Isolation - 1

The first week came and went. And with it, all of Doctor Andromeda's pretense of care.

The sweet, goodly doctor act faded, and she returned to her cutting, clinical tone and manners. Thankfully, I only saw her once or twice a day. She'd darken the west ward doors with a rickety metal cart containing a sparse meal, three medicine bags for the IV, and a tray of empty blood tubes. And she'd leave with a half-eaten bowl of gruel and six tubes filled with my blood.

The meals could barely be called such. Cold soup with chunks of unidentifiable meat and vegetables that were obviously from three dinners passed. But I didn't complain.

When she hooked those medicine bags that shone and swirled like liquid mercury and fed them into my small, bruised arms, I didn't complain. When the medicine burned and made me feel like I was dying the most painful death imaginable, I didn't complain. And when she stood over my writhing body, glaring down at me as though each moment of agony was punishment for being alive, I didn't complain.

I ate what she gave. Suffered what she gave. Slept when she was gone. And silently surrendered what she wanted. My blood. Always my blood.

Occasionally, I heard her grumble under her breath. Angry huffs as she scribbled data onto her precious clipboard. Something about "fundamental incompatibility" and "adverse reactions to the treatment." Most of the time, she sat silently and wrote. Her pen scratches were the only sounds that filled the space between us. Pen and paper and my ragged breaths.

Oh, but I never complained.

I smiled when she entered, brightened even as she hung another bag of that poison on my IV stand. She wanted me docile and compliant. Weak. Obedient. I gave her the performance she sought. Because I wanted to be conscious.

The first night in the isolation ward, I dreamed. It was a memory from years ago. A time when I'd complained about the medicine making me feel sick, making my head hurt, and making me tired. I argued, a child begging the only adult in her life to listen. That was the first time Doctor Andromeda sedated me. I had buried that memory. The tears and pleading as she stuck a big needle into my arm and told me it was for my own good.

I'd woken up back then, certain I had dreamt the encounter. I’d been so certain the doctor wouldn't have hurt me like that. Poor kid.

I wasn't going to give her the chance or the reason to do it again. Arya and I agreed that, in those brief moments when we were both strong enough to communicate, we needed to be awake. We needed to build our strength and do whatever we had to do to escape the isolation ward and Doctor Andromeda when the time was right.

But that time felt more distant with each passing day.

Every bag of medicine and minuscule meal and vial of blood she drew took me farther and farther from freedom. I rested when I could. Ate as much of that trash as I could. But the blood and medicine kept me weak.

Aurelia... we need to get out of here. Next time she comes, we have to fight back.

If I fight her, she can and will overpower me. I'm not strong enough to face her head-on, Arya. I know it.

Then, we make another plan. But if we stay here, we won't last much longer.

She was right.

Whatever Doctor Andromeda's "treatment plan" was, it wasn't to make me better. Any fool would know as much. Any fool would know as much. I might not have been the smartest wolf in the pack, but I knew enough that medicine wasn't supposed to make me feel like this. Treatment wasn't supposed to take more than it gave.

The problem was finding the strength to make it out of the isolation ward without being captured, brought back, and sedated into oblivion.

I need to get the lay of the land. If I can scout around and see just how far I need to go to escape, maybe I can build up the strength to at least get outside.

But once you get outside, then what? We need to shift. To fight.

Arya, I'm too weak. I don't think my body can shift. Whatever she's been giving me in the IV bag, it's... suppressing you. Like the night of our first meeting.

She forced that foul medicine down your throat, and I couldn't hear you or feel you anymore. I whined, but you never answered.

This medicine is the exact same stuff. I can tell by its look and smell. Poison, it has to be poison. I just wish I knew why.

“Why” doesn't matter, Aurelia. As long as we're trapped here, “why” is the least of our problems.

She was right.

I'd never get answers if I didn't get out.

Doctor Andromeda had left after my first meal of the day around two hours prior. I had another three before she rolled back in with more food and "medicine." Three hours to force myself upright and to the wheelchair in the corner. With that, I could wheel myself around the west ward. Three hours to come up with a plan.

But the first step is to move.

I looked down at my thin legs. Minutes ticked by without so much as a twitch, but I didn't stop. Every thought in my head focused on wiggling my toes and moving my feet. The dead weight of them ate away at my confidence, but with Arya baying in my mind, her howl an encouraging roar of support, I couldn't stop.

I wouldn't stop.

Ten minutes. Then twenty. Thirty. Forty-five minutes. I focused and fought and tried everything in my power to move my feet. An hour passed. Had the poison taken too much? Was it too late?

"No."

I gritted my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut. And it happened.

A twitch. My toes shifted, and feeling returned like pinpricks and electric jolts through the soles of my feet.

YES! Good job, my girl.

"Alright, let's get these legs moving."