Herself

It was going to be another busy night, but she was up to it – looking forward to it, in fact. It was rewarding, to be able to be so professional, so clinical, so effective – and she was doing so much to help others. She finished laying out the new surgical tools, and turned to the doctor, who was standing, staring at her open mouthed – as was the rest of the team, and the ambulance team who had just wheeled the next emergency in.

What was Gavin’s problem? He’d know for a few weeks now that she was cursed to apparently live forever – she hadn’t wanted him to know, but he’d found some old photos of her, photos which were clearly her, from over a hundred years ago. So ... she’d explained her curse, and how it had been hard to live with for many centuries, but she’d seen lots of change, and knew more was to come, but had chosen to be a nurse because people always needed caring, needed to be given hope.

He’d accepted that, and accepted that her meticulousness now was in response to decades of despair where she’d tried to kill herself. There’d been no intimacy, just mutually respectful friendship – the G was a good doctor, but what was he starting at her for?

Then she noticed some of the rest of team starting at the patient, and she looked down.

It wasn’t like looking into a mirror: it was ... as if the Universe had turned and twisted sickeningly, like some monstrous, not right side show alley ride, and thrown her out in two places at once. She’d nursed a patient once who had had an eye dislodged, who had talked to her about the disorientation of having two sets of vision at the same time: it felt a bit like that, she thought.

There she was, unconscious, dressed disturbingly differently, clutching something in her hand that looked alien – no, she knew it was from the future – and looking decidedly unwell, uncared for – a futuristic version of the homeless people she’d helped.

Where was her meticulousness, her professionalism gone? What was she going to go through?

She burst into tears, and Gavin guided her out, as the rest of the team sprang into action.

© Kayleen White, 2010

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