==> Teresa: Go make sure you’re not completely insane.
The best way to do that, you’ve decided, is going to the hospital morgue. Making sure John’s body is there, still… Dead.
You’re kind of dreading this moment, as you walk into the hospital and quietly speak to a nurse. You feel awkward, stilted, strange. The hospital is white, too white, so white that all you can get is cotton ball-flavoured clouds drifting through your vision. They’re distracting enough that you miss what the nurse said, and you ask her to repeat it.
When she does, though, you blink your cloudy eyes and ask her to repeat it yet again.
Yep, you didn’t mishear her.
And that’s… Wrong.
Blinking, you frown a litttle. She can’t be right. There’s no way.
Asking her to take you to the morgue, she complies, but you can tell she’s annoyed. She doesn’t seem to like you, but that doesn’t surprise you. Not many people are keen on you. You’re grating to most people, really.
She takes you into the morgue and you stand there for a moment, taking in a deep breath. The smell is strange, shiny and metal and foreign, and you feel strange. The muted shades of people in drawers strike an odd note in you, making you a little sick to your stomach in uneasy confusion. But… There’s no clouds of blueberry wind. Not even a trace, which should have lasted. You ask her again, and the woman confirms it.
You blink a few more times, staring at the vague shape of the nurse until she sounds uncomfortable. One last attempt, and she still reaffirms what she’d said.
And that’s not good.
She leads you back out and all you can do is thank her and leave, make an escape from this strange place. You’re walking the streets irritably as you think, trying to clear your head and settle your stomach.
You can’t believe it, but everything you’d gotten had shown you otherwise. You couldn’t get a taste of him, a scent or a shade or anything. It stays with him, always, and it wasn’t in that room. It wasn’t anywhere, and the woman had never heard of him. There wasn’t a patient by that name, living or dead.
And that wasn’t okay. It made your head ache and itch, like there was something you should have known but were missing. It didn’t make sense and yet the idea seemed almost comfortable as it sat on your mind.
Finding yourself in a park, you sit on the grass and think, taking in the sunlight as you do. When you close your eyes, you can see these threads, teal and strange and branching, and it makes some kind of sense. You pick one out, and watch as images play through your head. It’s similar to what’s happening, and yet there are differences. And there are other possibilities mixed in, some bizarre and some almost sensible. You don’t understand it yet, but it’s fascinating nonetheless.
So you sit there in the Texas sun, ignoring the heat and letting your mind wander through these odd branching possibilities, unsure of what they mean. It’s not as if you have anything else you need to do right now.
