The Pain Inside

Chapter 14

    "You'd have made a great doctor, you know," she heard the words even before she'd truly gained her bearings. When the table came into focus before her, the sparse room, her eyes immediately went to the chair across from her where Matt had always been sitting before, in this world where the shadow had first made its appearance, but he wasn't there. Her eyes quickly scanned the room and found him standing in a corner, leaning against a wall, his arms crossed over his chest as he watched her. "Maybe you should change your major when you get back," he joked.

    "You'd be a better doctor than I could ever be," she replied, shaking her head slightly. "You've got the brain for it, the will to help others no matter how you're feeling yourself. If anyone was going to aim for med school, it should've been you."

    "The constant press of people in a hospital, terrible hours, non-stop stress day after day, knowing that people's lives would rest in my hands, and the potential for so very many mistakes, any one of which I wouldn't be able to let slide off my back, that I would simply never be able to forgive myself for? At some point, every doctor is going to screw up. Make a mistake that gets someone killed. Even the smartest of them isn't perfect, they're human, it's inevitable... And I wouldn't be able to live with that," Matt told her with a little shrug, before smiling. "But then, I guess I couldn't live with anything anyways, right?"

    "That's not funny, Matt," she said flatly. Already the walls of the room were becoming a little indistinct, blurring at the edges. The table in front of her seemed less real every time she looked at it. This world wasn't going to last for very long. There wasn't much holding it together any more.

    "No?" he asked, still smiling, but bowing his head slightly. "You're going to have an amazing life, Kat. You're stronger than you think, with or without me. You'll do incredible things, and make me so unbelievably proud of you, no matter where I am."

    "Matt..." she started, her voice catching. What was he saying? And then something struck her. "What's wrong with your chest? You keep having these... Attacks. What's causing them?"

    He didn't answer for a moment, his eyes focusing on nothing, and just when she was about ready to say something else, he finally spoke. "Do you know how long we've been here Kat? Really been here I mean? Any expert on dreams can tell you that time works differently, inside our heads. Mere seconds in the real world can become minutes, hours, even days within our minds. Without the limitations of our body and our natural sync with the passing of time in the physical world around us, our brains can process things and operate remarkably fast. I don't know how long it's seemed to you since you got here, but in the real world it's only been seconds, maybe a minute," he explained, hesitating as he continued to stare off at nothing, before going on. "As everything comes together, I'm only now beginning to understand it all myself. I think... I think the instant you arrived here, in my head... Was the instant after my heart stopped."

    "What?" she whispered, her blood running cold.

    "My heart isn't beating. I only truly realized it just now myself. Being caught up in these worlds was shielding me from feeling it. But as they break down, it's starting to get through to me. Without my heart pumping blood, my brain has enough oxygen to keep me going, to keep these places running, for maybe a couple minutes of time in the real world, and then it's over. Whatever brought you here did it because I'm about to die, for real this time. Maybe this was the universe showing me a kindness for a change. Giving me a real chance to say goodbye," Matt stated, his eyes finally focusing on her again.