Chapter Text
Ann had never felt so disoriented.
She had been walking through the bustle of Tokyo daily life. The sun had been warm on her face. Strangely, she had found herself in a rare moment of peace. Just someone in the crowd of people moving along. A lovely rare afternoon off that she had managed to fill to the brim with errands; buying groceries for the week, getting her drivers licence renewed, going to the office to collect some files to look over again, just in case. The weather made the day feel kind and willing. People around her were laughing, talking, taking it easier so as to not overheat. Ann felt a strange appreciation for them, nothing big though, just a side effect nice weather could have sometimes.
Somewhere, she remembered, some boys had made trouble, getting the cars to angrily honk at them. She had been too far away to see what they had been up to thought. It didn’t matter anyway, she would have forgotten about it if it had not been for the sound of the honking cars slowly flowing into the sound of explosions. As if one big organism, everyone around her had stopped, looking up at the sky to admire the fireworks colouring the air above the tall gleaming buildings of the city.
Ann had found it odd, fireworks on an average summer afternoon. Surely, whoever was firing these off had no permit to do so. She would probably get to hear all about it tomorrow at work. For now however, it was a lovely little moment. People pointed and shouted, children were hauled on shoulders to get a better view.
Quite lovely. Quite lovely indeed.
Then, terribly loud thundering, a sudden big flash and-
She somehow felt like she had lived an eternity since that moment. Waking up in a strange white room. Surrounded by white curtains. A monitor was beeping. Her ears were ringing. It felt like the room was slowly turning around, pulling the bed from under her. She gripped the railing a little too fast, making a surge of stinging pain run through her torso. A dull ache thudded in her head, perfectly in unison with her heartbeat and the beeping of the monitor.
What the fuck had happened?
She knew she was in a hospital, that much was clear. She could see part of a window through an opening in the curtains that shielded her from the rest of the room. It revealed a sliver of the sky outside, or rather that was what it was supposed to be revealing. Instead, the window seemed to be covered in a thick layer of dust or ash, only letting in a little bit of light from outside.
It felt like her brain would explode out of her skull with pain. The loud noises of rushing people outside the room certainly didn’t help. She wished she could be unconscious again.
Maybe she had been in a car accident? Those kinds of things happened all the time.
She had always prided herself in being able to think level headedly in unnatural and potentially fatal situations but even though she seemed to be in no immediate danger, panic rushed into her chest. What the fuck happened? Her breathing became quick and uneven. Her eyes watered. Where the fuck am I?
The pain in her head had started to blur her vision. Blood was rushing through her ears.
This is what it must feel like to die.
Another sharp pain stabbed her chest. It felt like she was on the receiving end of her own autopsy. She winced, letting out a muffled cry. It sounded louder than she had intended among the monotone beeping and the dense stirring outside.
‘Are you awake, miss?’ a voice sounded from beyond the curtain. ‘Should I call in a nurse to help you?’
So she was sharing this room with at least one other person, maybe more. Ann wanted to answer but all she could produce was another small whimper. She felt like she was going to throw up, the room still spinning around her. Closing her eyes only made it worse.
The rustling of bedsheets, followed by a low buzz sounded from beyond the curtain.
‘It might take a little time, miss. You are going to have to hold on a little bit longer. The hospital has been completely overrun with patients. The staff has been working overtime.’
Ann wanted to ask what happened, why there were so many patients, why there was dust on the window. But her mouth was too dry and her breathing too irregular.
Oh God. It dawned on her. Tokyo got hit by an atom bomb. The thought made her feel even more nauseous. Her whole life, everything that she had built, ruined in a single afternoon. She felt herself start to hyperventilate. Every twitching breath was accompanied by a sharp, stabbing pain in her lungs. Imagine all the death, the sickness.
She needed to get out of here. It wasn’t safe. She was probably already over exposed to radiation. It was likely she wouldn’t even survive the week, cancer rapidly multiplying among her cells. Just please let it be quick. Just please let the pain be over.
A door opened, bringing a flood of hallway noises into the room. Outside, people were crying, shouting, pleading. Ann’s throat closed up. I don’t want to live in this hell, I don’t want this.
The face of a young nurse appeared from behind the curtain. To Ann’s concern he wasn’t wearing a hazmat suit or anything resembling it. Just a face mask and a white hospital outfit. His hair was dishevelled and his forehead was covered in little drops of sweat. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a long time but he nevertheless gave a little bow and started inspecting the file hanging at the foot of her bed.
‘We are happy to see that you are awake, miss…’, he mumbled while reading, ‘Oh, it looks like they did not find a means of identifying you yet. I will let you fill out a form later. You must have a lot of questions right now. But I’ll give you a little dose of morphine first, for the pain.’
She had tried to conceal the horrible ache in her head and torso, feeling for some reason that she needed to be tough in front of the nurse. She didn’t even feel the little sting of the needle. Thankfully, after some time, she started to feel the pain ebb away. Her hands and legs felt tingly, her breathing steadied itself. Though the ringing in her ears hadn’t gone away and her vision was still a little blurred, the worst pain was gone for now.
With a sigh of relief she accepted a little plastic cup of water. The nurse started flipping through her file again.
‘I will keep it short and simple. Yesterday, a meteorite hit Tokyo resulting in a large explosion destroying a part of the city. A lot of people were wounded and a lot were killed. You yourself have been hit by some debris resulting in…’ he read the file, ‘Resulting in a punctured lung, heavy blood loss and a coma, your heart stopped for a minute on the operating table. The operation was a long one, but they were able to revive you eventually. The doctors were able to remove the debris from your body. Thankfully nothing was infected and-’
He stopped, seeing Ann’s bewildered look.
‘I know this might seem like a lot right now.’ His brown eyes held a tired look of pity. ‘The recovery might be long but you are in no danger of losing your life. I will call a doctor to give you a checkup soon, right now they’re all busy.’
Someone crackled over the walky-talky hanging from his belt. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute.’ he replied with a sigh.
‘Do you have any friends or family we can contact for you? A lot of volunteers are working on finding missing people and reuniting families. I’ll leave the file with contact information and the file for confirming your identity here so you can fill it out. I-’
His walky-talky barked at him again. ‘Yes, I am coming.’
With an apologetic look he fumbled some more with her patient’s file, clipped some papers to a clipboard and laid it on her bedside table.
‘I’m really sorry, miss. I have to go now, but a doctor will be with you soon.’ He gave her a little bow and hurried away, only to turn around again, fumbling with something in his pockets.
‘A pen, of course.’ His eyes gave a weary smile. She didn’t even have time to thank him because with another quick bow and three big steps he disappeared behind the curtain again.
The sound of the chaotic hallway surged and dropped. Apart from once again muffled hallway sounds, the beeping monitors and the ring in Ann’s ears, it was quiet again. The morphine had left her feeling loopy, the information left her feeling completely dumbstruck. In a way she was glad that there was no talk of an atom bomb, in another way she had hoped it would have been something simpler, something smaller. This… was a lot.
Tokyo got bombed from outer space.
It had felt like weeks, maybe even months since the fireworks. It felt like her hair had grown, like she had eaten meals, drank alcohol. Like she had ran, fought, lived. But it had only been a day. She had been in another world it seemed.
She considered the forms that lay next to her bed. With the morphine now really settling into her veins she could feel the complete and utter exhaustion that had previously been overshadowed by her adrenaline. Her thoughts were already incoherent, the breathing of another patient in the room suddenly felt incredibly loud.
I could fill them out tomorrow-
The forms-
I will go for a walk and-
The bed was tilting again-
Someone needed to clean the window-
Get home-
Breathing so loud-
Get to work again-
All the paperwork-
All the forms-
Her sleep was deep and chaotic. Occasionally she was half awoken by stirring in the room. A patient crying out, a doctor hurriedly entering, people giving each other commands in the hallways. Vague fever dreams were sprinkled through the night. One was of a scraggly guy trying to find a witch and burn her. Another of a girl karate kicking a lizard looking man while carrying a wide grinning cat under her arm. In another dream Ann herself was running through a never ending forest, though she was uncertain if she really was herself or a golden galloping deer.
The last and by far the worst dream was that of a man with a gun. He was running upside-down through a maze of buildings, a cape whirling around him. Ann was hiding, not being able to move.
She saw a girl get shot right in front of her. More vividly than anything she had ever seen before in a dream. She could see the girl spat open, her shoulder punctured, then her torso, her lungs. She could see her fall onto the pavement. She could see the pool of blood slowly expand from under her, drawing a dark red velvet bed for the girl to lay on.
When Ann looked closer she saw her own face, motionless, staring right through her. The blood seeping from her shoulder was filled with little red glistening diamonds. She wanted to run away but couldn’t, not being able to look away from her own body. She was a crime scene.
She almost screamed out when her corpse stirred, a spindly hand moved towards her white lips. It was holding lipstick in a dark red shade. When her corpse put it up to her lips blood started seeping out, first slowly, dripping, then more, streaming down her chin and into her mouth.
She couldn’t breathe anymore, her throat was closed up, dry. She wanted to yell out for help but her mouth was filled with stinging diamonds. Hopelessly afraid, seeing nothing but buildings the size of mountains tower over her. She pressed her eyes close, willing it all away. But no matter what she tried, the diamonds stung down her throat, bleeding into her insides and tearing her open.
Her chest stung, her shoulder had a hole in it. A bird sat on her stomach, picking at her wounds. With every tick of its beak an outpouring of pain ran through her.
Someone shooed the bird away. Its flapping wings fanned the hair out of her face. A hand found hers. Warm like a kind grin. Its fingers wound around hers, its thumb drawing small circles on her knuckles. She felt her lungs open again.
Vines now cradled the swaying towers of the city around her. A white rabbit passed by, not seeming to notice her. Taking a deep breath in, she inhaled all the air from the city, pulling soft white clouds and little blue butterflies along into her lungs. The butterflies nestled themselves in her lungs and stomach, fluttering their delicate wings against her insides. The feeling felt so bright she wanted to cry. It felt like being in love.