The Transmigration Of Souls [How To Save A Life Sequel]

Chapter 1: The Man In The Mirror

"W-where's Kate?", I asked, my voice barely above a whisper, "Kate a-and Grace.  Where are they?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Richard", she replied, calling me a name that obviously didn't belong to me (this had to be a joke, right?), "It's just me, Clara, your girlfriend." Her palm suddenly pressed against my forehead with gentle touch, she slowly ran her fingers through my hair, instantly making me pause. "Who are these people, Richard? You know you can tell me everything..."

"No, no, no, no, no", I exclaimed, my voice getting louder with every word, pushing her away from me, "Just stop! Whatever you're doing, just stop it! Where is Kate? Please tell me where she is and I'm fine. I just want to find her and- and--..." That was the moment my voice failed.  Whereby it somehow didn't sound like my voice at all.

"R-Richard, you're scaring me", she, Clara, mumbled sadly, "Why don't you open your eyes and look at me? Please, look at me, darling."

But I just kept my eyes shut, desperately fighting against the curiosity that was trying to catch a look of what had actually happened. "Please just let me go", I begged, still confused about the voice that was saying those words, "I just want to see my family a-and-...", I gulped, forcing myself to cough in order to get my voice, my real voice, back.

"Clara, his heart rate is increasing", Liam suddenly interfered, "We should pause for a while and continue later..."

"I don't know what's wrong with him", she cried out before I heard some footsteps walking away from me, turning to the other side to bury my head in the pillow, ruffling my hair.

"What's happening?", I asked myself, a single tear streaming down my cheek as I still kept my eyes shut, "I want this all to stop, please just make it stop. Where's my family? Where's Kate? A-and where's Grace?" Hesitating for a second, I coughed, desperately trying to get my voice back to normal but paused as soon as I recognized my plan wasn't going to work out.

But eventually (as I couldn't see any other option left for me), I decided to finally open my eyes. Hesitantly at first and quickly narrowing them again as the flickering fluorescent light was blinding my eyes. It was too bright, too bright for me to see anything at all. My eyes still had to adapt to all this light that was now surrounding me.

And this scent. This already known but nevertheless strange scent of disinfectants, sickness and disease (?). I didn't know how else to describe it.

Although there seemed to be a certain familiarity now that I was finally able to have a closer look at my surroundings, something still didn't match up, felt different, wrong. But I couldn't quite tell what was bothering me, asides from the fact that all of this was so obviously messed up.

This woman, Clara, who seemed to know me so well albeit I have absolutely no recollection of her, this man, Liam, and me (or not me?). She called me Richard which surprisingly wasn't my name, neither have I ever been mistaken for one, everyone knew who I was. None of this made any sense at all and the burning question on my mind was basically summed up as What the hell was happening?

And the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize there was only one way to find out, one way to deal with this ridiculous joke.

Gathering all of my strength, I eventually pulled myself up, almost falling back but quickly grabbing the drawer next to my bed to hold on to. I gulped, taking long and deep breaths to let some oxygen curse back into my lungs as I was hesitantly placing one foot in front of each other, desperately trying to stay balanced.  Actually, it wasn't even that hard to stay on my feet but this whole situation just seemed so different, like these feet didn't belong to me. That probably was the reason I fell to the ground only a couple of seconds after taking the first steps, clinging to the drawer just to throw it to the ground where we both landed with an incredibly loud bang.