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Page 16.
Chapter 10
 Tedda lay in some sort of mummy wrapping on a gurney under a pinkish light. It was like the light in a dentist's office, round and pink with concentric plastic rings in its cover.
Sedated—that much she could feel.
The turgid metal of some opiate swirled in her blood stream like mercury, making her feel dull and amputated but free from pain. Amputated from pain, she lay in her cocoon feeling numb and warm and safe. This was better than being dead, even though this hurt dimly, but it was not as painful as the cold.
Tedda felt her fingertips pressing against her thighs, so her manacles and chains must be gone.
That much was good.
Why am I here? she wondered.
She was wrapped in blankets and around those, tied with straps, to a hospital bed. Two I.V. poles stood nearby. Bags of saline hung suspended, clear and wrinkled, and stabbed into those were various piggy-back I.V. medicines, and it all went drip, drip, drip down clear plastic tubules toward the parts of her body invisible to her beyond the horizon of sheets and straps.
This was a place or a condition of endless monotony.
It was a large room with peeling white walls and dull floors.
Under the dull ceilings, a double row of long fluorescent tubes mostly were not working, and the few that worked were all different shades of pink or yellow or gray.
One kept winking on and off.
Their chargers hummed.
She felt a twinge of that awful need to run somewhere, do something, save someone, help someone, a warm someone—but the feeling eluded her.
She could make no sense of it.
Tedda looked toward the only motion visible.
To her left was a row of long, low windows that could be leaned open, but they were all closed.
Above those were big square panes of glass that could not be opened.
Outside were huge green tree crowns full of leaves and rain.
Wind pressed leaves against the windows.
Tedda could hear a faint howling and realized the wind outside must be very strong.
Not a good night to be outside.
She looked with glazed eyes at the endless runneling of rainwater down the window glass.
It was good to be inside here, warm and dry.
What the next second or minute might bring, she had no idea. But for this instant in time, she felt warm, dry, and safe.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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