Tuesday, July 20, 2004
When I woke up next, I was in a hospital bed, appropriately with one of their designated robes placed over my real clothes. The doctors had placed an IV in my arm. Unfortunately, I was still stuck in Lily's body.
It only took a matter of seconds before I realized that the patient I could see in the corner of my eye in the bed to my left wasn't someone else; it was me. A mirror image of me, mimicking my every move: when I waved my arm at her, she did the same at me. But despite the fact that I was in Lily's body, the mirror image I was looking at was my body, my real body.
"Lily?"
My aunt's voice startled me. I turned to look at her, standing at the left side of the bed, only to realize that there was a mirror image of her, too, standing beside that of me.
"What?" I said lazily, continuing to look at the image. Out of curiosity, I looked to my right, where another mirror image of the two of us could be seen. Straight ahead, I saw the same thing. "Who's over there?" I asked Aunt Sophia, pointing to the duplicates of her and I to my left, her right.
"It's…another patient," Sophia said as though it should've been obvious.
"And…over there?" I said, turning to my right and pointing to that mirror.
"Another patient. You're in the hospital, Lily. You've been unconscious for five days."
Where was Lily's voice? I could hear her before I'd fallen unconscious. So where was she now? Was she still in my body in California? Was she okay?
"How's, um, Claire?" I said.
"Funny you should ask," Sophia said, placing a comforting hand on my cheek. "Your aunt and uncle called. Something happened to her on the same day you fell," she explained, rubbing her hand through my hair, "and she fell unconscious, too. Are you still hearing those voices in your head?"
"No," I said. And that's what worried me, although I didn't tell Aunt Sophia that. "Why are you here? Shouldn't you be at work right now?"
"I've been visiting you everyday since the accident. I had to know my only daughter was okay."
Those mirrors were still creeping me out. Every little gesture my aunt and I made, they repeated in unison. Where were they coming from? Why was I seeing them in the first place?
Of course, the answer was obvious. It was the trapdoor. That damn trapdoor.
Thinking about that damn trapdoor at that moment turned out to be an epiphany of sorts. Unlike my misadventures with Holly back home and in that ancient Egyptian tomb, in this alternate reality, I was in Norfolk, and therefore, if I wanted to, I could access the trapdoor. On the other hand, when Lily was me and I was her before, I'd gone down the trapdoor and ended up in this, an arguably even worse reality to be caught in. Still, the thought that, maybe, going down there again would return everything to normal wouldn't leave me. It was a long shot, but it just might work.
"I want to go home," I said forcefully, grabbing my aunt's blouse.
"I know you do, sweetie," Aunt Sophia said. "And nothing would make me happier than to have you home again. But you literally just woke up, Lily. The doctors will need to make sure you're all set to go before they can release you."
"Screw that," I said. "I need to go, right now."
"Lily, we can't just snap our fingers and make it happen like that."
"Hey, you two," a handsome blond doctor, somewhere in his thirties, said as he (and his reflections in the mirrors) suddenly showed up in our little cube. He smiled and wrote some information down on a clipboard with a pen. "So you're finally awake. That's good."
"Can I go home now, doctor?" I said, not expecting a positive response. I looked at his name tag so I'd have some idea of who I was talking to, who'd been taking care of me for the last five days.
"Soon enough," Dr. Larson said with a nod.
"How soon?"
"Well, you probably could go home today if you wanted to, but you should probably stay here another day or two so we can make sure you'll be completely all right when you do leave."
"That's not soon enough!" I said.
"Calm down, kid."
"I will not calm down! I have to go home right now!"
"Be back soon," the doctor said, ignoring me as he walked away. He passed through the wispy mirror I was seeing around me and disappeared.
"Mom," I said, and it felt weird every time I called my aunt that, "you have to get me out of here! I need to get back to the house!"
"It can wait, Lily."
"I'm not Lily!" I exclaimed, slamming fists, weak from days of no use, down on the bed around my legs. "I'm your niece, Claire, and I'm trapped in her body, and she's trapped in mine! This all happened because we went down the trapdoor in the cellar! I think if I go down there again, I might be able to reverse it! …Or maybe it'll make things even worse, I don't know. Help me!"
My aunt just stared at me like I was some kind of nut. And if I were in her position, I probably would have done the same. But everyone has that part of the brain that believes the craziest things no matter how insane they might sound, and I hoped that Aunt Sophia's crazy-believer wouldn't be tossed aside, not today.
After a long pause, she said slowly to me, "I want to believe you, but…"
"You know what?" I said defiantly, taking the IV out of my arm and pulling my hospital robe off. "I don't need you!" I turned to make my way off the bed while Sophia, perhaps still registering what I'd just told her, just watched. "I'll just find my own way home!" Walking with a little bit of a limp following the disuse of my limbs, I made my way out of the mirror cube I'd been stuck in, and what do you know, I was able to pass through it just as Dr. Larson had earlier, and when I looked behind me to see how it appeared from the outside, I saw just saw ordinary hospital beds with ordinary, different patients (although my bed was now, of course, empty). I shook my head and uttered a small, rather bitter laugh, only to trip onto the floor I was walking on.
My aunt showed up from behind to help me up, and after doing so, she told me to great, wonderful surprise, "I do believe you, um, Claire."
"Thank you!" I sighed.
The two of us shared a hug, but we were interrupted in the middle by Dr. Larson.
"What do you think you're doing?" he asked.
