Falling Up

There was no way I could be dead; my body ached too much for me to be in Heaven. Unless I had somehow wound up in Hell. Geez, I hope not- that would really piss me off.

I cold hear a beeping noise every couple of seconds, which was starting to annoy me, but assured me that at least some of my hearing was back, which was always a good thing. Slowly I opened my eyes, and winced slightly as the bright lights assaulted me all at once. My eyes adjusted, and once again I was thankful for the return of yet another one of my senses.

Where was I? The last thing I could remember was passing out in that ally with a hallucination of an angel above me. Had someone found me dying outside in the snow and had taken me to a hospital? Or had I unconsciously just ended up here? I didn’t think that the later of the two ideas was possible, as I had been much too weak to go anywhere, so I was going to go with the first option, although that didn’t make much sense to me either as most people were probably too scared to approach me, let alone help me out and take me o the hospital. Was this even a hospital at all? Don’t they normally put a hospital gown on you when your in a crappy state like me? I was still wearing all of my clothes from before, including my beanie. What was going on?

I looked around as much as I could without moving my neck too much, as it was very sore, and I saw that it looked like I was in a lab. Adrenaline pumped through me as my panic and fear heightened. I was not going to be an experiment! I wasn’t going to die, not now!

Ignoring sharp stabs of pain in my ribs, I quickly sat up and began to yank out different needles that had been under my skin, wincing as I did so with less care than I should have done so. I pulled what looked like a fancy clothes’ pin off my finger, and I knew I had made a mistake when the strobe-like beeping from before became a constant drone, flatlining. No doubt someone would come rushing in now, concerned that their lab rat had died on them. I had to get out of here, now. That was harder said then done, as I collapsed after only a couple of steps.

As I tried to work up enough energy to escape, the doors in front of me slid open with a small whoosh, and I was pretty sure that I looked like a deer caught in the headlights when I saw who was standing there. The first word that came to my mind when I saw him was ‘predator’, because even though I had never seen him before, I could tell that he was strong, smart, and when he wanted to be, lethal.

Wearing jeans and a white wifebeater, his arms looked extremely strong and defined. His hair was a dark brown, and on someone else I would think that his hair style would look ridiculous, but on him it looked good. His eyes looked slightly frantic at the moment, probably because he thought I was dead, but I could see an almost wild look behind the concern, something that I guessed was always there no matter how he was feeling. He was probably in his early-to-mid-thirties, and, even though I usually wasn’t into older guys, it was hard to ignore that he was handsome.

I saw panic flash across his face when he saw that I was no longer in the bed, and I hoped for a moment that maybe he would run out of the room to go tell someone, leaving me the opportunity to escape. But then he looked my way, and our eyes locked for a second before he started walking towards me slowly, and I couldn’t bring myself to move away.

“Listen, kid, calm down a sec. I ain’t gonna hurt ya.” His voice was rough and deep, but even though he looked and sounded like he could be dangerous, I was pretty sure that he was telling me the truth when he said he wasn’t going to hurt me. I gave him a small nod to let him know that I believed him as he continued to come closer. Now he was maybe three feet away, and he kneeled so that we were eye to eye with each other. His hand reached out to me, and even though I believed he wouldn’t hurt me, he was still much too close for comfort. I didn’t have a lot of energy, but I probably had enough to get back a couple of feet.

So right before he managed to grab my hand, I flashed back and landed against a wall, leaving a good ten feet in-between us. For a moment, I was proud of how far I had managed to flash with such little energy, having thought before that I wouldn’t had been able to flash half the distance I did, but then the pain seemed to come back ten-fold, and my accomplishment was quickly forgotten as I doubled over and gasped in agony. Pain now radiated from my upper-torso, which seemed to throb along to the beat of my now racing heart. My flash backwards away from the man had been more rough than other ones before it, probably due to my lack of energy, and probably jostled my injuries, leaving me unable to do anything but to gasp and cry in pain on the floor.

The man swore as he got up and ran towards me. He knelt down and, in a surprisingly gentile way, picked me up and carried me back to the bed. As he lied me down, over the sound of my own gasps for breath, I could hear the whoosh of the door again, and then heard several footsteps.

“Logan, what happened? Charles sensed the heart monitor flatline.”

Another deep voice, but this one seemed more articulate, more… regal somehow. This new voice had named the gentile predator Logan; now who was this?

Suddenly another face was in my line of sight, and I felt a mixture of surprise and safety within me at the same time. He was big, taller than Logan and with broader shoulders. From what I could see, he wore a white button-down shirt, black dress pants, and a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose. I would have thought that he looked like a normal guy, except for two rather unusual traits.

He was furry.

And he was blue.

Everywhere.

‘A mutant!’ I shouted in my head happily. A fellow mutant would not harm me, I was sure of it, especially since we both looked different from everyone else. I probably would have smiled if I wasn’t still gasping for air.

“The kid’s a teleporter. I found her on the floor, and I guess when I got too close for her liking, she teleported herself against the wall, and next thing I know she’s gasping for air on the floor,” Logan explained.

“What if her ribs punctured her lung when she moved? She could be drowning in her blood.” Yet another voice was heard, this one feminine, firm, yet loving and concerned. Her words, although I wished otherwise, made sense to me. Broken ribs would explain this agonizing pain, and I had heard somewhere before, maybe on some crime scene show, that if your lungs were punctured, there was a possibility of blood flooding the lungs and drowning the victim. Was I drowning? Was I going to die here?

“Ororo, go get an oxygen mask, quickly. Logan, remove her hat.” I could feel Logan slowly removing my black beanie as the blue man carefully lifted up the hem of my hoodie and then my shirt to inspect my ribs. I wondered if he would be able to find any bruises with all of my dark marks inking out most of my skin. My eyesight was beginning to go blurry, although I wasn’t sure if that was because of my eyes tearing up or if it was because I was dying- maybe it was both-, so I couldn’t see how the blue man reacted to the possible damage. I did, however, hear Logan swear again from behind me. “What’s wrong?”

“The kid’s hat is soaked with blood, Hank.” I saw the blue blur, who I now knew was Hank, quickly walked out of my line of sight as he joined Logan, and heard him mutter darkly, although I couldn’t make out what he was saying over my attempts to breathe. I felt like all of the oxygen had been sucked from the air, like I was indeed drowning. My lungs were on fire, in agony as they screamed for relief. My eyesight was blurry and spinning, and even though the lights overhead seemed to be glowing brighter than they had before, everything was dimming. I knew I wasn’t going to last much longer, no matter what they did.

I could vaguely see a dark-skinned blur with white hair put a mask over my mouth. Maybe it was the oxygen mask, but still I could not breathe. This was it, it was over. My heartbeat began to slow dramatically, and my once desperate gasps for breath stopped all together. I closed my eyes, and the desperate shouts surrounding me faded away. The immense pain from before was now diminishing, and I would have been happy and relieved by the fact if I didn’t know I was dying.

Hold on for just a bit longer, Evie. There are a couple of people here who still want to meet you.

I was startled when I heard a friendly voice as clear as a bell in my mind, after all else had faded away into the darkness that now surrounded me. Who was that? And who was he talking about? Who wanted to meet me?

Suddenly all the pain came rushing back and hit me all at once. My eyes snapped open as I arched my back and gasped for breath once more. I almost cried out in relief when oxygen filled my lungs, instantly relieving the agony I had felt before. As I fell back to the bed, I realized that as soon as the wave of pain had come, it was gone, and besides feeling exhausted, I felt fine.

In front of me I saw Logan, Hank, and who I assumed was Ororo looking down at me, each with a different expression on their faces. The woman was smiling, and I was shocked to see tears in her eyes. What was wrong? She didn’t know me personally, so she couldn’t have been crying over me, right? Logan had a look of surprise on his face, his eyes seemed to be looking for an answer as he looked back and forth between me and his hand, which was now held in front of his face. I saw that his surprise turned into confusion quickly, and saw him mutter something to himself. His reaction confused me, but I really didn’t care right now. Hank also looked confused, but happy at the same time as he smiled down at me. All three of them had relief obviously written across their faces.

“You gave us quite a scare, miss. I’m happy to see that you’re alright now,” Hank said.

As happy as I was to be alive, one question flew in a frenzy in my mind: How?