Chapter One
The garments scratched at Emmy's skin like sandpaper and she wanted nothing more than to scratch her arms and legs.
"Twenty minutes," Doctor Mora said, not looking at her, fastening a yellow band tightly around Emmy's wrist.
Emmy sniffed in acknowledgement and looked over her shoulder at Georgina. G was also wearing the scratchy blue outfit, a yellow band strapped on her arm. They smiled at each other but said nothing. They couldn't anyway. Emmy wasn't supposed to talk to Georgina. She looked back to Doctor Mora.
"How long now?"
The doctor looked irritated at her question.
"Just under twenty minutes, now lie back."
She pushed gently on Emmy's shoulders so she was lying on the bed she'd previously been perched at the end of. Mora then pulled open a draw, extracted a syringe and filled it with fluid from an airtight sac that hung on the wall. With each time Mora flicked the syringe, Emmy gripped Georgina's hand tighter.
"Now this will only hurt a bit," said Doctor Mora, positioning the needle on the inside of Emmy's elbow, finding the vein. Emmy squeezed her eyes tight as Doctor Mora injected her with the pale blue liquid.
"It's finished now, it's okay to open your eyes." It was the first time the doctor had spoken kindly to Emmy and there was a look of genuine sadness in her eyes. Emmy smiled and carefully opened her eyes again, the world blurry for a few moments.
"Ten minutes."
Emmy's feet were numb and she prodded then gently, feeling a tingling sensation dance over her toes. She liked that. She giggled – quietly, so as not to draw attention to herself. Doctor Mora had left two minutes beforehand and, though she didn't admit it to Georgina, she had started to feel a little lonely. She was sat in a wheelchair in the main hall with a few others, some of whom were also sitting. She curled her legs up to her chest and fiddled with her toes, enjoying not being able to feel anything. She was lucky; some of the patients had their legs strapped to their chairs, unable to move. They're the crazy ones she thought, avoiding eye contact with them. The way they looked at her made her feel queasy sometimes, like they were staring right into her. Georgina was sitting on the floor next to Emmy, her short curls covering her face. She's sad Emmy thought. She stroked the girl's hair back, but then snapped her hand away before anyone could see. She wasn't allowed to communicate with Georgina.
"Don't worry," she whispered almost silently, "it'll be all right."
Georgina must've heard her because she looked up at Emmy and smiled subtly.
"Five minutes."
She was numb almost all over now, but she couldn't move her hands to feel the tingling across her body. Every time she tried to move her hands, the effort was too exhausting and she soon gave up trying. Georgina was still standing, but seemed to have gone limp, her arms swinging gently by her sides, her posture slumped. Doctor Sanchez – the plump Hispanic doctor, who had always been kind to her – effortlessly lifted Emmy out of her chair and onto a table that stuck out of the wall. A table without legs Emmy thought, how curious. Above her head, the code 18A was printed in black on the wall.
Sanchez pressed a small green button to the side of her and the wall behind her head slid upwards. It was then she realised, the table is a shelf of course. From the hole now behind her head, Sanchez pulled out a thin plastic tube and attached it to the catheter already in Emmy's arm.
An electrical buzzer sounded, signalling the final minute.
"Not long now mi querida," he said, typing a code into the keypad to her right. She looked at Georgina, who was standing at the foot of the table. She started to cry silently, tears rolling down her cheeks like raindrops.
"Sshh," Emmy said, "we mustn't cry."
Sanchez looked at Emmy sympathetically. The buzzer sounded again and he gently pushed the table into the hole in the wall. As Emmy's torso disappeared into the glass tube embedded in the wall, she heard Sanchez say, "I see you in five minutes." But Emmy knew that, for him, it would be much, much longer. By the time the door to the tube closed at her feet with a soft click, Emmy's entire body was numb and motionless. There was a low hum, and then dark blue fluid began to crawl its way down the tube, slowly making its way from the entrance in the wall through the tube and into the catheter. She could only watch as the liquid entered her arm. It tingled slightly, but not in the way she liked. It was almost burning, but she couldn't cry out. She missed Georgina. She needed her here. Her eyelids began to droop and before long they had closed altogether and her thoughts merged and swam together, like soup in her head. There was another hum and the burning stopped. Everything stopped.