Z2012TheInfirmaryTheShot

__Figment __

Delaney met Adele at 2:12 in the morning in the eastern wing of the infirmary.

Delaney was wandering down the tiled, pristine hallway so late at night (or so early in the morning, depending on how one chooses to look at it) because she had been awoken by her own nightmare. In her dream, she was trapped in a room with thousands of fragments of mirrors for walls, and everywhere she turned, she always saw herself. There was no door. The mirrors cracked, little cobwebs of silvery fissures snaked their way through the fragments. The mirrors shattered, and Delaney was showered in pieces of razor-sharp glass.

Delaney awoke just before the glittery pieces of razor sharp glass, which faintly resembled deadly snowflakes, hit her vulnerable body. Her eyes snapped open, and the glass was no longer there. She sat up quickly and swung her legs to the side of her white hospital bed, the stiff sheets scratching her legs. She shook her head as if to shake off pieces of glass in her hair, stood up, and shakily tiptoed out of her room and down to the hallway to the restroom, where she was going to wash her face.

She supposed the dream was just a side effect of the shot she received earlier that day.

After walking for just a few feet from her room, she stopped to catch her breath in front of a window.

The cancer hadn’t spread for months now, but it still just as hindering.

A lot of people had been admitted to the infirmary for lung cancer by now; Delaney was part of a vast majority.

It was a big mystery among those with lung cancer and their families as to why their lives had been ruined by the dangerous multiplication of cells in a vital organ of the victim’s body. The secret was just like the tumors that grew inside the cancer's victims- the more it was treated, the more dangerous it grew. The government knew what this secret was. It was theirs, after all. They had figured it out in 1994. They tried to hide it; they tried to cover it with a sheet and push it into a corner, where a thin layer of dust would collect on it but no one would bother to clear it away. But it’s hard to hide the affects of asbestos.

Instead of moving everyone out of the naval base, the government was trying to decontaminate the entire naval base by mining out all the asbestos using special machinery. It was taking a long, long, time, and by the time they started to dig up problem, it was too late. Mesothelioma, a cancer of the lungs caused by the asbestos, was tearing through the families living on the naval base, ripping apart people’s lives from the inside out

But it was hard to tell who was more monstrous: the cancer or the government.

The government saw the outbreak of lung cancer as the perfect chance to test a new drug on those who had fallen prey to the cancer. Almost all the patients received an injection of what was deemed a “miracle cure.” It was a shot that was supposed to cure the affects of the cancer permanently.

Again, Delaney was part of the vast majority.

She didn’t know what the shot did. But Adele did.

The stars twinkled outside the window and Delaney watched them. She longed to lie amidst cool grassThe area of her arm covered by a flesh-colored band-aid ached like a bruise and she winced. It had been hurting her ever since she got the shot in the morning the day before.

Delaney ignored the throbbing in her arm and gazed out the window into the tiny courtyard, where fluid light shimmered down from the moon and reflected against the grass on the courtyard. The silence of the hospital was eerie. Delaney looked into her reflection in the window and gasped when she saw that she wasn’t alone.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Delaney whipped around and saw what was in the window. A girl. A beautiful girl with spiky jet-black hair and dark eyes watched Delaney with a smug smirk on her face.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">“You look surprised.”

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Delaney just nodded. She was surprised. She had never seen this girl before.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">“I would be too, if I ran into a figment of my imagination.”

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">“What?”

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">“Oh darling, you don’t know what the shot does, do you?”

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Delaney blinked, and the girl was gone.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">The clock on the wall said it was 2:12 in the morning in the eastern wing of the infirmary.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">August 2nd, 1995

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Patient: Delaney Hanson

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">I haven't been able to sleep the last couple of nights, so I'm pretty tired. I've been up all night, talking. The girl has been coming to visit me every night since that first night. We talk for so long. I am curious about her. She told me her name is Adele, which I think is a very pretty name. She also says that she is a figment of my imagination, caused by the shot they give us. I don't believe it. Imaginary figments wouldn't tell their imaginer that they are not real, and they certainly wouldn't say what is causing their appearance. She's just sick and crazed, like everyone else in the infirmary.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">"Delaney."

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">"Mmm?"

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">"Do you ever question what's in the shot? Or if it's really making you get better?"

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">"No. Why would I? The doctors say I'm making progress everyday."

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">SMACK. Adele slammed her hands on the grey plastic table.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">"Careful! Do you want to wake the entire wing up?"

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Adele ignored her. "You are so frustrating. You don't understand, do you?"

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">"What is there to understand! I can't question the shot, I have no choice. It's the only way I'm going to get better. I'm sick, and the shot is the cure. You're the one who doesn't understand!"

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Adele glared at her.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">"That shot is why I'm here."

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">"Of course it is. It's why I'm here too. Without it, we would both be dead from lung cancer."

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">"I think being dead would be better than living the way you are."

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">"What?"

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Adele sighed. "Just think. That's all. There’s something dangerous in that shot. No one is admitting it.”

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">September 10, 1995

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Patient: Delaney Hanson

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Adele told me to think, so that's what I have been doing. I haven't seen her in over a month now, so it's pretty much all I can do. I'm not sure whether thinking is a good thing or not.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">I've come to realize what a weird condition I live in. My entire life revolves around a shot in the morning, a shot in the evening, and nothing in between. Day in, day out. And the more I think, the unhappier I become.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">The terrible thing about thinking is that I can't stop it. It doesn’t come at scheduled times, like the shot. It comes when it feels it should, and sometimes its effect is so staggering that I have to stop what I’m doing or stop listening to the doctor or nurse talk to me and just be quiet.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">October 9, 1995

Adele came back last night. She has been getting healthier, just like I have. The shot is working on both of us, apparently..

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">I’m continuing to consider what she told me. I know the shot is working- I can feel myself getting stronger. The fact that I can walk around the hallways without being breathless after a couple of seconds is proof enough

But, I do feel something. Something differnt, something funny.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">December 31, 1995

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Adele was right. There is something dangerous in that shot.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">It was her.