Jacqueline Druga: Reset

It is said, that in the moments before awakening, that an outside stimulus can be registered by the brain, therefore influencing the dream. A change in temperature, alarm clock, noise, anything can influence and invade the dream of the slumbering individual.

A dream lasts only a few moments.

That is what happened to Nora.

She was dreaming. An odd dream, she was on the beach with her two young daughters, yelling to her husband Rick not to let them go in the water. It was too cold.

But, he allowed them and they went under.

Horrified, she raced into the water for her family, only to become engulfed by waves that felt thick, too thick. She couldn’t move, couldn’t swim, couldn’t breathe.

Nora was drowning.

A bright light passed over her eyes, the water changed from warm to cold and trying to gasp, she opened her eyes.

She had been asleep. But she wasn’t in bed, she wasn’t lying down. Her position, what was going on, was secondary to the fact that she couldn’t breathe.

Something was lodged somewhere between her throat and chest, and Nora coughed. Coughing wasn’t easy, because she couldn’t inhale enough air into her body to produce the cough.

Calm , she thought. Stay calm.

Using what little air she had remaining in her lungs, Nora gave it all she had. The object moved up to her throat and she went from unable to breathe to downright choking.

She was dying.

Suddenly, a sense of ‘release’ hit her and she fell face forward to the floor. In an attempt to stand, her body slid on the smooth cold surface. She pushed and pushed from her diaphragm and throat, but couldn’t clear the object. Surroundings fading, Nora, through her vision blurring, spotted a chair not far from her. She reached, gripped it, and after slipping once, stood and lunged her body full force, mid-section first into the back of that chair.

The object dislodged and she gasped for the much needed air.

Then she felt the horrendous pain to her stomach and chest. She broke a rib in her self-attempted Heimlich maneuver.

She caught her bearings and her breath, then she saw the object that came from her. It was thick, about the size of an egg and blue. Clear and gel like, it looked as if she had choked on some sort of gelatin dessert.

After a very brief moment, reality set in. Choking done, breathing normal.

What was going on?

She was completely naked, and she shivered freakishly out of control. Her skin felt damp and she turned around slowly.

Behind her was an open glass door. It looked like it was attached to a closet in the wall. A panel of lights beside it blinked and more of the blue thick gel lay on the floor and in the encasement.

That had to be where she had fallen.

Where was she? Her mind felt full and in the fog, it took her a second to even remember who she was.

My name. My name. My name is Nora. I think. Is it? Nora Something. What?

It wasn’t a large room, but it wasn’t tiny either. More compact with space utilized to the fullest.

An unmade single bed, the sheets and blankets were folded and in bags on top. A desk and a chair, above the desk was a flat screen adhered to the wall. Next to the bed was a door that resembled something from a prison.

Against the other wall were two white doors and what looked like a chest of drawers, white as well, built into the wall.

Very clinical.

Very clean.

Her body still shaking, arms tight to her, she looked back to the small coffin closet.

Then she remembered…

Moving, on her back, rolling down a hall, white fluorescent lights blinking above her.

“She’s still awake,” a voice said.

“We don’t have time.”

“Should we hit her again?”

“No, it’ll kill her. It’ll kick in.”

Whatever they had given her made her unable to speak or move, she was drugged.

They moved her from that cart and placed her on something else. It wasn’t comfortable. She merely balanced on a thin metal rod that pressed against her back.

Nora wanted to cry out, to scream, to fight. But she couldn’t.

Something wrapped around her head, then her chest and waist. Leveled to a standing position, Nora was then lowered down.

The encasement.

She remembered the encasement and seeing that room before she passed out.

A clear view of the room and someone in there, she may not have been able to speak or move but she could see. Who was he? He wore a white lab coat. There was a hiss, a click and then a warm thick liquid encompassed her feet. It crept up to her shins, her thighs and then her body.

She recalled the fear of drowning as the fluid hit her chin, and that was the last Nora remembered.

All went black.

Her immediate thoughts after the memory were to get warm, get dressed and find out what was going on. It hurt to walk and her body was rigid, not only that, but her skin began to tighten from the liquid as it dried.

A step toward the bed and the monitor above the desk blinked and came on.

The picture was bad, it flickered and distorted. A man in a lab coat stared at the camera.

“Good morning,” he said. “By now you have awakened. Please, for your health, as quickly as possible, relieve your bladder and wash any remaining residue from your skin and hair. You will find we have provided you with clothing. At this point, you are wondering what…”

The monitor shut down.

Her eyes widened. ‘What?’ she thought. ‘Wondering what?’

Nora was wondering a lot. However, just in case the fluid that covered her was indeed dangerous, she sought out the bathroom so she could wash.

It wasn’t the first white door, it was the second and Nora stepped inside and immediately followed her brief instructions of relieving herself and washing.

It took the lukewarm water of the shower to bring Nora to a more aware state. She was groggy and tired, her stomach wretched in hunger and she craved caffeine.

However, she wasn’t home. She just couldn’t go to her kitchen, pour a cup of coffee and start her day.

Nora had no clue where she was other than in a clinical style bathroom.

Very clinical, prepackaged toiletries perched on lid of the stainless steel commode

She was no longer cold when she left the bathroom, the temperature was average and she had to find clothes, see what was in the small room and get out. If she could.

Her room was a step above a cell, had she been taken prisoner? Apparently she had been drugged.

Think , Nora, think . She hit her fist to her head. What happened? Where were you?

Recall your life.

It was blank. It was absolutely, positively blank up until the point she was rolling down the hall.

Folded bedding set upon the mattress and next to it a clear bag of clothes. They had to be for her. Boots, drawstring pants and a long sleeve tee shirt, along with generic style undergarments.

She immediately ripped open the sealed bag and placed on every item, all the while speaking aloud; hoping the sound of her own voice would jar her memory.

But no real sounds emerged. Nora couldn’t speak.

She chanted in her mind what she knew, what she remembered.

My name is Nora Lane. Lane. Is it? She didn’t remember fully. The dream of a husband named Rick and two daughters… was it a dream? Was it a memory?

She just didn’t know. Nora closed her eyes tightly as if pinching them closed would cause clarity. It didn’t and she walked to the closet. More clothing, all the same, hung in there. There was a backpack on the floor, she opened it. It was empty.