Decaying Hearts

Chapter 4

When I awoke my head throbbed. I tried to move yet my head just spun. The pounding was like a steady beat to a drum. It made me feel queasy and vulnerable. I didn't like being vulnerable.

A sterile smell took to my senses, the cleanest scent I had smelt in only god knows how long and a harsh bright light forced its way through my eyelids. Slowly I tried to open them, but the light only threatened to blind me. The strength of the light burned and I automatically raised my hand shelter them, this only making my head thud even more and a sharp pain surged through my left side. I had not even thought about my unknown surroundings and that maybe I should have feigned sleep to gather any information.

After my eyes had been given enough time to adjust, I slowly propped myself up on to my elbows to take in the room around me, but with each movement a new pain surged through my tired and aching body. If the pain wasn't lurking in my skull, it had moved to sear through my tender side. There was no possibility of finding comfort.

I was being kept in some kind of medical room, a very basic one at that. The walls were white with chequered lino flooring and white cabinets pushed against the walls with matching ones positioned overhead – some of them had windows and revealed its tempting treasure, medical supplies.

I rose to my feet and my weak legs shook beneath my overwhelming weight, I only just had managed to catch myself on the bed that lay in the corner of the room. It held a thin green mattress, which only reminded me of vomit, with a simple sleeve of tissue laid across its centre. Where ever the hell I was, the people here were lucky enough to be able to hold on to the simplicity of hygiene.

Staggering across the room, I began to rummage through the cabinets as I always would if the opportunity presented itself, looking for any supplies I would be able to take on the road or anything that could someday proof to be useful. I had learnt that a single match could mean the difference between life and death – It was a scary thought that something once so menial, was now something so desirable.

Each cabinet was filled with bottles and vials and boxes of medicines of different types, many of which I had no idea what they could possibly be used for. So I stuck to what I knew. One of the cabinets was filled to the brim with boxes of paracetamol, something that always had a use. Another cabinet was filled with other goods such as ibuprofen, asprin, penicillin and amoxicillin. So I grabbed a mixed handful or two, pausing to open a box of paracetamol and plucked two capsules from their plastic prisons and swallowed them dry. I tried to ignore the bitter taste they left behind. It was only then that I began to notice how thirsty I was, my throat as raw and dry as a desert, becoming more and more unbearable by the second.

But I grabbed as much as I could of the daily essentials I could need, without taking too much that would leave those here vulnerable or even enough to notice anything was amiss as first glance. Bandages, plasters, antiseptic creams, safety pins, slings, tape and even a pair of scissors; if necessary they could prove to be a handy weapon.

I went to grab for my bag to secure my loot when it suddenly dawned on me that I didn't know where it was. It wasn't there. It was gone.

Shit.

Everything that had kept me alive all this time was in that bag. My limited food supplies, matches, weapons, the last of my family photos, there were all gone.

"I see you're awake then." A voice called behind me.

Startled, my body jumped and my loot fell to the ground. Bottles rolled out across the floor to meet the boot of a man in the doorway. Now, how was I going to wangle myself out of this one? If they knew I was planning on running with all this gear, they would surely kill me without haste. That was just how the world worked these days. It was survival of the fittest and the fittest would need the supplies to survive.