Chapter 4
Waking up in the hospital at night is both one of the most depressing and terrifying things an individual can experience. The sense of isolation bred from waking up alone in an unlit, unfamiliar room. The chorus of unfamiliar sounds just outside your door, or window. It’s quite different than waking up at say, a friend’s house. You know that feeling? Where at first you don’t recognize anything, and you don’t remember why you’re there? Those first few seconds of unrecognizable decor and sounds while you try to piece together the events before you fell asleep?
Waking up in a hospital bed is very similar. Not in the least because most everypony sleeps in a hospital bed in the exact same pose: splayed out like a corpse on an autopsy table. Does anypony sleep like that naturally? If they have, I haven’t met them. It’s one thing to recover from a mildly comfortable position and regain your bearings as you process everything. It’s quite another to sit straight up from a pose you know you wouldn’t fall asleep in normally, to a place you don’t recognize right away, in an environment that is basically standard fare for nightmares and horror movies.
The first thing I became aware of was beeping. I was attached to a heart monitor, which I assumed was normal for overnight observation. I don’t spend a lot of time in the hospital. Prying my eyes open was an act of patience and a test of mettle; a large part of me didn’t want to know what the world looked like outside my closed eyes. Especially since that world had started to change around me in the span of a day.
Finally, my eyes cracked open, and I took in what little decor I could make out in the dark room. Hospital machinery and moonlight provided some illumination, but it’s my firm belief that unfamiliar territory has this innate ability to generate darkness with a natural resistance to light. Why the hell else would flashlights be so shitty in those movies?
I took in the decor, trying to familiarize myself with the room, as if it were getting ready to change on me like some sick, sadistic “Spot the Differences” game. A generical, yet visually appealing flowerpot sat on the windowsill, bearing a couple of tulips. Not my flower of choice, but a comforting thought nonetheless. Like a weed growing through the sidewalk, flowerpots in otherwise “sterile” environments are a small glimmer of hope that something can live in a place made of cold steel and white tile. Just beyond it sat a couple of “get well” cards standing in folded positions. Gifts from my friends, no doubt, or maybe a generic gesture on behalf of the hospital staff. I couldn’t tell in this lighting whose hoof- or muzzle-writing it was.
Slowly marching my eyes across the room, I saw a cheap CRT TV propped up on a metal rack in the upper-right corner. I assumed somewhere nearby there was a remote control to operate it. Below that, a corkboard almost completely hidden behind notices, charts, schedules, and miscellaneous paperwork. Most of which I could only determine by large block lettering and the always-recognizable shape of a calendar printout.
The curtain next to me was drawn wide open, and I saw, more than a little relieved, that it was indeed empty. It had been made up properly, the tops of the blankets and sheets tucked neatly under the pillows, and hospital corners at the end. It was tucked in properly all around, and I felt myself slightly restrained by similar bedmaking skills. The procedural equivalent of being tucked in. My eyes lingered on the bed a little longer than they should have, as if to absolutely make for sure certain that nothing was going to launch itself at me from that corner of the room. Staring into the almost completely darkened corner gave my eyes time to adjust, so that I could see the rest of the room rather clearly. Or, as clearly as could be allowed.
I decided to focus on the array of... stuff in my immediate vicinity. There was the small plastic table nearby with a complimentary glass of water on it. I imagine at one point they’d left food there, but took it away as I continued to sleep. Come to think of it, I had no idea what time it was, come to think of it, aside from the obvious answer of the middle of the night. My train of thought led me to search out a clock on the wall.
I found it soon enough. A simple black and white clock, circular in shape and positioned a foot or two from the ceiling in the middle of the far wall. There was something peculiar about it, though. I could hear the ticking, but it wasn’t quite right. According to the clock, however, it was 12:01. Just a bit past midnight. And although there was a subtle something about the clock that I couldn’t quite put my hoof on, it didn’t seem important. So I went about searching the room.
It was during my second pass of investigating the bed that I noticed it. A crease in the blanket. Now, in any other scenario I wouldn’t even pay attention. But in a hospital, a crease in a blanket is tantamount to having turned the entire bed upside down. Details and aesthetics are very important, at least to someone. And if your job is nothing more important than making sure all of the beds in a hospital look spic and span, then by goddess they’re going to stay that way. So I observed the crease for some time. It didn’t seem quite right, honestly. Like the shadow of a pony earlier, or the ticking of the clock
(that was getting louder, just a little, wasn’t it?)
there was something not quite right. I figured out soon enough what it was, though. The crease, while somewhat diagonal, and near the bottom of the bed, was, essentially, impossible. Any amount of scrutiny of the rest of the bedspread would assure any onlooker that all the edges were straight, tidy, and folded just right. There was no room for that crease, that fold in the blanket, to exist. The sheet was pulled too tight, was laid out too straight.
Yet there it was. Simple, innocuous, but impossible. Almost foreboding in its defiance of the natural order of hospital bedding. I investigated the crease, well as I could from my position in my bed, until something quite a bit more alarming happened.
The damn thing moved.
Not like one of those lumps under the sheets in the kinds of horror movies I mentioned earlier (which I have a bit of a passion for, I’ll admit). It didn’t suddenly start creeping toward me, the sheets and blankets rippling as an ominous bulge surged forward beneath the covers.
It simply creased more. Became more pronounced. And still, the surrounding bedding was unaffected. It folded on itself, bundling up and scrunching together. And as my eyes focused and unfocused in disbelief, I saw that it wasn’t just the sheet, anymore. I watched in disbelief, a kind of mental stasis, as the wall beyond the crease folded, as well. A sense of morbid curiosity led me to follow the crease to the end of the bed. The tiles, too, seemed to fold into themselves. Linoleum cracked and metal creaked as the fold expanded, and soon, like the heat off a metal roof in the summer, the air shimmered with intensity as it seemingly tried to collapse in on itself.
I made an attempt to ignore it. To simply look away, and forget it was there. Like the doctor(s) earlier that day, I made the assumption
(blind hope don’t kid yourself)
that it would simply go away with time. Or if I just didn’t look at it. However, tearing my eyes, and my mind, from the impossible collapse before me left it to wander in a desperate attempt to latch onto something else as a distraction.
The only thing I could seek out, or rather, the thing that sought out my attention, was the infernal clock. And suddenly, like hearing a name you’ve been trying to remember all day, it clicked: the clock was ticking backwards. Even the sound of the ticking was reversed. I looked up at the clock, and saw that it had relapsed back to midnight. Or, more precisely, midnight and thirty seconds.
Tearing my attention away from the clock was a task comparable to the great feats of strength a hero performs in lifting their compatriot out of the canyon, or bottomless pit, or whatever endless crevasse they had risked falling into. I latched onto my focus with one steely hoof, as if I needed the other three just to keep myself firmly planted in reality, and tore my eyes and ears away from the clock.
Yet all that was left for my mind to latch n to was the ever-expanding fold of the room around me. It had grown in the short time I had tried to ignore it. As if time had slowed while I was watching it, like the fabled pot on the stove that never boils, and had returned to normal
(normal are you kidding me the clock is ticking backwards)
while my attention was elsewhere. Soon I saw the foot of my bed folding into itself, and the air around it. The sheets tugged, yet stayed in place, and I could feel the taught pressure of linens holding me in place.
It was about this time that I remembered screaming was a thing. So I did. Yet the sound, while escaping my throat in a normal, and as of lately, familiar capacity, seemed to reach the distortion, and reverberate back to me. In reverse. s I screamed, I heard my own tormented cry played backwards like a slowly reversing turntable recording. And in hearing my own screams played back to me, as if to remind me of the futility of such an action, once again my mind latched on to the ticking of the clock. Still in reverse, louder than ever, as if the space between me and the clock had somehow shortened, and my ear was pressed against it intently, trying to discern any little differences between each tick and tock. My eyes swung up to the clock in a panic, and I saw that now it was merely ten seconds to midnight. Correction, nine.
The edge of the bed had folded in on itself so intensely you couldn’t see it because it was in the way.
(Eight)
My rational mind lashed out, reaching for any kind of explanation, some mental ward or barrier I could place between myself and the world around me.
(Seven)
What was it Ditzy had said? They could change your perception of the world around you.
(Six)
That had to be it. I was hallucinating. My legs and hooves really weren’t folding in on themselves. I scrunched my eyelids tight and prayed for the world to go away.
(fivefourthree)
My eyes shot open as the ticking of the clock hurried itself, as horrid indignation shot through me. I looked up at the offending timepiece, somehow the only part of the room not horribly distorted or now part of something else.
(Two)
I braced myself for midnight, the moment that hadn’t happened, yet we were counting backwards to.
(One)
I don’t know what I expected to happen once it became... yesterday? Or would the day start over? What happened after
(Zero)
Waking up in the hospital at night is both one of the most depressing and terrifying things an individual can experience.