I do not own Sister Location.
White.
That was all I could make out as my eyes opened.
I felt like I was floating, and yet something seemed to weigh me down at the same time.
I couldn't find the strength to move.
The bright white around me began to hurt my eyes, and I closed them, easing the pressure in the back of my skull that had started making itself known. In the blackness I could hear beeping, and I immediately tensed, afraid I was still at Circus Baby's in the scooping room, the machine about to jump to life and end mine.
'Am I dead?' I wondered, afraid I was going to be forced to relive my last moments for all eternity as some spirits are told to do on those Ghostbuster wannabe shows I used to watch as a teen.
But then I noticed the beeping was at a higher pitch than the one in the scooping room was, and was at a somewhat steady pace despite the rate speeding up. I realized it was matching my heartbeat almost perfectly, the heartbeat I could just barely feel thudding in my chest when I focused on it.
I tried opening my eyes again, and everything seemed to come into focus now that I was fully awake and aware. There was still a bright white around me, but I noticed right above me was a fluorescent light surrounded by white ceiling tiles. I focused on the pattern the lights and tiles made as I tried to get any part of my body to move.
Two tiles, one light, two tiles, one light.
They went like that each way throughout the room. White painted walls met my sight next as I managed to start turning my head from side to side to look around better.
The room was fairly small, meant for only one person and a few visitors. A light shaded oak door stood at one wall with a gray metal frame around it and two panels of glass on each side of the door with small white curtains on them. A window looked out into the sky next to me on the opposite wall from the door, large white curtains hanging from the sides there, too. The brown branches and green foliage of a nearby tree stood in my view of the outside, and the light blue of the sky with small white clouds passing was a calming thing to observe.
After a moment, the memories of the previous night flooded my mind, making me wonder why I wasn't in any pain. That gash to my arm had been a bad one. I looked at said arm and noticed it had been properly wrapped in white bandages and lay limp at my side on top of the white sheets covering my lower body. I must have been numbed by pain meds.
I sat up a little, or at least tried to since my body still felt heavy. An IV connected to a bag with a clear fluid in it was attached to my good arm, and an oxygen mask covered my mouth and nose. A few chairs were scattered around the room, a single bedside table stood between me and the window, and a small flat screen TV sat on the wall directly in front of me. On the bedside table was a small vase with blue and white flowers in it, the Golden Freddy plushy I had forgotten I grabbed at Circus Baby's, a bunch of what I assumed to be "Get Well" cards, and…a small basket with an assortment of butters?
I shook my head and picked up the Golden Freddy plushy with my good arm, laying back down and hugging it to my chest. Not too long after, a nurse around my age with dark brown curly hair that reached her shoulders walked into the room, her emerald eyes focused on a clipboard in her hand before she looked up and noticed that I was conscious.
"Ah, Ms. Schmidt," she said. "I see you're finally awake."
I nodded. "How long was I out for?"
"Hm," she hummed a bit, looking back at the clipboard. "You were admitted here five days ago."
"Five days?!" I cried out in disbelief.
She nodded. "You had lost a lot of blood and were close to going into shock when you were brought in. We had to put you into a temporary coma until you were stable so there wouldn't be too many complications. Most of the surgeries you needed for your arm are done, but you might need a skin graft later on if the wound doesn't heal the way it should."
I nodded, taking in her words with furrowed brows. So much had happened without my knowing.
She smiled at me kindly in what I knew was an attempt to help calm me. "The doctor was able to use the skin still connected to your arm as a sort of makeshift skin graft, though, so if you do have to have an actual skin graft done, it won't be as bad as if they had to start from scratch. Anyway, there are some visitors here for you, if you feel like seeing them."
I nodded again, and the nurse left. I sat up the best I could, moving so that my back rested against the headrest of the bed. It was a moment before I heard a commotion in the hall, and Becca burst into the room and ran towards me, locking me in the tightest hug I'd ever gotten from her.
"Becca!... Can't…breathe…" I gasped. It didn't actually hurt me, but her grip was a bit too strong for my liking and made it difficult to breathe properly, and I was sure it would have hurt if I wasn't on anything to block the pain.
She pulled away with a small "sorry" and allowed me to see that she wasn't the only one who had come to check on me. Behind her were Jeremy, Fritz, Mr. Fred, and even Mr. Afton.
"Geez, Mike," Jeremy said in a joking tone. "First you disappear, and then you almost die. Do we need to start babysitting you to keep you out of trouble?"
I laughed a bit. "Sorry, sorry. Things turned out a lot more complicated than I anticipated."
"Still, we're glad you're alright, Mike," Mr. Fred said.
I smiled and held out the Golden Freddy plushy to Mr. Afton. "I'm guessing you want this back, right?"
He shook his head. "Keep it. After everything you went through, you deserve it. Plus, there's not really any place to put it now. Circus Baby's Pizza World has been closed and is up for sale."
I nodded. "And what are you going to do with the animatronics?"
"Mr. Fred's taking care of them," Mr. Afton replied. "I have to go now. There's some business that needs to be taken care of. I hope you'll feel better, Michelle."
He left before I could respond. I shook my head, and then turned to Mr. Fred.
"What are you doing with the animatronics from Circus Baby's?" I asked.
Becca, Jeremy, Fritz, and I looked expectantly at him, and he chuckled.
"I bought them off of William," he replied. "I'm sure they'll make a good addition to the place once you're healed and ready to repair them. Until then, they'll be in the Parts & Service room."
I forced a smile. "Great," I said, trying to add enthusiasm to my voice when in reality I wasn't too fond of the idea of having them around. They did try to kill me, after all.
Mr. Fred walked out of the room, followed not long after by Fritz who said he wanted to visit some friends he'd made here in the hospital that hadn't been discharged yet. Jeremy soon followed, and Becca left too, saying she wanted to talk to Mr. Fred quickly.
I leaned back until my head bumped against the wall, and then closed my eyes and sighed. "Just great."
()()()()
It was a few weeks after when I was finally released from the hospital. I was healed as much as I could be, the injury on my arm now a raw scar that I knew would never go away. It still hurt a bit, since I did need a skin graft to correct some extra damage my arm had taken, but other than that all I was told to do was keep it clean and wrapped for at least another two weeks.
The first thing I did when I got home was eat and sleep. The food at the hospital was bland at best, so it was hard to eat anything, and I was grateful for the snacks Becca and Jeremy brought me every day I was there. That part was Jeremy's idea since Fritz went through the same thing during his stays there for chemotherapy. I also had trouble sleeping most of the time. I guess it was the fact I was trying to sleep in an unfamiliar place that gave me the temporary insomnia. Not surprising since I'd always had trouble sleeping at sleepovers growing up. I was thoroughly exhausted.
Twenty four hours passed, and I felt better than I had while in the hospital and decided to go to Freddy's to take a look at what remained of the animatronics from Circus Baby's. I groaned as I took one of the pain pills the hospital staff gave me, my arm hurting a bit worse than it had the day before, and made my way to Freddy's.
It's not that I didn't want to go back to Freddy's- I really did- but the animatronics from Baby's were there and I was still wary about them. They did try to kill me. They were in pieces at the moment, though, from what Becca, Jeremy, and Mr. Fred had told me, so I could modify their designs slightly to make them safer, and maybe if the spirits were still in them and calmed down a bit I could befriend them like I did with the others.
Mr. Fred greeted me and we talked for a while, mainly about how I was doing, if I felt better, etc., before I made my way to the Parts & Service room.
The scene inside was similar to what I saw at Circus Baby's, minus the scooper. Flashes of that night entered my mind, making a shiver run up my spine, but I mentally shook it away to focus. Sections of exoskeletons were scattered around the room, each one mixing with pieces from the other Circus Baby's Pizza World animatronics in unorganized piles. Off to the side were six bundles of wires morphed into the shapes of the animatronics from Circus Baby's, revealing more detailed versions of the endoskeletons than the ones I was familiar with here at Freddy's.
I picked up a piece of Ballora's face, then looked over at her endoskeleton. Her eyes were closed. When I went over to try and open them, they wouldn't budge. They had been glued or soldered or something to keep them shut.
With a sigh, I began my work.
Sorry about the hiatus with updating this story. School has been taking most of my time, and work on top of it has been stressful.
