Thump.

 

Thump. Thump.

 

Thump! Thump!

Thump!Thump! Thump!Thump! Thump!Thump!

My eyes shoot open as my heart races faster than it ever has before. Shivering, my face barely peeks out from under the covers. Seeing nothing but darkness above me, I sigh and instinctively rest my hand on my chest to calm my heart only to feel… wrappings?

Wrappings? Why is my chest wrapped? It’s the same wrappings I used to wear! But why am I wrapped up like this while in the hospital..? I manage to spout of a few questions as panic starts to sets in, chest heaving and heart continuously thumping.

 

“...shou….kil….would’v…if only…it was dea…” 

 

There's another person in the room.

My blood runs cold as I am uncomfortably aware of my entire body, the fabric of the thin hospital bed sheets clinging to my legs feels as if a pencil could rip them with ease. I feel vulnerable… and weak. 

Straining my eyes, not daring to close them for a second, I look around the room. Goosebumps are layering my body, my breathing is slow and tiny so as not to draw the attention of the unknown presence.

As slow as a snail I finish my sweep across the room and see it. A woman with dirty and disheveled blonde hair wearing jeans and a sweatshirt with… blood splattered on it? 

Mom?! I scream in my mind. My body tenses, I can’t move a muscle and can’t tear my eyes away from the familiar figure I’d recognize anywhere. 

“I should have killed that disgusting thing when it was born...” My mother mumbles, her voice slightly louder yet weirdly distorted.

“I should have pushed it under the water in its first bath…” The hair on the back of my neck stands as straight as an arrow.

“I should have left it in the car during that heat storm…” I try to plug my ears but can’t will my arms to move.

“I should have finished strangling it and then accepted the phone call…” Any air still in my lungs vacates in an almost inaudible whisper.

“M-mom..?”

 Shit. Shit! SHIT! Why did I say that?! My heart’s beating painfully fast and too loud to let me hear the woman any longer.

The figure jerks around mid sentence to stare at me. I can’t see her face but I know it’s her. That voice, those clothes, the hair… I go limp as she stares at me in silence.

Thunk. My head hits hard tiles.

F-fuck! What was that?! I exclaim in my head out of pure confusion. Where’s the soft mattress of the hospital bed?

“C-cement? How?” My throat opens slightly to let me question aloud.

The sound and smell of rain then washes over my senses, my wrappings are slightly wet and clinging to my skin. As I bask in confusion, I hear her speak again and notice her move towards me with a…

With a knife.

“We pulled it across the house by its hair to raise a blade…” My mother drawls and I try to breathe in as much air as I can.

“We threw it at walls when it tried to speak…” I manage to claw my way across the garage floor, only to end up in the same spot I was on Friday. 

“No no no no.” Tears begin to pour down my face.

“We ripped its skin and screamed at it every night.” She stalks towards me the same as before.

“D-don’t come any closer!” I yell and fall to the side to try and escape, but I feel warmth for a second.

Huh? I move my hand out from under my side, only to see blood. 

Cough. I spit up red fluid and my gaze turns to my stomach, blood pours out of the wound like it did on Friday.

“W-when?” She hadn’t even reached me, yet I was bleeding.

 I look up to see the woman shoot towards me with her free hand and grip my throat. I’m immediately assaulted by how cold the hand is. Her hand feels as if were a corpses.

She yanks me up off the ground and lifts her eyes to meet mine. 

Eyes.

That's all she has. Eyes and nothing else! What the hell is she! I can’t breathe! Am I gonna die?! No! I don’t want to die by her hand, please!

“We’re going to strangle you. We’re going to drown you. We’re going to bleed you dry.” The mouthless form of my mother rambles on, my eyes quickly becoming useless from the tears blotting my vision.

“We’re going to-” She sinks her knife into my stomach and pain erupts through my body. Gasping I try to breathe, but fail. It’s like I’ve been cut in half, I can’t feel anything but the pain. “-stab you with your fathers hunting knife.” 

My face turns blue as the tears cease, my arms and legs stop flailing and go limp while I asphyxiate. The bloodshot eyes, the only marks on the figure's void-like face, get closer until they take up my entire range of vision. 

I scream as loud as I can with the little air I have left. Yet barely a whisper escapes my lips.

“We’re always going to do this to you. We’re always going to torment you. We’re always going to plunge this knife into you. Failure. Monster.” With every period, and every inflection, she accentuates her point by ripping the blade out and stabbing me again.

 

Minutes pass, or maybe hours as my mother rambles while stabbing, twisting, and yanking her blade through me. It feels like I’ve been choking for far longer than any human could hope to live through, it all makes me wish for one thing. Something I’ve wished for, for far longer than I’d ever dare to admit.

“We always have and will forever hate you.” She finishes with one last stab that rips through my stomach and pierces out my back.

I’m unable to react anymore as my throat is coated in blood, lungs full, while my eyes stare half lidded without any sign of life within them.

 

I-I…I w-want…

I want to d-die. 

 

The last thing I see before my vision completely goes black, is the mouthless figure… smirk.

 

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Dr. Grey Pov

 

“Lindsey, how’s your sister been lately?” I ask my assistant as we walk towards our newest patient.

“Good! Thanks for asking by the way!” She chirps.

“Of course. She’s one of the ones I sponsored after all. But that’s not the only reason I’m asking of course. I just like to make sure my coworkers and their loved ones are doing the best they can.”

“I know, I know.” The nurse responds. “Honestly though, after we moved out you’ve been a blessing. You know that right, doctor?”

“Hey there, just call me Grey or Jasmine like the others. Formality kills people pretty quick, and I don’t want to see the light in your eyes go out just yet.” Patting her shoulder I joke.

“Sorry… Grey.” She manages, albeit with difficulty. “It’s just hard to speak so casually to someone who’s essentially your hero and savior…” 

“You don’t need to think of me like that, Lindsey. I may have helped you out and sponsored your sister, but you guys aren’t the first.” And it’s not like I’m that good a person anyway.

She sighs and slumps her shoulders a little. “Really? You should know by saying something like that it’ll only make us think of you better, right? You can try to cover it up, but your cold and stern facade only makes it so much better when others realize how warm you are. Just by seeing you with little miss Yun, anyone can tell you’re a big softy. Well, so am I, hehe.”

“...” I’m unable to respond, so I try to ignore her. I have hardly any idea what Lindsey means by a ‘cold and stern facade.’ Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, a distraction captures our attention. 

The sound of whimpering and pained gasps echo out from one of the rooms ahead of us. The one we’re heading too now to get a morning checkup on. Lindsey looks at me and we lock eyes before speeding up and confirming the room is indeed, Yun’s.

As soon as I reach the door and the moaning and cries get louder, I whip the door into the wall without a care for the possible damage.

 “Yun! What's wrong?!” I rush in while Lindsey follows behind silently.

What I see stuns me for a moment before I manage to rush to her bedside to stop her.

“Lindsey, call for assistance now! Get Dr. Halsin in here immediately, and another nurse to bring some equipment for disinfection and stitching!” I scramble orders out. Thankfully my nurse, although quirky, is damn good at her job. She quickly runs out of the room already on the pager and grabbing help.

In front of me Yun is arching her back and clawing at her wound. I try to shake her awake but it seems she’s unconscious as she responds to everything with whimpers, sobs, and more clawing. Her pillows are covered in tears and snot while her sheets are damp with sweat and, around her midsection, blood. 

“Shit! Yun, wake up! You’re ripping the wound open!” If this goes on for much longer, her recovery will be pushed back by weeks. I have no choice but to hold her down before she makes it even worse.

“Ahhh! Hic, pl-plea-, AHHHH!” She screams while flailing before going limp. The patient monitor beeps erratically and out of rhythm quickly after.

“Fuck!” I yank my pager off my hip. “This is Dr. Grey, I need help in room one hundred twenty immediately! Patient is flatlining, I repeat! Patient is flatlining! She is going into cardiac arrest!” Luckily as I’m communicating on my pager and heading towards the defibrillator, a nurse that was walking down the halls bursts in to help me.

We manage to secure the device over Yun as fast as possible and begin the process of restarting her heart. Whatever the hell happened in her dream literally gave her a heart attack.

 

“...Thank god.” After a few tense moments, her monitor displays slow, yet stable, heart beats. 

“Dr. Grey! I’ve brought Dr. Halsin and a nurse plus some extras that heard your message!” Lindsey jets into the room to hand me equipment with a line of followers.

“You said she was flatlining, Dr. Grey?” The younger female doctor, Dr. Halsin, asks. “Ah, I see you used the defib.” 

“Yeah. Nurse Lindsey and I entered the room right before it occurred.” I explain while moving away ripped bandages to check the state of the wound before doing anything else. “I’m lucky this nurse was nearby to help me while Lindsey went to get you and the others. I wasn’t expecting her to have a heart attack.”

“Indeed. Expect the unexpected in medicine.” She replies dryly after clearing the room out and giving orders to have a surgical room readied. “What do you think caused it? Her record shows a single seizure a few nights ago, but that's it.” 

We start moving the bed out of her room and towards the one we’re pointed towards.

“Well, when we got into the room she was crying and whimpering while clawing at her stitches. As I’m sure you can tell. She wouldn’t respond to any stimuli and, just after I sent Lindsey out of the room, before she went limp I heard her say ‘please,’ before screaming one last time.”

“Hmm. With that I think it’s quite obvious she had an extremely distressing nightmare. You wrote on her file that she claimed to stop having dreams and such years ago. Hopefully this was just the buildup exploding, and not a regular occurrence.” The younger doctor guesses 

Indeed. If this was a regular occurrence then she likely won’t last for long… No. I won’t kill her off like that, I saw her determination to live before. She’ll survive this and get stronger from it. I just hope she hasn’t done any lasting damage, she did a number on the knife wound.

“...I haven’t lost a patient in so many years.” I whisper to myself. “And you won’t be the next.” 

As we roll into the surgical room, the excess nurses file out as Halsin finishes the prep. And with the stretching of a glove, we begin.