Universal Displacement

Fires and Frying Pans

"No," she muttered to herself. She wasn't going to become a science oddity if she could help it. With her luck they'd insist that she be kept in some type of home.

Sutton threw back the bed sheets and wobbled into a standing position off the bed. After a few moments of readjusting, her legs held her up fine enough and she snagged her old clothes that were folded neatly next to her bag of belongings.

When she was dressed she took inventory of the bag and sighed when she found all her things still present and intact. She rubbed her thumb over the cool metal of the fob watch and bit her lip.

"I'm getting home. Just take one step at a time. I can do this."

The door opened automatically for her when she approached it, and the heartbeat monitor on the screen gave a shrill beep while shooting off a notification that the patient had left the boundaries of its scanning field.

Sutton walked quickly.

She was able to make it to a receptionist area before someone spotted her. A woman in a lab coat with too large of eyes was just tucking a tablet under her arm and rubbing at her neck when Sutton crossed her path.

"Wha- Miss, you can't be here. Visiting hours are over!"

Sutton clung to the strap of her handmade bag with both hands and nodded under the doctor's stern, unnerving gaze.

"Right, sorry. I was just trying to leave."

The doctor hummed lowly in her throat and then pointed down the hall.

"Down that hall to the right are the lifts. Take them down to the ground floor."

"Thank you."

Sutton trotted for the elevators as quickly as she was able to while still trying to appear casual. They couldn't force her to stay, right? Even if you really should stay in the hospital, you always had the option to check out. She had made it to the elevators when she heard an alerting chime followed by the clacking of the doctor's shoes and a slightly alarmed,

"Wait! Miss, you shouldn't be lea-!"

The elevator doors slid closed and Sutton breathed a sigh of relief as she descended to the ground floor.

From the ground floor, it was easy to slip out the front doors and into the night. Traversing the city was another story.

Although it was dark, twinkling lights from the surrounding skyscrapers lit up this sky while there was a steady, quiet hum from continuous traffic. Sutton came to a sudden stop as the realization of how quiet it truly was sank in. Cities were never this quiet. New York had never been this quiet. Traffic was always startling and loud no matter the hour, and yet that was not the case here. There were still the sounds of disturbed air and chatter, but it was deathly silent in comparison to what she was used to since moving to New York. Overhead vehicles zipped by, their blinking lights a warning that they were there, and vehicles hovered just above the ground below them. For a moment she hesitated. It was dark and she was in a city and in a world that she didn't really know. Television and movies hardly spent time focusing on earth in Star Trek when there were entire new planets to explore.

It left her at a slight disadvantage on how to correctly handle this situation. She wasn't exactly a Trekkie. Her mother had watched it off and on while she was growing up, but she didn't know the slang and she was still suspicious about the hospital not billing her. But she had no real choice but to continue moving forward and try to find a place that wasn't a hospital to sleep for the rest of the night. Whether it was her deer in the headlights look or the fact that she was waving one arm frantically at passing vehicles, Sutton finally got one to stop for her. As luck would have it, it was designated as a cab. She opened the back passenger side door and poked her head in nervously while the driver turned back to look at her.