19

Eleven: How will I know what I like?Max: You just try things on. Let them speak to you. Not Mike. Not Hop. You.

***

The corridor was filled with dust. It tickled her nose making her sneeze. The walls, divided by beams of metal, kicked up mold too. She gagged and coughed her way down the corridor.

Water sounded so good right now. Cold, soothing, refreshing. But the telltale dust and mold wasn't promising. It told her the building was abandoned. If it had been occupied, it would be clean. 

Alone.

She shivered at the thought. Was she really alone? That meant she had been abandoned too. Forgotten. They had forgotten her. Left her to die. These nameless, faceless people hadn't cared enough about her to take her with them. 

Chilled through and through, she wondered why. Why had they left her behind? Had it been some calamity, some attack? A fire perhaps, that left people scurrying for the doors thinking about themselves. About their own safety. Not giving a single thought for her safety.

As near as she could figure, the building was a hospital. The bed with the rails, the tubes in her body all spoke to an undefined illness that had her recuperating for an undisclosed amount of time. Memories lost to her in a haze of fog as solid as the walls in this building. 

What about her parents? Family? Someone must have brought her here. Someone must have stayed with her, watching over while sick. Offering comfort to her. She sought her mind for those kind of memories but came up blank.

She pressed on, water foremost on her mind. A drinking fountain, a kitchen or even bathroom water would be good right now. She wouldn't care if there were germs, she'd drink it anyway. Desperate, she held onto that hope. Had little else to cling to. 

The corridor extended for what seemed like miles, the light she kept her eyes on getting further away. She stumbled along, shoulder leaning heavily against the wall. Surely she must be getting closer to the light source. She couldn't be hallucinating it could she?

Not surprising considering how weak she felt. Her vision was almost gone. Only a pinprick of sight at the end of a narrow tunnel. She didn't care. She would keep going until her body dropped. 

She began counting the beams her hand touched to keep her mind off the dizziness. Counting kept her awake, kept her in the here and now. If she succumbed to the darkness now, all would be lost. At the one hundred and thirtieth beam, she'd reached the light source.

It flickered overhead, a source of comfort in the gaping maw of darkness. Her vision cleared, her eyes adjusted to the light. It was not bright but it was lighter than the dark. With it, she scanned the area around her. Up ahead, the corridor split three ways, each branching corridor leading off into an unknown direction.

Next, she searched for signs, some way of knowing what level she was on. Nothing but grimy dirty brown/gray walls. Each corridor appeared to be rounded in shape, more tunnel than corridor. No numbers, no directions to tell her which way to go. Odd that there was any electricity left at all. The building operated under low power, too low to be registered by the power company that must have run the place. Unless there was a generator still working after all this time.

She peered down the corridor to her right. Dark. Left, the same. Up ahead, the corridor stretched further. She hesitated to leave what might be the only source of light in the building. It comforted her, gave her the tangible hope she so desperately needed. 

But which way? Left, right or straight? How was she to know the corridor she chose would lead her to water? She didn't. She closed her eyes, allowing her instincts to take over. For some reason, she felt compelled to keep going straight.

Straight it is.

She passed under the light. It faded the further she went along the corridor. Soon, she came to a door. Twisting the knob, it failed to open. More doors, all locked. She assumed there were doors across the corridor as well but refused to waste energy checking them out. If the doors on this side were locked, then made sense the ones across the corridor would be as well.

The corridor ended abruptly with a single door in place of a wall. She found the handle, twisted it and miraculously, it opened. More sources of light flickered inside enabling her to see the stairs leading up to other levels. She groaned aloud. Walking on flat surfaces she could manage, but stairs? Forget it.

She sat down on the bottom step and leaned her head against the railing. "Can't do this," she whispered, her voice coming out as a croak.

You must. 

The voice in her head sounded as loud as a bell. "I don't want to."

You have to.

"I'm nothing. I'm nobody."

You are someone.

"Who?"

In this, the voice grew silent. She lifted her head, dizziness coming in waves. Vertigo made the stairs and levels above swim counterclockwise. "I need to rest." She closed her eyes and slept for a few moments, jerking awake when the sound of a distant door slamming penetrated her dreams.

The noise came from above. Groaning from pain and stiffness, she turned over on to her hands and knees. She took one step at a time, head down, eyes on the step beneath her. Arms trembling, she made her way up to the next level. With as much strength as she could pull out of her, she crawled to the door and reached for the handle. It failed to give. Locked. Sighing, she steeled herself for the climb to the next level.

It, too, was locked. Was there no way out? Levels three, four and five were also locked. On the sixth level, she rested, giving her body a chance to rest. Maybe the wind had slammed the door shut. There have to be windows in this place. What hospital had no windows?

She stopped counting the levels after a while. It became a cruel game to her. Someone played a very sick joke. Probably watched her from some hidden camera, laughing. She imagined it so easily. People in white lab coats, observing her actions on monitors, recording her behavioral responses. Like rats in a maze. 

Not a hospital. A lab. It sounded about right. Made more sense. A hospital had doctors and nurses, people who were trained to care for their patients. Have enough compassion to ensure everyone got out in case of fire or attack. A lab drummed up thoughts of uncaring scientists who treated people as little more than experiments to be tested on over and over.

Why did that sound so familiar? She probed her mind, fighting through the fog for answers. The fog resisted pushing her back. A headache formed at the base of her skull and climbed over the top settling in her forehead. One more source of pain to endure as she continued her climb.

The next level turned out to be the last. If this door doesn't open-- She left the thought hanging as she dragged her now mostly useless legs to the door. Weak, she could barely lift her arm up. Her hand snagged the handle and she pulled it down. It gave with a subtle click. She used the handle to stand up. 

The door, made of heavy steel, was hard to open. It weighed a ton, not meant for someone of her size and weight. She used both hands and backed up, the door moving at a snail's pace.

She worked her left around the other side and shouldered the door to the wall with cement, tile breaking thud. It sprang forward when she let go. The door came at her too fast to move out of the way. It pushed her into the corridor, knocking her flat onto the grimy cement floor.

"Ow." She coughed out the dust she inhaled then got to her knees. More lights were on in this corridor. They flickered much the same way the one did so many levels below. She got to her feet, moans escaping past her lips. 

The doors in this corridor had numbers on them, starting with one, she checked each door. All of them were locked. When she stood before the door with the number nineteen on it, to her surprise, it opened easily. Inside was a bed, a desk and a lamp. A couple of pictures, drawn in crayon, graced the wall on which the bed stood. Nothing much, just some stick figures, small ones, playing a game together. She couldn't make out what game.

She took the picture off the wall and flipped it over. No name. No date. Nothing to indicate who had been the artist. Still, it amused her. She stuck it back on the wall. Then she saw the blanket on the bed. She took it off the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. She rifled through the drawers of the desk, not finding anything worthwhile. The last drawer held some white slippers, gray sweatshirt and sweatpants.

The slippers added some warmth to her feet. The sweatshirt and pants warmth to her body. If this was someone's bedroom, then there must be a bathroom nearby. Cautiously, she stepped out of the room. The corridor that crossed the smaller numbered rooms from the larger numbers had exactly what she hoped to find. A communal bathroom, complete with showers. Now, if the lights worked then--

She turned on the faucet of the nearest shower. "Yes!" she shouted, her hand slapping over her mouth. Shocked, she stood still, water running into the sink. Her voice, had made vibrations in her throat but didn't reach her ears. 

Forgetting the water, she tested her voice. "Hello?" Nothing. She could hear nothing. Stunned, she leaned against the sink. I'm deaf. Is that why they left me behind?

"I'm deaf," she said out loud. She studied the water, unable to hear the trickling of water droplets hitting the shower floor. Reality sank in. They'd left her behind because of this defect. She shivered with cold beyond the damp temperature of this place. 

The shower took some time to heat up, once it did, the water felt like sheer heaven on her cold, sore body. It warmed the outside but did nothing to ease the chill on the inside. The sliver of soap left in the dish dissolved down to nothing by the time she finished. She worked hard to get the grime out of her hands and the caked on dirt on her body. Even her head was scrubbed.

In the mirror, the length of her hair was no surprise to her, having felt it in the shower. Cut short, close to the scalp, she turned her head this way and that, observing the dark brown mingled with blonde. But her eyes fascinated her the most. Green. Bright green that sparkled in the dim florescent lighting. 

She dried off with paper towels from the dispenser and dressed again in the sweatpants and shirt. Opening the cold faucet, she let it run for a long time, then dipped her head to the side, taking a long drink from the water, slaking her thirst.

Finally, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Belly sloshing, she walked back to room nineteen and burrowed under the covers, exhausted. Tomorrow she would do some exploring, find out her name. There must be some files tucked away somewhere.

For now, she would go by nineteen, the number on the door.

***

Anyone guess where she is yet? Let me know in the comments.

Can anyone guess the season/episode for the above quote?

Question: What is your favorite line and why?