Chapter Three: Blurred

There was little to be said for the way Erin felt about her current situation. Any synonym for 'abject misery' would have sufficed.

She was not entirely certain about how much time had passed, since there were no clocks in her room, and the amount of daylight visible through the narrow window could have suggested either that only several hours had passed, or that a full day had. This was doubtlessly also due to that certain quality all hospitals seemed to have, a feeling of disconnect, of weightless suspension. With the door closed, she had no way of knowing what was occurring on the other side, with the exception of listening very intently, and even then only hearing muffled voices, and the occasional trundling of a cart being rolled passed her room. Obviously that really was not much to go by, since there were often torturously long spans of silence that had the unfortunate effect of making Erin feel as though she were adrift on a raft in the middle of a still sea.

At least she could say that she no longer felt as though she were being flayed alive. This was, of course, entirely due to the copious levels of morphine running through her blood. Of course, that had been a battle and a half, since apparently there was absolutely no reason why she should be feeling pain. Or so the doctor had told her in broken English. Apparently it was all in her head, and boy had she hated the way they all looked at each other with their carefully constructed masks, as if they were all thinking the same thing, but had no intention of letting her in on the joke.

Whatever it was, evidently it was far from being funny, and their feigned sense of serenity was frankly aggravating.

There were, however, more pressing matters to be dwelled upon endlessly, and fruitlessly. For example, she still had no idea how the hell she had ended up in a country, which from her limited understanding, was likely to be Japan, given the sound of the language they spoke. She was fairly familiar with Korean, given how much she enjoyed their dramas, and she had stumbled across a few Chinese based shows, so she knew at least a few traits of the languages, even if it was less than a bare minimum. She was hardly fluent in any way, shape, or form.

That aside, just because she knew it was Japanese she was hearing did not mean that she found any solace in it. There was no sound explanation outside of some sort of yet-to-be-heard-of mental impairment caused by the accident which was altering her ability to interpret speech correctly, or she was suffering some sort of retrograde amnesia regarding the timespan between the accident she did remember having, and whatever event which had occurred resulting in her in a hospital, in Japan.

Monsters, her mind hissed at her, as an in impossible third solution. Magic, it said, but she was steadily ignoring that that train of thought. Monsters and magic were not an acceptable excuse for anything, unless in the pretext of small children, or dramatic metaphors. While she made no arguments against her being a somewhat dramatic person, she also would not allow for such a flimsy excuse, no matter how much time she spent immersing herself in fictional realities. In any case, her mental stability was already proven to be shaky. It made infinitely more sense for that to be the source of her current problem.

Still, she was far too miserable, on far too much pain medication (just enough, just enough to not feel like there was a black hole devouring her piece by piece) to continue trying to reason out her perplexing circumstances.

She could conclude that she was headed for a great deal of therapy, and possibly surgery in the event that this really was some sort of auditory hallucination brought on by brain trauma. There was also likely to be a number of expenses as a result, and that meant, without a doubt, her parents would have to be involved. She'd only had enough money from her articles and her unemployment fund to scrape by. Whatever fees she was going to have to pay for medication, therapy, or surgery, maybe both, on top of the legal fees, and transportation too (there was going to be paperwork, so much paperwork), would need to be found from other sources.

Actually, while she could rationalize them not being present when she had awoken, Erin was a little shocked that her mother and father had yet to make an appearance. They must have been notified of the first accident, and possible the potential second accident. It didn't really matter what exactly had happened to Erin, they still would have at least tried to sort things out. Therefor they had to be in town, or staying nearby… despite everything, Erin didn't really think they would just admit her to the hospital, and then disappear to their respective corners of the continent. Thus, it should not have been difficult for the hospital to get ahold of them to inform them that their daughter had woken up from her coma, and it certainly would not have very taken long for them to get to the hospital. It remained a mystery, then, as to why she had seen neither hide, nor hair of a single family member.

Yet another thing for her to think about when the single, faded water stain on the ceiling stopped being so distracting. Actually, it kind of looked like that weird cartoon character Crayola, or Canola or something.

There was a good reason she was convinced she was missing time, whatever the cause might have been, outside of the Doctor's halting, patchy explanation. Although the window in her room provided very little in the way of actual daylight, it did offer her a very dull view of the adjacent wing. Which had snow on the roof. Snow. When the last thing she remembered was the scorching heat of Hell-on-Earth. It was a very light layer of snow, but it was snow nevertheless. She didn't know the date, but it was pretty obvious that she must have been out of it for several months at the very least.

It was either the coma then or, more likely, the retrograde amnesia, which was slowly gaining a greater percentage on terms of probability. Erin did not actually know a great deal about memory loss, outside of the fictionalized accounts which had become something of a fad in media, and was a common plot device in a great many fan fiction, so she did not know if it was possible to forget forgetting. Or perhaps she hadn't forgotten in the first place, she had just knocked out the memories in between the two places. Or maybe she really had been a vegetable for months. Maybe the weather was just super weird. Maybe everything was weird.

Her head was starting to hurt, and it was either because she was due for another dose of morphine, or because she was thinking too much. Possibly both. She had already established that getting worked up over things she couldn't do anything about never served any purpose besides stirring up emotional turmoil.

Her musings were interrupted by the rattle of the door to her room. A nurse entered immediately after, an awkward, but sort of friendly smile on her face. There was something… off about it though. Something in the way her fingers had a white knuckled grip on her clipboard, something about how her eyes darted back to the hallway—something, most likely someone was there.

Sure enough, moments later, a man walked in. At first he did not seem to have a great deal of presence. His face was fairly open, and kind, if not a little plain. His hair, which was rather voluminous, was dark brown, and might have been the victim or a terrible perm. He was dressed in a heavy coat, and fairly cheap looking suit, his tie an unfortunate yellow-orange colour that looked like burnt mustard. He reminded her of someone, though she could not place how so. Perhaps he simply looked like someone else, though she could think who that might be, given how she didn't actually know that many Asian men. Perhaps she did have amnesia, and had forgotten meeting him.

The nurse said something to her in the language she did not know, before stopping. Her face scrunched up in concentration, and she stared at Erin for several long moments, as if hoping for some sort of reaction. She was met with disappointment though, because Erin had a headache. Plus, she was still somewhat distracted by the stain on the drywall above her, was wondering about when she could have some more morphine, was trying to figure out how she knew the man, and. Did. Not. Understand.

The man said something to the nurse after several seconds of awkward silence, his hand lifting up in a placating gesture, to which the nurse hesitantly nodded, and then, with one last, rather pensive glance at Erin, left the room. The man watched her go, and then, with movements that seemed deliberately casual, slid the door shut behind her, effectively securing that Erin and he were alone.

Erin's skin started itching something fierce, and her attention diverted from the ceiling to the door. It was a wide, sliding door, in a soft coloured wood. Though it probably was not real wood. It was probably that cheap MDF stuff that was all glue and a bit of sawdust painted to look authentic. It also had a stainless steel knob—which was probably plastic, and not real metal. There was also an oblong window, which was semi-transparent, giving the illusion of privacy for the concerned patient trapped within.

Only the patient was Erin, and suddenly she found herself thinking that the window was not quite transparent enough, and that there was a stranger in her room, with the door closed.

Suddenly, a wallet unfolded in front of her face, with a picture of the man, and a golden coloured badge. She couldn't read any of the words, since she knew even less about Japanese writing than she did of the spoken language. It did look Japanese though, and she realized that probably meant she really was in Japan, and not suffering some sort of brain damage induced hallucinative trauma. That narrowed the possibilities down to amnesia, which was most certainly not ideal, since she still had no idea what had occurred in the timeframe between the hot, sunny, summer day she last remembered, and this cold, grey winter one. She did have an assumption though, which helped. Somehow.

The man was speaking. Slowly, as if she were a child, or very stupid. Which, to be fair, she had just woken up from a coma, and she was hyped up on on drugs.

"My name is Aizawa Shuichi. Aizawa. I am… police." He was speaking in English, hesitantly, since he clearly was not used to it. His accent was heavy, he practically butchered the word police, and he stumbled while he searched for the right word.

It was such a relief to hear something she could understand though, that Erin found herself nodding along, and carefully repeating the name to make sure she remembered it properly. It rolled off her tongue easily as if it had been practised, but only she seemed surprised by this feat. The man, the police-man, mostly seemed pleased by the prospect of progress. He took a moment to glance around, before pulling one of the chairs by the wall closer to the side of her bed.

"Yes. I am police, a…" he stopped, mumbled something again in Japanese, before continuing "detective? I have some questions to ask you."

Erin nodded eagerly. It made sense, and though she really did not know how helpful she would be, given her current state, protocol was protocol, and the guy had a job to do. Even if she was not the most comprehensive, they could always contact her again once her condition had improved. Chances were that they just needed a statement for documentation, or record purposes, or whatever.

"Okay," the man said, nodding along with her. He smiled, and it was not strictly a genuine thing, but it was professional and polite, which was not bad either. "What is… your name?"

"Erin Harker. Ugh, Harker Erin?" Obviously they knew she was not exactly a fellow countrymen, but she didn't know how best to introduce herself. First name first, or family name first? Well, he would probably figure it out. They had her ID anyway.

He nodded, and on a small notepad which he drew out of a pocket on the inside of his coat he made a note. "Date of Birth?"

As Erin told him she noticed he had a habit of repeating everything she said while he was writing it down, although it was a bit presumptuous to call it a habit when she had only answered two of his questions. Plus, he was probably having a hard time with the English.

"Can you tell me your… home. Now?"

"Where I live?"

"Yes," he smiled at her again, and she found herself a bit taken aback by the sudden eye contact he was making. Up until now he had been acting very casual, and somehow she had found herself at ease, despite the closed door. Maybe it was because of that familiar feeling, which was still niggling at the back of her mind that had caused her to let her guard down.

"Sure. Ah, yes. Um, like, mailing address and street address?" She asked, fumbling with her words awkwardly while she tried to focus on maintaining eye contact, which was certainly not one of her strong points. While she rattled off her current place of residence, she had to struggle not to let her eyes dart all over the place. Her father had always told her it was rude not to look at people when speaking to them, but somehow she always felt prolonged eye contact was oddly confrontational.

"What about family?"

"Huh?" She blinked.

"Your… family? The… mother? Father?" He asked, looking confused, uncertain about how to rephrase that question, of what words he was supposed to be using. It took an edge of the whole interrogation feeling, but only just.

"That's… Leah Sanger and and Fred- um, Alfred. Alfred Harker. Well, technically mom is still Harker, but…" but why was he asking about her family? They had to have gotten in contact with them. She was in a hospital! She had been in an accident! She had amnesia! There was no way her parents weren't around. Unless something had happened to them. Something she couldn't remember, and what if whatever had happened to them had been the reason why she couldn't remember, and what if they had been in some sort of accident too?

"Are they alright? Have you spoken to them? They are here, aren't they? Did they get hurt? But they're okay, right? You have met them, haven't you? What happened?"

She barely registered the way the beeping of the machines connected to her started to increase, because her head was pounding, and there was a marching band stomping around with symbols, and wow, who was spinning her bed around like that, it wasn't very nice, was it? It was like she was on a merry-go-round, and she really didn't like those. Didn't like the spinning, spinning colours, and it reminded her of sun, and sand, and laughing, laughing, laughing, but those were happy things, so why did she feel so sick, and why was everything wrong, wrong, wrong?

The man's hands were on either side of her face, and he was talking to her. Talking at her. She had no idea what he was saying, because it was in a different language, and why was it in a different language, none of it made any sense, how did she even get here anyway? Where was she, what happened to her, was it monsters and magic after all? Because it all seemed just crazy enough that it could really be true.

"Erin Harker. It's okay. Okay. It's okay. Okay. Erin Harker. Be calm. It's okay." He kept on saying that, the police-man, because he didn't know what else to say, but he had to know that nothing, nothing at all, was okay.

Then there were nurses, and needles, and voices, and they were all trying to get her to calm down. Their fingers were all over her, bruising, and pinching. It hurt, it hurt so bad, and she couldn't breathe, not with their eyes, those black holes, black tunnels, sucking her up, destroying her very atoms.

She wanted to scream, and maybe she was, but she couldn't hear it over the ringing in her ears, and the laughing. Laughter, she could hear the laughter over everything else, like a cacophonous symphony of musicians tuning their instruments, and with it were yellow eyes, bright, bright yellow eyes, like stage lights, like headlights, and they saw her. They saw her, so she shut her eyes, and she screamed, and she screamed, and she screamed, but her mouth tasted like blood and ash, so much ash that she was suffocating on it, that it stifled her voice, filled her esophagus, and buried her alive.

Alive?