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Katya wakes up to hear mechanical beeping and feel dry mouth. She doesn’t even want to open her eyes. The more she wakes up the less she wants to be awake. There’s a voice… weirdly masculine, gravelly. That’s not her mom, or her dad. She shifts her neck so she can hear a little better and finds her shoulders protest. She winces, and the voice stops for a second. Since Katya doesn’t show any more sign of stress, whoever is speaking continues.
“...That you would have me seek into myself/ For that which is not in me?
“Therefore, good Brutus, be prepared to hear.
And since you know you cannot see yourself / So well as by reflection, I, your glass,
Will modestly discover to yourself / That of yourself which you yet know not of.”
Katya finds her dry mouth opening. “Wha’s ‘at?” Her voice wheedles out like a sad car horn. She drags her sticky lids open to see the blurry image of a girl at her bedside. Her hair is long and blonde. She claps her book closed and jumps up to stand. Woah, she’s fucking tall.
“Ohmigod,” says the girl.
Her voice is far more high pitched than when she had been reading. One of her hands grips the side of a pillow Katya is laying on. The other clutches a plastic bar on the side of what Katya realizes is a hospital bed.
“Do you, can I get you anything?”
Katya tries to clear her throat. “Water.”
She walks across the room, out of Katya’s line of vision. Katya blinks a few more times and tries to figure out why she’s in the hospital. She tries to look at herself, but her neck hurts, and there seems to be something stopping her from moving it too much. She tries to move her arms and finds her whole right arm is in a cast. The girl walks back over with a cup of water and a straw just as Katya is starting to freak out.
It must be obvious in her eyes, because the girl holds her water and says “What’s wrong? Are you in pain?”
“I can’t move my toes.” Katya’s voice is choked.
She pauses but doesn’t say anything, which means it must be bad.
A straw is placed in front of katya’s mouth, and she takes a glorious sip. She moans.
“What? What is it?” the girl pulls the water away.
Katya hums in protest, her lips clamped around the straw. “I’m thirsty,” says Katya, irritated.
“Oh.” The girl gives her water back.
After draining most of the cup, Katya licks her chapped lips and sighs. “My throat hurts.”
“You… had a breathing tube for a while.” The girl’s voice is timid and quiet.
Katya stares at the wall. Pieces are collecting in the back of her brain, and she’s not liking the picture they’re creating.
Silence passes and the girl stands awkwardly next to Katya’s bed. After a while, she says “How do you feel?”
Katya blinks. “Like I got hit by a car.”
The tall girl laughs wryly.
“Is that what happened?” Katya questions.
The girl rakes her fingers through her hair. “Maybe I should get the nurse.”
“It was yours, wasn’t it?”
The girl pauses. “What?”
Katya forces her aching shoulders to let her face the tall girl who’d shown up out of nowhere, knew her medical history, and had been reading to her in her sleep. “I don't know you, but you’re here.” She points with the arm that’s not in a cast. “You read me Julius Caesar. You worry about me being in pain and like, obviously, I am.”
The girl hangs her head in shame.
“It was your car, wasn’t it?” Katya repeats. “You hit me.”
The girl covers her long face with her long hands.
Katya can’t say what she’s feeling exactly. So she keeps asking questions, and her voice gets lower. “You know why I’m in casts and that I had a breathing tube at some point in recent past. I don’t even know your goddamn name.”
The girl coughs. When she pulls her hands away from her face, her mascara is smeared. Katya doesn’t feel bad for her.
“Alaska,” she says. “Like the state.”
“Okay, Alaska,” Katya hisses. “I’m gonna need you to help me out with a few things here.”
“Of course,” says Alaska. She joins her hands in front of her. “Anything.”
“I’m gonna need you to start by telling me if I’ll ever walk again.”