Chapter 3
Word Count: 1,851
Uploaded: 03/30/16
Uploaded: 03/30/16
Sirenia was in the clinic enough times to know Renata's schedule. She knew the woman worked night shifts, eleven to eight, and that she normally took her break at around three or three-thirty. She made rounds to visit patients at about two, and Sirenia was in the middle of the wing. She figured there were four other patients based on the monitors beeping at the nurses' station, so it would be about thirty minutes after Renata checked on Sirenia that she'd leave things to the nurse on duty.
Renata was smart to put Sirenia in the room across from the station, but she couldn't help the fact that one of the weekend night shift nurses had a tendency to watch Netflix on her phone rather than doing the paperwork Renata left her with.
It wasn't all the nurses, Sirenia knew that, just the one nurse who gave the others bad rep.
Renata couldn't have made Sirenia's escape any easier.
After stuffing a few pillows under the sheets and adding the icepacks, Sirenia crawled out the door, chewing on her lip to keep from groaning. Security cameras could go suck it.
The clinic used to be a large residential home, one of few buildings that remained from the early days of its colonization back in Avallinia—days long before it had been dragged from Avallinia and through a massive tear in the Rift that planted it in the center of Earth’s Pacific Ocean. The original owner decided to turn it into a clinic after his daughter died in transit to the hospital on the main island of Euphemia, a travel that took nearly an hour to make by boat then.
The building’s façade remained the same, but the interior had changed over the years, undergoing an evolution that adhered to proper sanitary standards of any other small town clinic. Though, it did keep hold of many, if not all of the paintings the original owner had. They littered the halls in intervals; portraits of community members and early political figures that helped situate Versaivona on Earth. Make note of the paintings on the walls and finding the exit would be easy.
Just don't run into night shift workers or security. Especially not security.
That was exactly what Sirenia hadn't taken into consideration when she started running.
Running makes a lot of noise with or without shoes, and running in a quiet hallway with clean tiled floors would wake up any sleeping guard.
Only two guards worked the night shift--Frank and Horace Montali, brothers whose family normally took up serving as the clinics security year after year. Frank was a tall and heavy-set. He enjoyed his chicken caesar salads with an afternoon snack of cheesy chips with chocolate pudding. She’d watched him plenty of times behind the front desk, dipping the curly cheese chip into thick chocolate or hazelnut spread.
He was the first of the two to show up at the end of the hall Sirenia had run into, his attention clearly on making rounds and not on expecting to find a patient on the run.
Sirenia skidded and dropped to her knees, wincing as the fall shook her body. She watched him reach for his walkie-talkie in its holster at his waist, watched him whisper into it like she wouldn’t already know whom he was calling.
"Do you ever not cause trouble?" he groaned after putting the walkie back.
Sirenia got up and sprinted for the last corner she'd turned. Frank's jangling keys told her exactly where he was, and he wasn't a quiet runner either. Quick, but not enough.
Exit. Exit. Exit. The word pounded in her head with every breath. Why the hell does it get hard to find an exit when you need it?
Sirenia turned into the East Wing, Frank's keys lost in the distance, but another set was coming her way. Looking around, the only safe place she had was the janitor's closet and a vacant patient’s room. When she looked back up, Frank and Horace had her from both ends of the hall.
Horace was even larger than Frank, meant to be the go-to man for any patient that really wanted to cause trouble, which wasn't anyone other than Sirenia for the most part. He had a nice red beard Sirenia always thought would look better if he trimmed it into a shape of any sort, sculpt it so that it didn't look like he were trying to grow a bird's nest. Though, if he did house a bird, she’d prefer that over any weird sculpted windmill beard.
The two stopped, breathing heavily as they stared at her like provoked bulls.
"Your grandmammy ain't gonna be happy about this," Horace called.
"She's never happy with me."
A nurse came out a patient's room, looking between the three of them. Sirenia took the momentary pause to sprint past him and run through the nurses' station, making her way back toward her room. She made a sharp left down Hall B and found the burning red exit sign above a set of doors at the end of the hall.
Freedom.
Frank and Horace were nowhere to be found or heard when she shoved against the doors. They were heavy, meant to slow down any patients on the run, but Sirenia wasn't in too bad a condition. Some major bruising and aches that'll haunt her for days, but nothing she couldn't handle with a will to get out.
She stumbled into the alley, the trash deposit at one end and either Belmont or Hennessy Street at the other. Either way, once she got there, home would be an easy travel back.
Sirenia started up the alley, but found her breathing easing into a hyperventilation the further she got. She had to stop. A panic attack wasn't exactly what she needed, but when it made a visit, there was no choice but to pause and let it pass.
Taking a few steps, she tried forcing through each gasping breath, but it was much harder than she expected. The air was cold, even for an early July night, and far too thin. Pausing, Sirenia leaned against the wall and worked her way through the breathing exercises Renata had gone over with her dozens of times.
In. Hold. Slowly out. In. Hold. Slowly out.
But then she noticed the discoloration of the gray stone walls, how they'd taken on a slight violet hue. The smell of the alley came second, and it wasn't the usual week-old leftovers or spoiled milk swirling with dregs of alcohol.
How hadn't I noticed quicker?
She followed the scent back down the alley, knowing the smell would be most concentrated where the portal opened.
Living in a household where a portal was opened on a near daily basis, and being part of a family that had members making frequent trips back to Avallinia made all the signs of an open portal second nature. Even if she was never allowed to get near one or see one opened, Sirenia knew a portal when she sensed on.
And it was there, tilted against the wall and barely noticeable unless you caught the silver glint when you tilted your head.
It could have passed for a hallucination. Some weird trip a drug could put her on, but she didn’t take any, and she could smell Avallinia on the other side of the faintly glowing wall.
It was the same overwhelming scent of lilac and honeysuckle with the bite of freshly cut ginger roots. It was something Avallinians could never forget; just one trip across the Rift and the scent would haunt them forever. It was what may have driven her father mad those years ago.
It suddenly felt like Sirenia had been on some long vacation and she was standing at the threshold of home, the smell foreign yet recognizable, and for the first time, she actually knew what home smelled like.
Avallinia was never anything short of home for her. Even after her family’s exile from Avallinia to Earth due to his blasphemy against the Empiorex, home was nowhere other than there.
But because she was a Wilter—the only race in Avallinian susceptible to an ancient disease that could turn her into a mindless killer—and because she was a Wilter in exile, she could never see home again. Those doors were closed for her a long time ago. Sirenia wouldn't be breaking Earth's laws by jumping the portal; rather, she’d be breaking Inter-Realm laws that, more often than not, resulted with death when broken.
Death. To die on the other side and on the soils she was born on.
Sirenia closed her eyes and the memories were there.
Of Avallinia, of home, their house by the lake, of her family before exile, and the memories that were fading suddenly snapped back to clarity, to the point she could remember the colors of the Lolin dragonflys' wings as they flew across the lake during the summer. The blending of turquoise and emerald green with splashes of violet and rose red. When the sun caught against their wings, it sent streaks of rainbows across the water's surface, turning it to a pool mirror the galaxies of another Realm.
I could go home. I could go home.
Sirenia took a step toward the portal.
And then she was yanked back.
The portal swallowed itself, collapsing and shoving her with a gust of Avallinian air. The alley darkened back to black shadows. The struggled to breath was back, but it was because Earth's air caught in her throat--too thick now that she'd adjusted to the wave of Avallinian air.
She wriggled in Renata's arm, eventually freeing herself to twist around to her.
If the portal had stayed, she would have been launched across space and time to Avallinia, to home.
She was so close to home.
"That's not funny!" she yelled, her voice shrill and undertoned with a rumble.
"It was the only way to keep you from running."
Renata didn't move toward her even when Sirenia's knees shook and her breathing wavered. She watched the girl grab the wall to keep from falling, watched the heavy lids close and open.
"Besides, it was a controlled setting."
"Still!"
Sirenia wanted to cry. Not from the aching pain in her lungs, but from the thought that she was so close to home. So close.
So damn close.
"Still," she panted. "That's a shit move, Ren. Real shitty move, even for you."
"It worked."
Sirenia shook her head, watching Renata return to the doors and pull them open. She waited for her, making note of every small move Sirenia made in case the girl tried to run again.
If she went that far to keep Sirenia from running, then she had no choice but to respect Renata's attempts. As much as she didn't want to go back inside, knowing morning would bring with it a lecture for fighting, being out late, lying, and trying to make a run from the clinic, Sirenia went in.