I made it to the hospital too slowly yesterday
It takes me between 12 and 14 minutes to walk to campus.
Actually, scratch that, yesterday it took me a year. Five years if you count the time I spent at home beforehand.
You see, the last few days, years, have been hard. Time got funny on me. It’s October 2014. In a single afternoon it became November 2018, and then in a moment it became November 2019.
Let me back up, this isn’t easy to understand.
I am a normal college student. Well, a semi-normal college student. My scholarship didn’t pay for a full ride, but my family came through. We have a family house near campus that had been vacant since my Aunt passed away six months ago, or six years ago, it’s hard to tell. My family decided that I should live there rent-free while I went to school. It was kind of a beneficial setup, I saved a ton of money, lived near campus, and I only had to follow two rules: (1) I was never allowed to bring anyone else into the house, not friends, not roommates, no one, and (2) I always had to wear two perfectly-synchronized watches at all times while in the house (even in the shower). The house was the exact same model as the house I grew up in, kind of a cool old Victorian, but it was really too big to live alone in, and I wished I could live in the dorms with my friends.
Sorry, getting side-tracked, and I don’t have much time, or maybe I have a lot, I don’t know.
When time jumped and I was in November 2018, I decided to walk to the campus health clinic. It should take me between 12 and 14 minutes to get there, it is right next to the building I used to have class in. I concentrated very carefully the entire walk. Every footstep was carefully chosen, I didn’t let anything distract me as I hurried along the cold street.
I got there and glanced at my watch, only two minutes had passed. I sighed and went to open the door, but found it locked. I checked the sign and saw I had arrived at the Economics Department.
I felt dizzy and weak, I knew this was the clinic, I got a flu shot here two weeks ago. I asked a passing student about the Health Clinic and he gave me a weird look, said it had moved to the other side of campus nearly two years before. I almost collapsed, and luckily he realized something was very wrong and called an ambulance, I don’t know how I would have managed on my own, and the next thing I knew paramedics were whisking me to the hospital.
I got checked in quickly, thankfully it was a slow night, and was waiting in a room, trying to decide how I would prove this wasn't some sort of breakdown, or whether it might be a breakdown, when Sarah walked in with a Doctor.
Sarah is a friend of mine, she’s pre-med. Or is she? Is she a doctor now?
“Sarah?” I asked hesitantly.
Just then there was a huge crash in the hall as someone pushing a tray of supplies collided with someone else. I remember Sarah staring at me with a really confused look on her face, but people were screaming and I got really distracted and overwhelmed.
Then the room went dark and silent.
I got out of bed and stumbled to the waiting room. Sarah was there, talking to someone. I was so happy she was still there, I must have passed out.
“Sarah?”
She turned around, saw me, and screamed.
Here is what I can tell so far: when I concentrate, really concentrate, time slows down. I can almost make it stop for those around me (it’ll take me about 30 seconds to write this entire post, to give you an example).
Sorry, almost got distracted by a weird noise from the vent. I asked earlier about what I heard from it, and was told that it was just the old machinery, nothing to worry about. The nurse explained that my room is down in the old wing of the hospital, that the ventilation for my room goes straight to the basement and isn’t part of the new ventilation (they moved me to avoid disturbances). The basement has been abandoned for years because of asbestos, no one is allowed to step foot down there.
If I get really distracted, or confused and scared, time speeds up. Sarah says she had walked into my room while on rounds as part of her training when there was a noise from the hallway. She said I just disappeared right before her eyes. I was gone, like I hadn’t been there. A year later, she was getting a report and suddenly I walked up to her like nothing happened.
I have learned I vanished from school years ago right after being accused of cheating on an exam, there are all sorts of rumors among the other students about what happened to me, but I seemed to evaporate into thin air.
My family is flying out right now, they told me just to hold on a little longer. I don’t know if I can stop this from happening again before they arrive, I just pray I will still be here and they can stop this.
Sarah has filled my room with clocks. They seem to help, I’ve got 12 of them here, all perfectly synchronized. I stare at them a lot, it’s very soothing to count a second in my head and see a second tick by on the clocks.
There’s something I haven’t told you, but I messed up. One of my watches died, and I didn’t replace the battery or get a new one. It was such a dumb rule, and I had done it for so long, plus I have a cell phone, and that is basically a watch, right? Then two days before all this started happening I dropped my cell phone in a puddle and destroyed it. I had a big test coming up in a few days (the one I was accused of cheating on), and the cell phone store was all the way on the other side of town, which meant a long bus ride there and back to get a new one, so I figured a little study time without distractions would be a good thing.
Is that what caused this?
I've searched everywhere on the internet, trying to figure out how to stop this. We're afraid to try medicine, since the effect could be to make it worse. I nap intermittently, but I'm afraid to fall asleep, afraid I'll wake up in another time.
As I lay here typing this on a phone Sarah picked up for me I can hear whispers from the vent. The coalesce into voices, syrupy and dark as they bounce through the old ventilation. They’re talking about me. They're talking about me and they don’t know I can hear them. Perhaps in that I can draw a little hope.
There are two of them. One is asking how I have lasted this long, how I haven’t come fully untethered. The other is responding that I will belong to them soon, and that my grip on the present is weakening.
If someone is down there, someone who caused this, I need to confront them to figure out how to stop it. I have three clocks with me, all I could fit in the weird pockets of this hospital gown, and I’m going down there to figure this out.
I’ll update again soon, I hope it’s soon for you too.
Posted Nov 11, 2019, 1:27 PM UTC