Page 2 of Once, Again, Always

Muddy, mired thoughts.

Molly woke with her eyes closed in another unfamiliar place.

Struggling to full consciousness felt like swimming upstream in her own skin and making pit stops in swirling eddies to acknowledge aches, confusion, and the swarming sensory input beyond her body.

Her left leg twinged with a dull ache. Her head felt cotton-stuffed, tacky, and sluggish. Machines beeped. Things on wheels rolled. Conversations swelled. Footsteps came and went. And a gentle, tender voice said something from nearby.

The voice spoke again: closer, easier to discern.

“Molly, if you can hear me, can you give my hand a squeeze? You’re at New Hope Regional Hospital. You’re safe, and we’re here to help however we can. Are you in any pain?” A soft hand slid into Molly’s.

Molly liked the gentle voice. It was velvet in her eardrums. She squeezed as exhaustion pulled her remaining energy downstream.

Forcing her eyes open, she found a figure at her bedside. A middle-aged white woman with dark brown hair streaked with shining silver. Tightness carved worry lines at the corners of her eyes as she watched Molly. No fewer than six pens in varying colors hung from the pocket on the front of her scrubs.

Drowned out by observation, Molly missed her doctor’s smile-softened introduction. Dr. Murphy, perhaps? Molly blinked, and a cloudy film slid over her eyes. She blinked again, trying to banish it. The doctor continued, “Are you in any pain?”

Molly swallowed, throat caught on dryness, on anxiety. Her doctor pulled a cup from the rolling table at Molly’s bedside and angled a straw to her lips. Was it Murray? Dr. Murray sounded like a name that could belong to a woman with a small arsenal of pens hanging from her pocket.

Molly wasn’t sure why she thought that. Or why it mattered. Her brain felt like hot soup, skull stewing.

She sipped, ice-cold water releasing her voice, weak and raspy. “No pain.”

Not enough that mattered, anyway. Sure, her head throbbed, her back was sore, and her shin twinged. But those felt like inconsequential things when waking up in a hospital bed. She sucked down more water before the doctor pulled her cup away.

“Molly, do you think you’re feeling up to answering a few questions?”

From the light blue curtain partitioning Molly’s tiny room from what must have been a whole bustling hospital ward, a man poked his head in, only belatedly adding a slightly breathless knock, knock.

“Heads up,” he said. “We’re about two minutes from calling security.”

Without waiting for a response, he disappeared, leaving Molly’s doctor with a strained cheerfulness pulling her cheeks.

“Where were we?” She clicked through several screens on the rolling computer beside Molly’s bed. “Can I ask you a few questions?”

Molly wasn’t sure she trusted her own voice. She simply nodded.

“If at any point you need a break or feel too unwell to continue, just let me know.” A meaningful pause. “What’s your full name?”

Molly blinked, struck by absurdity. “Molly—” She broke off, coughing, and then tried again. “Molly Elizabeth Graham.”

Her doctor made a note.

“And what state are we in?”

“Connecticut.”

Another note.

“And how old are you?”

An unfamiliar rush of hot panic fluttered beneath Molly’s skin as she answered. “Twenty-one.”

Yet another note.

“What happened?” Molly asked, her voice cracking. “Am I okay?” Her fluttering panic swelled from her stomach to her chest.

The doctor whose name she still didn’t know offered another smile. Molly assumed it was meant to be reassuring.