try to give him the benefit of the doubt that it wasn't meant as misogynistically as it came out. Once. I want to go back to something; you said he knows that time has passed that he doesn't remember?"

Alice had been working on theories on why people were retaining different levels of memory. "Yeah. His bar has been a bit of a gathering place for people, so there's usually a sizeable group of them all talking. So it seems like you might be right that people can help each other's memories."

"Hmm," Alice said thoughtfully, "I still think that's a good theory, and I bet it's part of it. I remember reading that couples and close friends tend to rely on each other to remember things for them. 'Tell them about that time I did such and such,' 'Where did I leave my whatever?' 'Did I watch that with you? Did I like it?' things like that. I've seen Anderson, Jessica, and Maebe act that way, piecing things together with what scraps of memory they have. But Anderson is always the easiest to convince without proof. He also always knows that he's missing memories and that time has passed. I feel like there's something there. How's your cheek?"

I prodded it with my tongue and finger simultaneously. "A little numb?"

"No trouble breathing or pain?"

"Nothing new anyway."

"Alright, I'm going to give you some more, and then we'll trim the area while we wait for it to finish kicking in."

She told me to get her attention if the act of trimming the area was uncomfortable, and then began to clear away my fur. It wasn't so long ago she was bandaging other wounds with a less friendly attitude. Last time, Jessica had gone missing, and Maebe had been found in a compromised state and covered in my fur. I watched the fur fall to the ground out of the corner of my eye. I'd been paranoid about leaving fur loose for a few days after that, worried Kay or someone would use it to set me up again. I was still a little nervous, but Alice and I had learned to trust each other a bit over the last few weeks.

After shaving the area clean, she gently cleaned it. "Even if we're not worried about infection, we want to get any particulates out of the way so we don't irritate the wound more than necessary after it's closed."

She used staples to close the wound, explaining that it was quicker, but that ordinarily she'd have recommended stitches for maintenance and aesthetic reasons, but that the time-loop negated the need. "Really, I could just superglue this closed, and it would probably be fine, if a bit rigid." Then she bandaged it loosely and far enough back that I could open my mouth without trouble. The bandage wrapped over my nose and near the back of my jaw and was mostly there to prevent snagging the staples on anything.

"Now, ordinarily, I'd be recommending soft, easy-to-chew foods because eating is necessary. For you, I'd recommend sticking to water. That way, you won't agitate it and need to take more uncertain medication. The anesthetic is supposed to be long-lasting, so with luck, we'll get through the day without any more unnecessary experimentation."

"That's fine; it's not like it'd be the first loop I didn't eat. Are you ready for me to bring out Luke's people? One of them, Craig, probably needs to be looked at."

"Yes, but if you don't mind, let's bring in the others. Exposing them to that kind of weirdness might help some of the other stuff stick."