Author’s Note: A little bit of short story fun, in two or three parts, on the condition of being human. There are twists and turns— in being human as well as in writing about it.

Waking up was easy. Easier than she had suspected. It didn’t take much out of her, and instead, she slid out of unconsciousness smoothly. But it was a slow drip of a thing. And the longer she fought at waking, the further waking seemed from her. First, there was the rise and fall of her chest, her stomach climbing up as if to kiss the sky, a rhythm she was only now becoming aware of although reason suggested that it had never stopped. That was the first thing she had noticed. Then there was the impulse to stretch her fingers. They felt heavy on the ends of her arms like pieces of old driftwood stuck in the middle of waves pulling in, pushing out. But she was determined to move them. All of them. Or any of them. Even just the atoms balanced on the tip of one of them. But against her efforts, they were locked in place with stiffness and lack of use.

Then there was the sound. Heavy, paced. It sounded like roaring wind in her ears, and if the muscles in her face weren’t so numb, she might’ve winced against it. Then the wind dulled to a light breeze, still heavy and paced, but less abrasive, almost peaceful. The thought that it wasn’t a breeze at all, but rather her breathing, wasn’t a revelation, but something she settled into. And she let the sounds of her breathing give way to other sounds. Shrill beeps. Droning hums. Disembodied voices. And all of it, shrill and wobbly like she was listening to it from under water. And she might have been. But like her respiratory system’s inhale-exhale, all of the noises became sharper, less piercing and more fine. She could almost recognize them. Almost. And then, just as easily as tripping over a crack in the pavement, she stumbled into her other senses.

Ammonia drifted into her nostrils, strong and offensive. And as her tongue circled the cage of her mouth, she tasted stale air and salt. No. Not salt. Saline. In the back of her throat. Thoughts invaded, dragging her from point to point, and when the pulsing beeps began to speed up in time with the pounding in her chest cavity, she realized that the beeping was coming from some kind of heart monitor. The realization sent her into another panic, and amidst all of the noise in her head, one clear thought stood out among the rest. “Open your eyes.” And then she did. All at once without hesitation. But she squinted weakly when white fluorescent light filled her eyes, making her corneas burn till great big tears dripped out onto her cheeks.

She waited until the burning was nearly all gone before trying again, and this time, she exercised a hint of caution. She opened her eyes slowly, her lashes doing what they little they could to diffuse the brightness until after a long moment, the brightness didn’t need to be diffused. And she looked around her, carefully and slow as her eyeballs seemed tight in her skull. Tight like her fingers. She found the droning hum immediately, and as she watched the small oscillating fan by her bed in fascination. It’s head wagged back and forth and back like a petulant child saying ‘No!’ over and over again. And just beyond the fan was the heart monitor. Her eyes continued roving over the hospital room. It was small and quaint with a couple of slapdash touches of home, but there was still the hint of ammonia in the air that made all of the attempts at comfortability seem useless. The room was far too sanitized to be anyone’s home.

She found the source of the disembodied voices, but she wasn’t surprised to find that they weren’t disembodied at all. They had just sounded that way in her foggy half-dream half-wake state. They were medical personnel. Doctors. Nurses. Orderlies. It was easy for her to tell one from the other. The doctors looked bothered, their smiles practiced and plastic. The nurses looked dried out, the result of being trod on by their betters. The orderlies looked invisible and sadly content to be so. All of them milled past her door with the ordered proficiency of a bee colony with workers and drones dancing for their queen. It was so ordered and proficient that she was hesitant to disturb the clockwork machine, but when a woman at the nurses station, in light green scrubs that worked as a fair compliment to her skin tone, happened to chance a cursory glance in her direction, the ordered proficiency came to a staggering halt.

“She’s awake!” the woman yelled. And the hallway outside of her hospital room came to life in a swell that would have overwhelmed her if her eyes hadn’t slid shut as unconsciousness swallowed her again.

The next time she awoke, it wasn’t drawn out and syrupy slow. But it was just as overwhelming as her right hand was immediately seized in a grip alternating between petal soft and crushing. She registered a deep voice calling out in excitement or pain— it was hard to tell. And she followed the voice to its source, her eyes locking onto his. There wasn’t time enough for her to properly study his face before the doctor swooped in like a dive bomber, and tilted her head towards him and away from the man holding her hand in a vice grip.

“Samantha, can you hear me?” the doctor asked, commanding her attention as he continued to drill her with questions. “Do you know where you are? Can you hear me, Samantha?” Between the feel of his bass voice bouncing around inside of her head and the blinding light he insisted on flashing in her eyes, she forced her mouth open hoping the action would compel him to stop. Stop speaking. Stop flashing. “Samantha?”

Noise sounded from her parched lips. Both men pulled in close, the doctor back to flooding her eyes with harsh light. “What was that, baby?” The man with her hand in his looked panicked. Sounded panicked. “Sam? What did you say?”

She swallowed although it didn’t do very much to ease the dryness in her throat. What did she have to do to get a drink of water? Sing? Dance? Sing while dancing? She opened her mouth again and tried her best to will volume in her voice, and her efforts were rewarded. “Stop.”

“Stop? Stop what?” the man pleaded.

“Stop…the….light.” And with strength that she knew she possessed, she lifted her dead weight hand and waved the doctor away. The motion was wilted and pathetic and filled the edges of her vision with black spots. But it got the point across. And the man’s face split in a smile that threatened to come apart at the seams.

“That’s my girl!” he exclaimed, tears spilling. “She’ll let you know what she’s thinking.”

The doctor smiled as well. “That’s good,” he replied as he took note of her request and pocketed his light. “Her eyes are reacting normally, so lower brain centers are intact like she thought. We’re seeing movement in her extremities, so her motor functions are online. She understood our questions, answered them, looked at us. Damage to her frontal lobe was one of our main concerns, and all of those are great signs. Remarkable” He looked at her, studied her. “Out of this world, actually.”