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“Oh, she’ll feel foggy for a while,” Flora said and shone a light into one eye and then the other. “It’s a combination of the meds and the skull trauma. It can’t be helped.”
“I do feeloff,” I replied. “Even at home, nothing felt real.”
“How are you doing here?” she asked, running her finger along the air in front of my face as I followed it with my eyes.
“Same thing. Nothing seems real,” I said, and my eyes flitted to Victoria before I could control it. I looked back at Flora and added, “I’m sure it’s just the coma.”
“I’m sure it is, but I want to take you in for a more detailed examination,” Flora said. Then she looked at Victoria and added, “You’ll receive an extra treatment for your patience.”
Victoria smiled at that and settled into her chair with a satisfied wiggle. She closed her eyes and sighed deeply as Flora pulled a domed device over and set it over Victoria’s head and face. It was also much like something you’d find in an old school beauty shop, a hairdryer.
“What are these treatments?” I asked, watching as Flora punched a few buttons on a keypad before the machine began to hum with a quiet vibration. Victoria appeared to drift away, becoming unaware of our presence.
“They’re designed to stimulate neurological functions,” she said with one last inspection of the helmet. “They will assist in learning as well as resist aging. They work on your brain and your skin’s surface. It will help you become the woman you’re meant to be.”
“One who is subservient to her husband and begs him for food scraps off his table?” I frowned and screwed up my face in disgust. “I don’t want to become that kind of woman. I would never want to be that brainless.”
“Not brainless, an important and integral part of our society,” she said with the kind of tone you’d take with a tantrum-throwing child. “But don’t you worry about that. We have other things to go over today.”
I followed her into another room and sat across a table from her. I chewed the edge of my thumbs nervously as I thought of all the ways I could get out of these so-called treatments.
They felt more like lobotomies than anything else. The sort of thing designed to melt my brain and turn me into the kind of woman who was deemed perfect in a world ruled by horrible men.
As Flora moved in on me, gently nudging me towards another seat with more gadgets and electronics attached, I panicked. I couldn’t stand the thought of having my brain sucked dry, and a robotic creature stuck there in its place. I wasn’t ready to give up my personality, even if I didn’t know exactly who I was.
I backed away from Flora despite trusting her. I didn’t think she was out to get me, but it felt like the entire system was designed to work against me. And I couldn’t help myself. I was a natural fighter, always discordant with the rules applied to my life and the duties expected of me.
“I can’t do this,” I said and shook my head. “I can’t do this.”
I repeated it a couple more times until my breath came faster, to the point that I was gasping in shallow gulps, and my head felt dizzy.
“Calm down,” she said and held her hands out to touch my arms. “It’s going to be okay. We just have to find out what happened at the scan.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, gasping again, panting like a dog.
“You shouldn’t have blacked out like that,” she replied. “We set up protocols against such reactions. We need to find out what’s going on up there.”
She tapped the side of her head and smiled. I wanted to smile back, to fall for her kind eyes and familiar chestnut curls with a touch of grey at each temple. But I couldn’t.
“I have to go,” I blurted, turned, and bolted to the door. I opened it and started down the hall, a fast walk at first but quickly transforming into a run.
“Willow! Come back!” Flora called out, and as I reached the doorway back out to the reception area, an alarm began to blare.
I shoved the door hard and found myself face to face with the hated Dr. Norris. He’d only come to see me when he needed to prod and poke me for responses. He never cared what I had to say, just how I reacted.
So I would fucking react and show him who I was once and for all.
I put my hands on his chest and pushed.
He stepped back, stumbled, and exclaimed, “Miss Avalon! Please!”
I didn’t listen. I ran out the front doors and into the courtyard. I needed peace. I needed seclusion. I needed to hide until I could calm the whirlwind of frantic fear twisting around my head and drilling into my gut.
I headed straight for the hedge where Harlow had pulled me earlier. I practically dove through the branches and flopped onto a bench, hunched over with my head in my hands, and kept my eyes squeezed shut as I worked to calm the terror inside.
I could feel a visceral, physical tug in my stomach as if I was being pulled somewhere else. And if I kept my eyes closed long enough, I would fall into the darkness behind my eyelids. Tumble down through space and spin endlessly out of control inside the inky black night.
“Are you okay?”
