The next time I woke up,
the IV was back in its place, and the monitoring device on my chest was humming
a gentle, steady lullaby. The raw panic from before had faded into a cold, hard
knot in my stomach. I thought about what happened and thought that maybe I had
been allucinating. But, as a nurse, I knew that that type of full hallucination
was an extremely rare occurrence. I had to know if it had been real.
I got out of the bed
slowly, a sense of dread pooling in my gut. I started to walk, pulling the
heart monitor attached to my chest while it rattled slowly beside me, a low,
constant reminder of my physical state. I stumbled to the door, dragging the
machine's wheels across the tiled floor.
My hand trembled as I reached for the handle. I cracked the door open
just a sliver and peeked through. My blood ran cold. The nurse station was
bustling with activity, but not in any way I understood. A young woman in
scrubs was speaking to a small, pink creature with a perpetually happy look, a
toddler ponytail and a single egg in its body. It was a Happiny, and it was handing her a
clipboard. Beside them, two larger, more maternal-looking creatures, both Chanseys, were diligently sorting
medical charts while two human nurses typed away on their computers. They were
just... nurses. Doing their jobs.
My mind reeled, a scream caught in my throat. I hastily closed the door
without them noticing, the world's most impossible sight now hidden from view.
I stumbled back to the bed and collapsed onto the edge, wrapping my arms around
myself as I put my face in my hands. The monitor beeped a little faster on my
chest, a cold, indifferent reminder of a reality I couldn't understand.
The moonlight gleamed
through the window and, after some moments of rocking my body to auto-regulate,
while listening to the strangest bird sounds that I've ever heard outside, I
got up again. My mind was still reeling with the implications of what I saw at
the nurse station, the image of those Pokémon acting as nurses playing on a
horrifying loop in my head. What kind of a world is this? What happened
to me? Is my family okay? what happened to my babies?
Once more, I dragged the heart monitor behind me, the
wheels rattling on the tiled floor as I made my way to the restroom. All the craziness
had made my bladder feel like bursting. The
bathroom was small and sterile. I closed the door behind me, the sound a soft
click that offered no real sense of privacy or escape. After I was finished, I
simply turned to face the sink and small mirror.
I took a deep breath while washing my hands, and for the first time, I
looked in the mirror.
It was my face.
I mean…of course it would be my face, but I had read enough fanfics to
think that maybe, if I was really in the Pokémon universe, I would be someone
else, or maybe a character from the games, anime or manhwa. The reality of it
was more horrifying than being a game character. The same nose, the same curve
to the lips, the same exact shade of honey brown eyes. But the face was gaunt,
with dark circles under the eyes, and its youth felt alien and wrong. It was my
face, but it was haunted by a grief I hadn't felt in years and a despair I had already
overcome years ago. I looked like me, when I was at my worst, probably 15 or 16
years old. I couldn't really believe my eyes. The heart monitor start beeping
with surprise, but I quickly took deep breaths to stabilize my heart rate, as I
didn't want anyone entering my room at that moment. I continued to take note of
the changes in me.
With trembling hands, I slowly unwrapped my bandage and the thin scar with stitches barely healed on my
left arm was a ghastly mark on my own familiar skin, a reminder of a darkness I
didn't really recognize. I ran a hand through what one could call a mess of a
hair. It was long and reaching the small of my back—I definitely hadn't had
long hair for at least 10 years—wavy, and unfamiliar. My NAVY colored hair. MY.
HAIR. WAS. BLUE. But it wasn't dyed or anything, I would definetly know, as I
had had literally every hair color during my anime-addicted young adult phase.
This was coming out of my own roots.
The
truth of it all hit me with the force of a physical blow. The impossible
Pokémon, the sterile hospital, the Uncertainty of my family's fate, and now
this impossible reflection. I couldn't stop the sob that escaped my throat as I
buried my face in my hands, hot tears finally spilling from my eyes. And I know
that was NOT the moment to notice, but I looked at my crying self in the mirror
and didn't see a single wrinkle…well, everything has a good side, as they say.
I started laughing sterically at myself for thinking something like that, tears
still streaming down my face, but I couldn't stop for a while. I didn't really
know what to do.
After a good ten minutes of laugh-crying, I returned to the room, the
heart monitor rattling beside me. My body felt heavy, but my mind was beginning
to clear. The hysteria was gone, replaced by a cold, sharp determination. I
needed to find out more about my situation, and a good ER nurse knows that the
first step is to assess the patient… and in this case, the patient was me.
I sat back down on the edge of the bed and looked at the white hospital
walls. The questions were a roaring chorus in my head, a cacophony of thoughts. Why
was this teenage "me" at a hospital? What made her try to take her own life? I had no memories of her life, nothing
to tell me who she was (was it really me? Was her name the same?) or what had
driven her to that point. Did I go back in time in an alternate
dimension? What happened to my kids? To my husband? The questions were endless, a maze
without an exit.
I closed my eyes and
tried to remember. The last moments of my life were a blur of dark terror, but
before the chaos, there was peace and happiness. I remembered the warmth of the
sun on my skin with my husband, Erik, by the cruise pool, the distant shouts
and laughter of my kids playing with some others, as they splashed in the
water. I had been sitting in a lounge chair, the familiar weight of my Nintendo
Switch in my hands, its screen glowing with the world of Pokémon Shield, that I was playing the
third time. It wasn't my favorite of the Pokémon games, but as the first 3D
game for the franchise, it had a special place in my heart. The excitement for
the upcoming Pokémon AZ was a pleasant hum in the back of my
mind. Playing videogames had always been a small escape from the
responsibilities of my busy life, and Pokémon were among my favorites since my
first Game Boy Color when I was 7, in which I played Pokémon Red. I still lived in Brazil
with my parents, and since we were upper middleman class, they tried to always
buy the lasted trends in kids entertainment for me. My dad was a programmer,
and also a gamer, so he always encouraged me to play games and have fun with
them. After my first game, I had always followed up on any other Pokémon game
that released, and the new Nintendo consoles that launched. You could say I was
a fan, I even read some fanfics when I had the time, and played the older games
sometimes on emulators or my old 3DS. Not to say I was addicted, far from it, I
played them once in a while, when the urge striked, or the new one when they
released some other game. I still had my family to take care of, my job to
work, and other hobbies to pursue, like reading fanfics of manhwa, and playing
other games.
Anyway, I remember the the blaring of alarms. The cruise colliding with something with a
horryfying sound, the screaming. The horrible tilt of the ship. My head hitting
the rails, The cold, dark water and my breath leaving my lungs. The memory was
too vivid, too real. It all led to a single, terrifying conclusion: this was
not a dream. I wasn't in a coma or in some elaborate simulation. I was here
because I probably died. And wasn't that a thought? What happened to my family?
I would probably never know. I could only hope that they were safe. And at that
thought tears started streaming down my face again.
My training, the endless nights in the emergency room, was the only
thing keeping me from flipping out again. A nurse doesn't panic. A nurse
assesses the situation, gathers data, and makes a plan of action. My life, my entire existence, had been
thrown into disarray, but I still had my training and my sharp mind. It was
time to get some answers on what was happening with me.
The medical chart was a logical first step. A short copy of it was
usually kept in a holder beside the door or at the foot of the bed. It was a
simple, mundane piece of information that felt like a lifeline at that moment,
and my body moved without conscious thought. I got up, and trying to be as
quiet as possible, I dragged the heart monitor to the door. I reached for the
plastic holder, my hands unsteady as I pulled the chart free. I flipped it
open, my eyes scanning the pages with the sharp, professional focus of a nurse
looking for a patient's vitals.
The words swam before my
eyes, but the information was clear. Name: Celeste Maria Fuente. DOB:06/29/1995 Age: 17. Date of Admission:10/10/2012 – 2 days ago. My breath caught in my throat. I
looked at the diagnosis: Attempted
Self-Harm, Bouts of Psychosis,history of depression and schizophrenia. The
details of the incident were described in the cold, clinical language of a
medical report. I was here because "she" had tried to end her own life.
I flipped to the first page and saw a familiar name under "Next of
Kin." My heart dropped. It was my father's. A wave of both relief and
terror crashed over me. He was alive. But in this world, he probably wasn't MY
dad anymore, was he? I stared at the
name, the letters swimming on the page with my blurred vision by tears. It was
a part of me, a part of my family, and a part of a past I now had to confront.
My dad here was alive. If I couldn't go back to my kids and husband, I would
have to come to terms with seeing my dead father again… family to mourn for and
to live for.
And then the date hit me
again, and a cold dread settled over me that was worse than the terror of
Pokémon. 2012. That was my last
year of high school. That was the year my family and I moved to the United
States. The realization was as sickening as the memory of the salt water. That
was probably the worst year of my life. I was bullied and had no friends at
school, some of the kids were racists while others mocked me for my slightly
different accent coming from Brazil. I really reached rock-bottom in my
depression that year, even thought about ending it all. Was it the fundamental
difference between me and this body's "me"? Was that the decision what branched
between us, and she died because of it? October was definitely when the
incident at the school bathroom with Olivia, the lead bully, happened. Was it
worse in this world than in mine?
I slid the chart back into its holder and returned to the bed, the
wheels of the monitor rattling softly behind me. My mind was still reeling, but
the tears had stopped. A new kind of resolve, cold and professional, had taken
their place. I knew what I had to do. I couldn't run. I couldn't hide. My only
option was to gather information, maybe I would even see my dad again tomorrow.
The night was my ally. I would use the last few hours of quiet before
the morning shift to prepare myself. I would find out everything I could about
this "Celeste Maria Fuente," this girl who was my parallel self. I
would try to remember her memories, her thoughts, her emotions. I would sift
through the chaos in my head, hoping to find a clue as to what had happened to
her, and what her life was like. It was a terrifying thought, but it was my
only option.