Fresh off the Starship

“Look—she’s wakin’ up!”

“Oh my goodness—could this be happening at last? Missy, sweetheart, are you really finally wakin’ up?”

“Darlin’, can you hear me?”

“Missy Girl, you comin’ back to us?”

OMG—oh my galaxy…what a strange-sounding language! It seems to be all k’s intermingled with whooshes of ssssss and sshhhhhh sounds! Is that English? I’ve studied English for eons, but it seems so different up close.

“She moved her hand again!”

“She’s movin’ her eyelids! Oh, Missy, are you actually wakin’ up?”

The woman in the bed slowly opens her eyes and then quickly shuts them against the bright lights.

“Missy!” An older female human be-thing’s voice cracks.

She opens her eyes again. The three people standing around and over her are blurry against the overhead light and the glare from the window. She counts two male humans and the female. She quickly shuts her eyes again.

Oh, that hurts! It hurts here.

“Missy, honey, can you hear me? Are you comin’ back to us?” The older woman’s voice breaks into a strange wailing noise.

“Darling girl, we thought we lost you,” the older man says as her eyes flutter open again. “But yer comin’ back to us, aren’t you?”

“Missy,” the younger man says, his voice breaking.

“Get the doctor!” shouts the older man.

The younger man rushes out of the room.

Her eyes slowly open even as she squints, trying to adjust to the bright light. Wow, that starshine is radiant—even more than the one at home!

A voice booms over the loudspeaker outside the room: “Dr. Livingston, please go to room two-fourteen. Dr. Livingston, please go to room two-fourteen, stat.” Those words are immediately followed by, “Code blue, room two-eleven. Code blue, room two-eleven.”

Ohhhhhhhh—what a strange place this is! Loud noises, awful smells, strange beings looking at me.

The woman struggles to lift her hand just a few inches off the bed, clearly shocked to see it. Oh. Right. I’m one of those strange beings now.

A woman in a white coat hurries into the room and looks over the machines next to the bed and hooked up to the woman in the bed.

“Yer a lucky lady,” states the woman in white. “We almost lost you. In fact, we did lose you. But welcome back.” She looks at the small family gathered in the room. “Yer one lucky bunch.”

“Thanks, Dr. Livingston,” the older man says through glistening eyes, “fer everything you’ve done.”

Doctor. Doctor. There are so many definitions in that word. Why can’t I remember anything? Where’d all my training go?

The woman in the bed just stares up at the group staring down at her.

This is odd. Do humans just stare at each other?

“Missy, how are you feelin’?”

She doesn’t respond; she just looks at the younger man who asked the question. He looks at the doctor, who then addresses her. “Missy, can you say something to us? Anything at all?”

The woman starts to speak, but then stops. The sensations in her throat feel very unusual.

“Well, you’ve had a very, very long journey back here,” the doctor says, reassuringly.

You’re not kidding.

“We should give you some time,” the doctor continues. She ushers the family out of the room.

When can I go back in the other direction?

The young woman can still see and overhear them talking in the hallway.

“Is she gonna be okay?” the older woman asks.

“How’s her mind gonna be?” the older man asks.

“Well, we don’t know yet,” the doctor responds. “We have to give it some time. That was a horrific accident, and we’re just lucky she didn’t die. In fact, she did die fer a minute there, as you well know. I’m amazed she came back. She certainly wanted to be here, that’s fer sure.”

The older woman holds her hand to her mouth, pushing back a gasp. The older man puts his arm around her.

The group starts to walk back into the room.

“Don’t push her,” the doctor emphasizes. “Give her lots of time and space—she needs that.”

Time and space. Oh, you have no idea.

“Missy,” the young man says, his eyes looking strangely wet, like the older man’s and woman’s had been, “we’ve been with you the whole time you was here.”

Isn’t it supposed to be were here?

“One of us was always with you, takin’ turns, the whole three months.”

“Where am I?” she asks.

The group of three, obviously ecstatic that she can talk but dismayed by her question, turns to the doctor, who’s still standing by the doorway, writing notes. She rushes in.

“Missy, yer in a hospital room. You had a terrible accident a few months ago, and we thought we lost you at one point. But yer a tough survivor and fought yer way back here.”

That’s truer than you know.

“Do you know yer name?”

The woman thinks for a minute and then shakes her head.

The young man takes her hand. “Yer Missy. Yer my Missy Miss.”

She looks at him as if trying to recollect where in the world she would know him from. After a minute or so, she shuts her eyes.

“Perhaps we should just let her sleep some more,” the doctor tells them. “That’s when most of the body’s healing takes place.” She ushers them out of the room again. “Amnesia can be a strange, strange thing,” the doctor starts to say. “The brain—” But she shuts the door and the voices are muffled.

Ohhhhhhh, I have a feeling I’m not in the Andromeda galaxy anymore.