Gifts

by Ethan Marsh

XV

  Connie has me lay down on the bed, and she straps me down so I couldn't get up. This frightens me, but I stays calm and remember that I trust Connie. I trust her with my life.

  “Okay, I am going to test your reflexes,” she says.

  I nod, hoping that worry doesn't find its way to my face, even though I can feel it inside.

  She places little suction cups all over me. It is a little bit embarrassing and scary for me since she had me undress before I was strapped down to the bed.

  She walks over to me and puts a little keypad in my hand. In the middle of the keypad, a large red button pops out, almost screaming for me to press it. I resist, and listen for more directions.

  “Okay, Roman. When you feel a shock, press the button.”

  “Alright.”

  She went over to a screen and I hear a click. I wait for the shock, frightened because I have know idea how powerful it might be. I am prepared though.

  I wait a couple of seconds, then a blast of electricity zooms through me, I feel like a rush of energy passed through me. My hand slams on the red button, as it tumbles to the floor. Connie makes more clicks using the technology, then she looks at me with a blank face.

  I look at her, with the same expression.

  “How'd I do?” I ask curiously, pushing the words toward her, wanting an answer.

  “I will tell you all of your results at the end of all of the experiments,” she says, sounding more serious than she was before.

  She pulls off all of the suction cups from my body which stings, but not nearly as much as what I have been through in the past.

  She gives me a hospital gown to put on, so my naked body is not shown. Next, we walk out of her office, straight across the big room outside. Everybody is gone. Unlike before, people do not sit at the screens, typing away. Instead, abandoned chairs lay across the wall perfectly pushed in, as if nobody had sat in them before.

  When we arrive at the room, the lights are not on, which made everything extremely dark. I could not see two inches in front of me. I wave my hands in front of me just in case I run into anything.

  Connie quickly walks over to a wall and the lights flash on. My pupils barely have time to adjust, again.

  Inside the room, everything is painted chrome(just like everything else in the building.) Tiles run across the floor. It was mostly empty, except for a large tube in the middle, also painted chrome. I know that this is another test and I also know that I don't want to do it. I'm not doing it for me though.

  I want to help Connie, because I can trust her. She sets a clipboard down on a desk not far from where I was standing. There were two “sections” in the room. One was the actual room with the large tube in the middle, and the other side was a small zone that had walls of blue tinted glass. Lots of buttons and screens are on that side of the room.

  “Okay, Roman, this is an MRI scanner,” she says, still leaving me still to no clue what it is.

  “What does MRI stand for?” I ask.

  “Magnetic resonance imagery. Roman, don't worry one bit, this won't hurt you at all. In fact, I myself have had many MRI's in my lifetime,” she says, coming over with a large plastic bin, filled with a lot of equipment, none I know what it does.

  “There are a few preparations that might sting you a little, but you'll be just fine. Trust me,” she says, placing the bin down on a small table like platform that leads to the MRI, which I assume that she is going to pull equipment out. A large syringe like object with a needle sticking out of it(at least three inches) comes out of the bin. She comes closer to me.

  “Put your arm out in front of you.”

  I obey her request and extend my arm straight out in front of me. She points the large needle at me, as it slowly floats over towards me.

  I wince at the pinch of the piercing metal, drilling a hole into my flesh. The second of pain feels like a whole minute, but then it is over.

  I let out all of the air contained within me, I could move a turbine with the great power.

  “Would you like some water, Roman? It might make the side effects less noticeable.”

  Side effects? Had I been drugged? I hope whatever was put into my body was not harmful.

  I take the water carefully out of her hand and gulp the liquids down, the clear consistency slithering down my throat. After I swallow, a sense of drowsiness comes upon me.

  “Roman? Can you lay down on this platform?” I do as she says, trying as hard as I can not to fall over. I collapse onto the conveyer belt, my back jerking and twisting from the impact.

  Connie comes over to me and places a full body mold on me, only leaving holes where my nose, mouth, and eyes are. The mold is a light green color, and it is the very opposite of smooth. The scratchy substance rubs upon me. I wish that I could scratch myself to rid of the itches all over me.

  Connie gives me one last smile, but this time, I don't even give her a smile. Then, she presses a few buttons, each corresponding to the same frequency of beeping. The belt of moving leather moves me into the tube. Outside of panicking, I see Connie as she walks to the other section of the room. I watch her as she talks into a microphone. Her voice echoes throughout the whole scanner.

  “Roman, I'm going to be right here the whole time, okay?”

  I gulp at the even the thought of breathing. The side effects of the drug that she had injected me with are taking over me. It is hard to control. But I manage to get something out:

  “Okay. How long is this going to take?” I hope for an answer of five minutes or less because I am not in the most comfortable position laying down in an itchy container with a rough surface planted on top of me.

  “Precisely, twenty-five minutes,” she replies.

  I sigh.

  “You ready, Roman?” she asks.

  More focusing to succeed at speaking, I say, “I guess.”

  She pushes one of the many buttons in the room, then makes a few clicks on a screen, and I a loud noise sound and I move slowly deeper into the tube, or scanner, as I should call it.

  The belts, and me halt to a stop when I reach about the end of the tube. It is very bright, and I have to squint when I open my eyes. After about a minute the noise gets louder which gives me a raging headache, which I can't ignore no matter how hard I try.

  I can't tell over the headache, but I think a large groan escapes me. The side effects don't bother me, the noises keep me awake and alert as I could ever be.

  On top of the occurring buzz, some louder sounds come in with little beeps, at intervals of about two seconds. This annoys me even more the buzzing did, but I am so scared that I couldn't care less about an annoyance.

  I start to feel weird after about ten minutes of the scan. It feels like electricity flowing through me, fast. I am uncontrollably shaking and I feel like the life is escaping out of me itself. I thought this was normal for the MRI to be doing this, but then I thought, “I've felt this before,”

  I've felt this before. But what is it? Then I know and gasp at the picture in my mind. The orange, large, infectious picture.

  I feel the adrenalin.

  XVI

  I feel the adrenalin. It's all I can think about. I feel the adrenalin, I feel the adrenalin, I feel the adrenalin! I am panicking. Full out panicking. Sweat beads start to form on my face, I can feel everything in my body. I feel my blood pumping, my lungs expanding. I try to think of this as a good thing: Maybe it will help the testing if I feel the adrenalin now. Maybe it's a good thing. Maybe this will help figure out what the adrenalin is, and how to get rid of it. I remember what is it that I need to do.

  Staying calm is a challenge, as it was when I felt the adrenalin before. My body continues the shaking

  "Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay calm," I think.

  I can't resist to the power of the adrenalin. My whole body is in tremors; I cannot stand to not being able to move. It seems that if adrenalin pumps th
rough me than blood.

  I hear the loudspeaker.

  "Roman! Are you okay? Try to stay still, it's not over quite yet," Connie calls, which reveals that she has no clue that I am uncomfortable. I am more than uncomfortable though. I am irritated, stressed, pained, strained, and anything else that could mean disoriented.

  I wish to reply and say what I feel, but I cannot even think to do two things at once, even if she could hear me. My brain feels like a glob of nothing, absorbing the adrenalin.

  The adrenalin is taking over me. I realize that I have to alert Connie. I cannot stay here any longer. The face mask is bolted to the cart, even though it didn't seem that she bolted it when it was placed on me . I am stuck here. My body continues to be in tremors, large explosions blasting in my chest. It is so much pain, I can't stand it.

  Maybe the adrenalin could help me escape? If the adrenalin made my hands burn other things, why couldn't my hands burn the face mask? After all, it is plastic, I think. If they were burning, I could burn through the whole scanner if I wanted to. I could focus on my hands.

  All I had to do is stop moving, and focus.

  Everything stops. The noises stopped. Was I in relief, or horror?

  I wait for a couple of seconds then come to see Connie, in obvious horror. She rushes over to the scanner, presses a couple of buttons, then the conveyer belts rushes me out of the tube.

  "Roman, what happened in there?!" she asks, prying off the full body mask, with the help of the screwdriver. I knew then that nobody wanted that to come off during the procedure.

  I step out of the cart, and she sees what happened. She sees my sweaty face, the worried look on my face, she sees that. She also sees something else. Something else far more important than sweat. More important than feelings.

  She knows what she sees. I can tell. She doesn't say anything at all, all she does is nod her head, back and forth. I see many things in her emotions, but the one thing that sticks out to me is her excitement. I can feel that she is excited, even though that she doesn't show it.

  "I'm scared, Connie," I say, telling the full-out truth. I did not think this through. I simply spoke my mind.

  “I know, Roman. There are many reasons that you may be scared in this situation. Don't worry. We will find what is going on with you,” she says, her big eyes stare down at me, which makes what I am about to say a little more difficult.

  “No, Connie. You don't understand. I am scared...” I take a large breath. It scares me even more just to say it. I know that there is no way that I can escape it. “...of myself.”

  You may think that being scared is hard, but overcoming your fears is even harder. The only thing that is harder than that is the feeling of having no fears at all.

  I stand in the scanner room next to Connie. I can't see normally. My sight is bulged with red and orange, fiery almost. I wonder what Connie is thinking.

  My sight is not the only thing that isn't working normally. My ears hear a ringing that has a constant sound. Like the doorbell that I heard at his house when the man, Mr. Jones, reminded me and him of education. I wonder how long it has been since then. Days? Weeks? Months, even?

  Connie stands there, looking at me. She sees that I am uncomfortable, and I couldn't care less. I glare down at my piercing arms.

  "I am scared of myself; I am dangerous. I am scared of myself; I am dangerous," I repeat. I have to keep everyone save, because of one thing.

  The adrenalin is taking over me.

  I can't stop it.

  XVII