Her hands were all she had.

They had been, but were no longer. What was left couldn’t be called hands, all black and blue and red. Not entirely gone, but entirely useless. Vestigial and without purpose. Unmoored and unneeded.

She’d cried for a long time.

They were the kinds of sobs that you’d only hear from a dying animal.

She remembered the platitudes.

“We’re sorry.”

She guessed that was true, because she was sorry.

“We did all we could.”

She hoped that was true, if it was true that would be wonderful. But she was all out of wondering. All that was left was white against white, floor and ceilings and her eyes stuck to them. It really was nice to empty herself of everything, to seep into the sheets and melt into the walls.

When the last bit of herself trickled away maybe she would feel something different.

Time had turned to bubblegum. She’d chew and stretch and strain against it, too terrified to swallow or to let it pop. Time was her constant companion, and she found herself horribly aware of it.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

An endless and impenetrable expanse.

She didn’t know how much time had passed, or how much time she would continue to tread her way through idly. She couldn’t do a thing.

Not a thing except ask.

God, please save me.

----

“Wake up.”

It was a voice she’d never heard before. It chimed like summer, and swelled in her chest like first bloom. She gasped as she opened her eyes.

There was the steady beep of her heart monitor.

The view outside the window.

The grooves on the tiling.

“Look over here for a second.”

That voice again. It sounded in her ears, digging and gnawing its way into her brain. She couldn’t help herself. She’d have clenched her fists if she could, but it wouldn’t have changed a thing.

She turned her head.

A joy burst in her chest as she laid eyes on them. It was like nothing she’d ever seen before. It was the sort of beauty that she could only imagine in abstraction. The Mona Lisa, or Starry Night. They were like those paintings, something twice removed from normality, to see them in the flesh was an experiential beauty.

They were more Faberge than aurora, crafted rather than birthed from circumstance. She couldn’t look away, the curve of their lips, the arch of their brow, the gentle bridge of their nose.

The pale blue near-white of their eyes.

A perfect beauty. The idea of perfection, the word simply sprang to mind when she saw them. And tickling somewhere at the back of her brain, pinching and prodding, was the feeling that it was all terribly wrong.

She felt bile build up at the back of her throat. There was only a moment’s warning, the faint taste of iron. Not prepared in the slightest, she crashed off her bed as she vomited out the contents of her stomach. Slime and mucus and blood dribbled from her lips and stained the floor.

All the while she looked up at them.

And all the while they smiled.

“What’s your name? I’m here to help you.”

"Wren."

----