This is an alternate branch of the storyline continuing from [17A]

The Tall and Short Problems of a Cute Gamer Girl

[18A]
For the Primary Branch [18]

At some point, Giselle felt that they started an IV line in her left arm. Whatever wound up pumping through her didn’t really help with the rocky, unstable state of her consciousness. But it did help to dull the brambles of pain and soreness practically making her 11-year-old body feel almost all the way back to its original age.

The ride was not as bumpy and fast as she expected but it felt rather like a video paused at certain places and then started up again with someone asking her weird questions she wasn’t sure how to answer. She did her best. Eventually, a nice lady told her that she was headed to a particular Children’s Hospital in the area. Her brain pieced it together and then told her to say that was the hospital where she and her wife did a charity stream for seven years running. The people around humored her as she made a rough motion like she was going to puke.

At some point in the journey, Giselle just gave up on trying to be conscious and slipped into a dreamless void with vague lights and gray hollows.

When she woke up again, Giselle noticed a nurse in a white face mask taking her vitals. She tried to greet her with a wave, but her left was tied up in an IV and her right was immobilized. “Just hold still for a minute, sweetie”, the nurse advised her with a thick southern accent. Patiently, Giselle whimpered and waited.

A pressing issue started to occur to her. She kinda had to use the bathroom. It didn’t feel especially imminent, but she had relatively limited experience with a female body, never mind an 11-year-old girl one, so none of that felt certain. She made sure to pass this along to the nurse, who then directed her to a choice of a bedpan or urinal with more of a cup at the front, since they didn’t want her to get up quite yet. Giselle didn’t find herself especially keen on either option, but she elected to try the urinal first.

The nurse was rather blunt but kind in helping her. Giselle found the most difficult element was that she couldn’t bring her left arm down to hold it. The nurse had to do that. Vividly and with deep embarrassment, Giselle could feel the space between her legs invaded by that plastic nuisance. Nothing else she had run into by this point made her feel as thoroughly helpless and emasculated.

She liked to tell herself that oh all this physical stuff and the various accoutrements were just like a costume, or an illusion, and she wasn’t actually a woman or an 11-year-old girl. But the nurse was wiping her. It was like exposing a very private secret. The nurse did her best to encourage her and tell her that she did absolutely fine to combat the bright, disconsolate blush she was showing. It didn’t help.

“Has the doctor come around to talk to you? As soon as we’re done here, I can go tell your family and friends that you’re awake. It’s been a couple of hours since you arrived, and they’ve been waiting to see how you’re doing. In just a little while.”

If the doctor came around, then she had no idea about it. When Giselle asked if they could unbind her right hand or how it was injured, the nurse said that the doctor would tell her family and her at the same time about that. So, Giselle waited. She had never really been in a hospital for any length of time beyond outpatient services and an overnight appendectomy. In fact, out of everyone, Gerald as a child spent several weeks in a hospital in the 1960s with the question looming about whether he would live or not. She opted not to dwell on that.

It was rather annoying to be left without a cell phone or other entertainment. The TV was currently off but it didn’t take long for someone to click it on. She didn’t have much choice when the MA decided that SpongeBob SquarePants on Nickelodeon would suffice. Actually, she didn’t have any complaints there. Especially since it was a classic but not one she’d seen before. As Jeremy, she had a pretty good catalog of episodes she knew.

Unfortunately for her, this episode turned out to be one of the older infamous ones where the characters were painful to watch rather than funny. Time passed. When the doctor finally showed up, so did Rachel and Olivia.

Giselle had a hard time recognizing Olivia at first. She knew that something had happened to her face, but it appeared almost totally transformed. Instead of a pale, vaguely albino appearance, her cheeks looked unnaturally flush as though she had some sort of rosacea or rough peeling from irritation or a sunburn. Her hair and the length of it also matched Giselle‘s. And a thick, gauze bandage covered part of her cheek. On top of her head was a ribbon folded and tucked around a hairband which didn’t seem necessary for her style.

She clearly still looked like Olivia, but Giselle envisioned it as if she were wearing a stiff mask which she finally peeled off to reveal the performer beneath. The grim appearance of Rachel and Olivia added tension for Giselle as she tried to piece together what was going on and what was about to happen.

Delicately, the doctor inquired about what Giselle remembered from the theater. Rachel jumped in to prime that there had been a big explosion. When they arrived, the glass and porcelain shattered, and Giselle was on the floor. She also ominously added that no one could find “it“. The doctor appeared slightly irritated at the interruption.

He took a breath and composed himself before saying, “Giselle. You are perfectly healthy. When you were brought in, you had some signs of shock. Mainly, your blood pressure was really low, so it was really hard for you to stay awake. We’ve taken care of that. But we have several questions because there are claims we don’t understand. That’s why I wanted to talk to you, to better understand your medical history and be able to help you.”

One thing he asked her was whether she’d ever been wounded, and her mind went to the appendectomy which they had already noted with the small scar on her right side. He moved to her right side though and gently undid the wraps and bandages around her right arm. Rachel looked like she was about to jump out of her chair. Giselle felt bewildered until the doctor removed the last of the wraps and bandages.

“May I ask you about this?”

This? What was it? Giselle puzzled at the sight before her. She felt like she still had to be asleep because something was wrong. This wasn’t her arm. Where on earth was the hand at the end? Instead of her fingers and palm, there was just a little, uneven bump that looked like the eraser end of a pencil stretched askew. Her hand was gone… her hand was gone? How could her hand be gone?

Even though the doctor tried to re-wrap her arm, Giselle wasn’t having any of that. She looked at the stump where her right hand used to be. She just stared at it in utter confusion, as though if she just looked at it right then the illusion would vanish, and her hand would be back to normal. How was this possible?

The doctor had some questions in that vein. He noted that there was no scar over the entire area, with the only possibility being it developed that way. But they had comments from family and one of her classmates that she wasn’t missing a hand at all before this afternoon. He wanted to know if she could shed some light on this bewildering medical mystery, so that they could help her.

Giselle only heard about half the words that the doctor was laying out at that point. She saw Olivia mouth plaintive words of apology. Not like it was her fault though. She was the one who saved Giselle, and nearly had her entire body cracked open. None of that made sense either to Giselle.

Eventually, the doctor got tired of beseeching her for possibilities beyond what she actually knew. He seemed rather disappointed but wrote up notes for physical therapy and prosthetics based on what he could ascertain.

Through all this, Giselle found herself drifting through varieties of denial from outright ignoring reality to casually continuing like everything was fine. She was able to prop herself up, but the imbalance took a lot of muscle memory to overcome. When it all started to click in place for her, her heart raced with sweating panic and she breathed as though she were a fish trying to find its way back to the water.

Even though she knew it was fruitless, she begged Olivia for some sort of transformation idea which would make her arm back into the way it should’ve been. Olivia dipped her head morosely. “Those monsters enjoyed taking pieces of us, to break our spirits. I wish with everything I have that I could restore what you have lost. But all I can do is change. No matter how I change you, this is now you. Truly, deeply, I am so sorry. Perhaps Athena might come up with something. I trust in her.”

That sounded especially silly in that moment, but Giselle resisted a morbid chuckle. She could still feel the warmth in her head and vaguely wondered if the spirit showed up as a fever or anywhere on MRIs or x-rays. She wondered if Athena had kept her alive. It was too quick to know, but she imagined if the strike had gone a little further she would’ve been decapitated. She expressed gratitude to her skull baby.

That was about the high for Giselle‘s mood. She remained listless, barely interested in eating. More than once, she sprawled out to the right and gazed at the blank stump. Even if she was Jeremy again someday, it barely felt like it mattered. She was broken.

Sure, she could still play with that Microsoft Adaptive Controller and maybe a modded keyboard and controller. But she was at the bottom of what felt like a towering mountain to climb. She sure as hell wasn’t going back to school. How could she possibly do art in the way she wanted to? She just wanted to sleep. Let time pass. Let everything go.

What was the point anymore? She wafted somewhere between strict denial filled with melancholy and denial of a world rife with quiet hopelessness. She barely even poked at the hospital iPad that the nurse brought for her to clamp to the side rail to watch a movie if she wanted. Dennis stopped by for a few minutes to deeply, pointlessly apologize, give her a nice card, and wander in confusion through his thoughts. Rachel spent a lot of time at her side, bringing up all the words of encouragement she could possibly draw upon. Giselle hated how much she sulked, despite Rachel‘s valiant efforts. It was like she completed her transformation into a someday teenager.

Crying felt like the next natural step. When the others stepped out, she considered shutting her eyes for a long while until an unfamiliar voice called out, “So, is it Giselle Conway or Giselle Huber?”

Giselle looked over with a concerned frown. An older woman with streaked hair and an outfit somewhere between gossamer witchy garb and princess frills crafted into a modest form stood in the hallway with a star-covered purse around her shoulder. A cross made of glittering silver rested around her neck. She raised a hand in place of a wave. “I didn’t want to cheat and look at your chart.”

Nervously, Giselle used her good arm to push herself back and prop herself up slightly, a formidable task to anyone confined to a hospital bed, let alone someone newly with one less hand. “Who wants to know?”

“A friend. Someone who wants to help you destroy Cerberus, the cruel beast made of shadow and darkness slaughtering toilet seat girls…. I really thought that would sound cooler or weirder to say out loud. But my name is Blessin Cross and I have a lot to catch you up on, my dear.”

[Since this is meant to be interactive, feel free to suggest ideas and prompts for future/alternate branch storylines. Some branches are already written but this will allow me to best pick new/alternate ones. I'm currently just rolling dice.]

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