Animal Emergency - Part One

My head swims as I slowly stir to consciousness, the pounding in my skull maintaining a steady rhythm as I listen to the blood rushing in my ears. The world around me feels almost disturbingly still, every inch of my face being held tightly by a warmth that seems to fill every nook and cranny around me.

Even as I feel worry begin to set in my heart rate remains concerningly steady, each pump coming in at a perfectly even rate despite the mounting fear. A dull beeping rings out from beside me, the electronic buzzing reaching my ears in a muffled and distorted state.

I struggle to open my eyes, the thick substance around me keeping my eyelids shut even as I attempt to ease them open.

"Goo... your awa..." calls out a heavily muffled voice, the sound of my blood rushing through my ears making in impossible to make out half of what they are saying. The world around me rumbles as they approach, the heavy footfalls jostling me as my eyes finally snap open.

I appear to be at around waist height, my view of the world warping through a combination of a faint green ooze and a thick pane of glass that appears to wrap around me. My mouth falls open, the foul smelling goo seeping inside as I stare at the sight of my body hanging limply on the other side of the room.

 

The lanky pale figure hangs from a series of hooks and straps, my limbs bound together with plaster and bandages tinged in a faint crusty red. Sutures cover the torso, rough hewn cuts resting in the center of blue and purple bruises.

A series of tubes plunge down into the stump resting between it's shoulders, the chest expanding and contracting slightly as oxygen is pumped directly into it's lungs by a small machine beside it.

Beside it stands a doughy woman in her late fifties, the caramel skinned Latina pacing and plodding her scrubs covered form towards my lower position with slow waddling stride. Her long black hair is tied back in a tight bun, the style revealing the small gold hoops dangling from her ears.

She looks down at me with dark brown eyes, her red painted lips curling into a smile as she looms over me.

"It was touch and go there, but it seems we managed to remove you in time" she sighs, stretching her fingers on the right hand as she eases them out after hours of work. I stare up at her, my mouth moving but with little more than a bubbling and sloshing of the goo around me coming out.

The older woman shakes her head, placing a finger to her lips as if to shush me.

"Try not to speak Mr Hughes, you're still recovering from a terrible accident" she explains, reaching over to pat something beside me. "And without any air in there I don't think you'll have much success with speaking at this point."

My mind races as I look between the woman and my body, my thoughts frantically searching for how I could have ended up here. I could remember.. something from earlier today, or at least I thought it was today. I had left the apartment to get some groceries, I had crossed the road and then... nothing. Staring up at the woman she stretches a little, her doughy five foot five frame jiggling slightly beneath her scrubs as she arches her back.

"We managed to save what we could, but the damage to your body is rather... extensive" she explains, hissing as she looks over her shoulder at my beaten and broken form. "We can piece it back together, but at this point it's certainly not fit for use."

I watch as the doctor paces over to my hanging body, the casts and bruises making it look more like a cartoon prop than something I had ever held beneath my head. She slowly moves around it, checking vitals and making some notes as she inspects her own handy work. Her delicate fingers trace over the gauze bandages and check the stitches, looking for signs of infection or dressing that needs replacing.

"It will be a while before we can let you out of here with... this..." she explains rather coldly, pursing her lips as she turns to face me again. Her pursed and frustrated lips turn to a grin however as she strides over, a certain glint and shimmer in her eyes making my own go wide with fear.

"However... given the severity of this case..." she begins, her grin growing wider as her body looms over me. "We've been given special permission to give you an... experimental loaner while your body heals here" she explains gleefully, her gaze turning down to the clip board in her left hand.

"Now... normally we would find you another human body to use for the next... well however long it takes to get your body back into a usable state..." she explains, tilting her head to the side as she reads her paperwork. "The world of anti-rejection drugs have greatly improved over the past few years... However..." she states, pausing as she begins to write on the clip board.

"We have been looking to trial something... more radical. Between pig hearts and livers, we've had some great success with human animal transplants, and with a new prospective transplant treatment we think we could go even further than that..." she continues, biting her lip as she jots down something before peeling off a sticker from the bottom of the page.

"Nuevo-Gen has graciously offered to let us trial their latest drug. It's really quite remarkable, not only does it prevent rejection is one hundred percent of cases, but it even seems to help make the new organ more akin to the surrounding tissue over time. It's really..." she explains, slapping a sticker across the glass in front of me.

As the woman continues to ramble I'm forced to stare ahead to read the label on my tank, my dulled mind struggling to read the inverted letters. My eyes water, my mouth moving wordlessly as I stare at the sticker, my mind finally managing to pull out the words...