Going Off Script

01

It was far too early in the morning. Or far too bright. Maybe it was both? I tried to pry one eye open and immediately regretted it, a piercing pain going straight from my pupil to my brain sitting directly behind it. Definitely had to be both.

My mouth tasted like it had been stuffed with cotton recently.

Perhaps I had indulged in too much alcohol last night and was now reaping the rewards of such a foolish endeavour.

I groaned softly. Thinking too much hurt.

Fighting every instinct in my body to sink back into a painless slumber and deal with everything later, I clung to the tiny tugging insistence that something was off. The bed underneath me was too firm, the blankets too scratchy, and the smell surrounding me too foreign from my usual space. Nothing particularly alarming, but still the cause for some concern and further investigation before mindlessly falling back asleep. This justification still didn't make the decision any easier to commit to.

Bringing my hands up to my face to rub at my eyes helped reveal another clue: on my left wrist was a laminated hospital band. The brightness of the room became far less relevant to me as I carefully examined the bracelet on my arm, intrigued by what information it could bring. Unfortunately it didn't offer much. It had a placeholder name for unknown patients and no birthday or other contacts or anything useful to me at all, just a barcode with meaningless numbers beneath it. The only thing it had helped was distracting me enough that my eyes had finally adjusted to the light properly so that I could try to find out more about my immediate surroundings.

The concern was beginning to build in my stomach as I took in the environment that in no way could be mistaken for anything else but a sterile hospital room. That plus the bracelet on my arm was pretty damn convincing for me to believe I must be in a hospital somewhere for reasons currently unknown.

Was I hurt? I did a quick inventory of my limbs and vital organs. Nothing felt out of place... So why on earth was I here? Was it something not obvious like having had a seizure unexpectedly or finding a cancerous tumour waiting somewhere in my body to spread? There was no IV hooked into my arm or anything like that, which I decided was a good sign. If there was anything seriously wrong with me they would probably have me hooked up to some machinery or something. There was no clipboard or other paperwork in the room found after a quick visual search, so likely no further information on why I was here would be available to me.

My body ached from staying still for too long, but other than that there were no injuries apparent when I sat up in bed. I swung my legs over the side and eased my weight onto my feet, glad when no issues occurred. This movement also brought my current attire to my attention.

Of course – if I'm in a hospital, it only makes sense for me to be in a hospital gown.

Personally not a fan of the disconcerting breeze this gown afforded me, I made my first plan of action searching the room for any other clothes I could wear. The tidy environment didn't make for great success with looting, but in the second drawer under the counter against the side wall I encountered some luck. A slightly crinkled black shirt along with well-worn jeans and a pair of sturdy looking outdoor shoes, scuffed and dirty, were neatly piled inside. They were fairly nondescript clothes but still were not any that I recognized as my own. Presumably these were the clothes I showed up to the hospital in, seeing as they were all my size.

Once fully dressed, hospital gown discarded on the bed and feeling grateful I had at least been left in my own undergarments, the next decision to make was whether to wait around for someone to explain what was going on, go search someone out myself, or just leave seeing as I didn't feel any worse for wear. A big part of me wanted to just bail and try to pretend this had all never happened and was just soe confused fever dream I was experiencing. Either way, waiting around wasn't appealing to me – it had come to me suddenly that I had no idea where my phone was, which meant I had no way of contacting anyone I knew to let them know I was okay. This also meant silently ditching wasn't an option as the hospital may have been holding my phone for me somewhere.