May 4th
26 days after the bridge attacks
One moment nothing existed.
Then she was aware.
Not aware of anything in particular, just aware.
One second she didn’t exist and the next she did. Oddly, she found she had no particular thoughts about this. In fact, she really didn’t have any thoughts at all. She did have a vague feeling that the quiet of where she was could be easily disrupted. She also sensed that her stay there could only be temporary.
That made her sad. It was quiet here.
With a bit of disappointment, she realized that feeling had become more of a thought. That signified change, and any change in here was bad. Somehow she knew it inevitably resulted in you not being here. Then her suspicion was confirmed. She knew that the wheel of change was indeed in motion because she was aware of something.
Something. Yes, it was definitely something. But what was it? It was... murky and difficult to define, but definitely there. Slowly, she recognized what it was - a sound. Along with that came the understanding of what sound was, and that really blew things all to hell; because her brain managed to identify the sound as a voice.
This irritated Jessica.
She was quite perturbed at how this was all turning out. But she felt powerless to stop it. Her mind seemed intent on figuring out what was happening, and started decoding the words. She recognized one of the words as her name, and after a moment the others caught up and started to make sense as well.
So with a mental shrug of resignation she turned her attention to the voice. It was asking her something...
“Jessica. Sweetheart. It’s time to wake up. I need you to wake up for me now. Can you open your eyes for me?”
It was a woman’s voice that she did not recognize, but nevertheless she found the sound of it rather beautiful. It was warm and rich and gentle and of the sort that a grandma, or a favorite aunt would have. She lay there for a moment listening to it, basking in the cozy implications that a voice like that carried, and relaxing into the bed beneath her.
That was when she realized that she could tell she was laying down. Before that she had no sense of a physical body - and she wasn’t sure she liked what this one was telling her. Something was wrong, no... a lot of things were wrong... terribly, terribly wrong. As her mind reached out to take stock of her anatomy, the reports it received back were alarming. There were things holding her down, things poking and piercing her, and things... inside of her. But worse than any of that was the eerie non-feeling that came back in places. She should at least be feeling weight, temperature, and position. But she was only getting an odd, high pitched, and monotonous tone. The nervous system equivalent of how her ears would ring after a loud noise. It wasn’t like the heavy deadened feelings of numbness either.
Things were just... gone.
And where feeling stopped and the buzzing nothingness began, there was pain. It was blunted by the gauzy wool of drugs, but it was still there. Like a snarling wolf held at bay by a thick door, it howled, and clawed at the barrier. It was unable to reach her completely now. But the incredible pain she would feel once it had her in its jaws was close.
Close enough for her to feel it on her like hot breath.
Tammy had gained significant experience with waking a variety of soldiers from chemically induced comas, and some of them had been under a lot longer than Jessica. But this was her first time waking a child, and she was nervous. She knew just how horrible and disorienting it could be. Some soldiers came out slow and easy and as sweet as babies, while others came out faster and were generally irritable, angry, and more traumatized. She didn’t fault them for their response. She knew it was driven by terror rather than anger.
So it was surprising to her that, despite all of her training, she was still frightened nearly out of her wits by how Jessica emerged from her coma. One second she was shifting a little, and displaying the common rapid eye movement you expect in the final minutes of waking. The next the child sat bolt upright in the bed, dragged in the deepest breath she had ever seen someone take, and let out a scream so loud and piercing Tammy felt an intense pain in her eardrums. Staff throughout the facility were frozen in place, dropped things they were carrying, and felt the hair on the back of their arms and necks stand up. One of the older nurses, Miss Rottenburg, fainted dead away, falling face first into an entire tray of urine samples. It took ten minutes for staff to roll her significant bulk over, and then revive her with smelling salts.
Video playback would show that the girl’s scream lasted for a full ninety-seven seconds before winding down like an out of control tornado warning siren. That was longer than most professional Opera singers can hold a note - and only shy of the world record by ten seconds.
By then a dozen people had come running, their professional training having finally broken them free from their paralysis. They clustered in the doorway. But Tammy shooed them off with a discrete wave of her hand, and never took her eyes off of Jessica. Right now this little girl was all that mattered, and she intended to do right by her.
The girl’s liquid blue eyes had been squeezed tightly shut for the duration of her scream, but once it dwindled to a low moan they opened slightly, and she took in another shuddering breath. Tammy gripped the edge of the mattress and prepared herself for another scream. But instead the little girl panted rapidly and turned her head towards her, a movement interspersed with tiny twitches, until she made eye contact. Her cool languid gaze was unwavering and without a single blink for the better part of a minute. It was one of the most unnerving experiences Tammy had ever had, and considering how she had come to be selected for this assignment, that was saying a lot.
So she took a slow breath, and then very gently spoke to the girl. “Jessica, it’s OK. You’re safe in a hospital and I’m here to take care of you.”
The girl only stared at her, still twitching slightly. It took several heartbeats before the girl’s voice emerged, cracked and stuttering, and Tammy was overwhelmed with relief.
“W… where’s my mo...“, she began, but then stopped short. There was another pregnant pause, and then the girl shifted her question into a flat statement. It was the sort of thing she had heard before from battle- deadened soldiers... An almost emotionless intonation with an undertone of dread floating just beneath its surface.
“She’s dead... and Dad’s dead too. Both of them. Aren’t they?”
Tammy knew from experience that this wasn’t so much a question as a need for confirmation. Often, the first thing a victim of severe trauma needed was to know that their experience had been real. Shock and time would leave them doubting whether it had happened at all.
So Tammy responded with what she knew the girl needed to hear, even though it broke her heart to speak the words.
“Yes honey... they’re gone.”
Tammy had expected the girl to cry, wail, or perhaps even scream again. But she hadn’t. Instead she raised her arms to look at them. The right arm was cast from her shoulder with a thick textured fiber that spiraled to her wrist. There it abruptly terminated in a blocky lump.
The other arm was a complete wreck. Tammy knew that underneath of the cast were dozens of plates, pins, and orthopedic glue that barely held the shattered arm together. In fact, there had been considerable debate over whether to even try to save the pulverized appendage. But Eddie had eventually swayed the surgical team to do what they could with it. All of the fingers were broken except the thumb. Unfortunately, that had been crushed and severed to such a degree that only a flattened smear of bone and flesh remained. Amputation had been the only option.
Sniffling, Jessica lowered her arms and looked down. Her gaze finally falling on the most grievous of the insults her body had endured. Her slender right leg, once small and perfect, now ended with a deathlike suddenness at the knee. The sheet fell flatly to the bed below it with a simple and horrifying finality. Her left leg was present, but was suspended above the bed, disturbingly out of place compared to the rest of her body. Swollen to nearly double its normal size; it was a mass of black, purple, and yellow-green bruising. This was interspersed with broken blood vessels and punctures where pins and wires were threaded through. A complex titanium framework crouched over all of this like a predatory spider, weaving the limb back to health against its own will. Starting at the knee a massive sutured gash ran nearly to the ankle, with stitches crisscrossing it so thickly that they looked like rope. The skin had not entirely closed in some places, and pinkish-grey flesh bulged from the incision... like rot seeking to escape the prison of a carcass.
Looking up again, Jessica caught sight of herself in the large two - way observation mirror. It took up most of the wall across from her, and Tammy knew that there were probably a dozen doctors, researchers, and military brass behind that glass. Not to mention Jessica’s aunt and uncle.
But the girl seemed completely unsuspecting, and was lifting her head to see the ragged, sutured rip running from her ear down her jawline. So Tammy reached over to the rolling tray and quietly took out the large hand mirror she had brought specifically for this moment. With both hands she held it out so that Jessica could see herself more closely. The trembling girl looked deeply for a long time, slowly turning her head back and forth before lowering her eyes to her lap. She sat very still for several heartbeats. But then her lower lip began to tremble, and her chest began hitching in staggered breaths.
Tammy heard the light pitter-pat of tears as they fell on the sheets. Reaching out, she slid closer and gently took the sobbing child into her arms as the grief overtook her. She said nothing, and did her best to just hold the inconsolable little girl as she dealt with the initial shock and horror of her injuries. She knew that this was just the first step of what would be a very long and painful road. It was a time when this sweet little baby should be thinking about school, her friends, and starting to wonder about boys. But instead, her coming years would be filled with pain, loss, and the long, difficult road to recovery.
The silence stretched out for a while, broken only by the low sobs of a child who had just been brutally amputated from the only life she had ever known. “There now beautiful”, she soothed when the child’s anguish slowly subsided to a soft weeping on her shoulder. “You’re in a very special place. The best place possible for someone like you. This is no ordinary hospital. All the docs here are like Einstein smart. So if there’s anybody who can have you back up looking like a peach in no time, it’s this crew. Trust me on that.”
Jessica continued to sob wetly into her shoulder for several minutes before sniffling back a choked reply, “Are... you... sure?”
“Absolutely!” Tammy exclaimed into her ear. “Hun, you’ll be playing banjo like Slim Pickens by your next birthday”.
Still clinging tightly to her, Jessica remained silent for several seconds before surprising Tammy with a small giggle. “Um... who is Slim Pickens?”
As they laughed together, Tammy began to feel the faint stirrings of hope.
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