Double Life

Chapter 13

She wanted to fight sleep. She really did. But the hospital wouldn't let her go until they could see that she could wake up once she did. Even so, even without a week-long coma, one doesn't just will themselves to unconsciousness. The sandman came when he darn freaking felt like it, and he especially didn't like the anticipation of what you'd see on the otherside.

Juvi had hoped it was all a fluke and that she'd wake up as Jubilee again, in the hospital or, better yet, having not slit her wrists at all. It would have the double affect of proving Jubilee had just been some strange, elaborate, twenty-six-year long hallucination her brain somehow conjured.

But on the otherside of the darkness was only the light of the glass cityscape, filled to the brim with it's millions of busy lights.

Her reflection didn't greet her this time. Or, rather, Jubilee didn't greet her this time. Even when she looked down at herself she didn't see the scars and freckles of Jubilee, but the clear, pale skin and pink-brown peach fuzz of Juvi's arms. She also had the clarity now to see that there was a distinction between the two. It had always been just herself and all the things similar between Juvi and Jubilee. But now, as just Juvi, she could see all the differences. She could see clearly that she wasn't both, but just Juvi. Thirteen and pale.

And yet, even as she squinted down at the lights, trying to see more of the flickering wonders within each one, she could remember, more clearly than ever, of being Jubilee, as though it had all been posted up before her in a high definition movie she'd just seen. But it was a movie that was over. She was present now. Present and Juvi.

It felt like she waited there for a long time. At length she simply laid back on the glassy top of the skyscraper and let her eyes close, and with that her mind seemed to slow. An eerie blackness she'd never experienced pulled over her, taking her sense of time, vision, and everything else with it.

It ended abruptly with her eyes opening to the hospital ceiling. Her pale mother and two white-coat doctors, one of which was Dr. Tusbasa, stood around her bed. Dad had probably needed to be at work, though Juvi didn't doubt he'd be here any second.

Eraserhead, just as in need of a shower and nap as before, leaned away, his eyes losing just a faint flicker or red. He slipped out a bottle of eyedrops from somewhere.

"Oh thank god," breathed Mom.

Eraserhead leaned his head back and got to work wetting his eyeballs.

"Why don't you have, like, an eyemister in your googles?"

It was something Juvi had always wondered and it had popped out before she'd thought better of it.

"You think I haven't tried that?" he said. "The technology is bulky as shit, and anything less ruins my vision." He blinked, probably just realizing what she had asked before looking down to give her a strange look.

Mom seemed to think it pretty odd too, but the doctors were too busy frowning over whatever was being displayed on the brain monitor. She had nodes on her scalp again. They'd probably been put on once she was asleep.

"Eyedrops are also technically poisonous," he said, a bit slower this time. "Best not to get the liquid anywhere else other than in your eyes."

"No way, poisonous?"

"Shouldn't you be a bit more, I don't know, I just woke you up from death again. Shouldn't your first words be something for your mom?"

"She's fine," said her mom, a bit more defensively. "I'd prefer that she's like this. Did you dream about the city again, sweetie?"

Juvi nodded, even as she looked at Dr. Tsubasa again and tried not to let her thoughts show too much.

"Mom, is dad at work?"