The Somewhat Short Life of Experiment 15

The Final Flight

I didn’t wake up in the hospital. I woke up at the Lab.

“No!” I screamed, ripping the wires hooked up to my skin. I practically jumped from the bed to the floor, except I only fell into nothing. Screaming, I tried to fly but my wings weren’t working. I couldn’t breathe again, I couldn’t scream.

Help! I thought. Please help!

“You’re only scaring yourself,” a girl’s voice said from behind me. I swivelled round, now standing firmly on the ground of the hospital floor, to be faced with a mirror. Except, while I was dressed only in a hospital gown, this girl was dressed in a red t-shirt and jeans and converse, clothes I hadn’t worn since I was Fay. This mirror version of me also lacked wings.

And that was when I realised it wasn’t a mirror.

“Finally, we meet,” Fay said in an American accent. I probably sounded the same, but I didn’t notice. Everyone in the Lab had mixed accents, so they weren’t something I paid attention to.

Fay stepped towards me until she was in my face, her iron straight hair practically mingled with my untended curls. Unlike me, she wore make-up: pink lip gloss, pink eye-shadow and a dusting of blusher. Fay knew she was pretty.

“I’m not as arrogant as you remember y’know,” she pouted, stepping past me. Following her I took note that our surrounding had changed yet again. Now we walked through an office, my hospital down replaced with the summer dress Berry Anderson had leant me on her parents’ boat. Fay didn’t change.

I carried on trailing behind her, only to see where she was headed and bounded in front of her.

“Taran!” I screamed in delight, the sight of his mob of hair bouncing about as he moved cheering my up instantly. When I finally reached him, I waited for him to put down what he was holding, bring me in for a hug and kiss me. But that didn’t happen. 

Instead, he carried on holding whatever it was that was in his hands and walked right through me.

Literally, he walked through me.

“We’re not really here,” Fay said, placing her hand on my back. It was cool and soft, something that Taran had always said my hands were like. Taran.

A tear rolled down my cheek.

“Why- why are we not really here?” I dared to ask, wiping my eyes. Fay wouldn’t meet my eyes, but took my hand and pulled me behind her as we walked. She didn’t dare break the silence.

We stopped when we reached what looked like a hospital room. Peering inside, I saw Taran kneeling down at someone’s bed side. Tip toeing in, I stopped short when I saw whose bed it was.

I was lying still on the bed, an oxygen mask covering my mouth and wires hooked up to me in various places. I was on a drip, and there was a bag of blood hooked up to me as well. My heart rate beeped on the monitor beside me bed.

“That machine is what is keeping you alive,” Fay said quietly. “When you lost consciousness they told him that you couldn’t be saved. They said they might as well just turn the machine off and give you a proper send off instead of leaving you here day after day. But he wouldn’t listen. He won’t let go of you.”

I looked again at Taran, crying as he knelt at my side, the table on the other side of the room full with flowers and cards.  “How long has it been?”

As if on cue, Berry Anderson strolled into the room, startled to see Taran there. She’s holding a bunch of flowers and another card, and behind her is someone I recognise immediately. Beside me, Fay’s voice cracks. “Hey Jesse.”