Previous Trauma Whump - Tumblr Posts

Here some whump. its been drifting in my google docs for a while, but here

its part of a larger series but won't be on tumblr

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I lay on my back, reading the book Doctor Harland had just given me. I liked it thus far.

He kneeled next to me, petting my stomach while he hooked me up to some kind of machine. I dropped the book, remembering the page number, and I found myself unable to move.

“It’ll be over in a minute,” he whispered. I didn’t respond as my brain went foggy and I closed my eyes.

He bashed me in the side of the face, and my eyes flew open. 

I stared at him, and he said, “Begin test number G-1-7-8-8,”

My muscles tensed and I went numb as something inserted itself in both sides of my neck and my muscles spasmed and I thrashed abou-

—

I came to with my muscles stiff.

“Test failed,” Doctor Harland remarked. “We need to deal with the epilepsy,”

He fastened an oxygen mask over my face and put an IV in my skin.

“We’ll feed you tonight, ‘kay? Just sleep off th-,”

Darkness.

—

I opened my eyes in my bed, and Doctor Harland entered a few minutes later.

“Sit up,” he ordered. I obeyed, and he handed me my book again.

“I’ll get you a treat for sitting quietly and letting us test our new device on you,”

I didn’t respond, immersed in the book’s world. It was about a girl who discovered she was the daughter of King Oberon from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Doctor Harland said he would get me the rest of the series after giving me a modern translation of the play so I could better understand it.

He held out something that smelled sweet and I took it, then ate it, my tail wagging happily.

He pet my head and I purred.

“One-two-seven-three, any strange feelings?” He asked.

“No,” I chirped. 

“Good. Good. Nausea? Tiredness? Breathing normally?”

He checked my heart rate and breathing for any abnormalities.

“Normal. Okay. Darling little test subject, we’re going to try and treat the illness that made this test fail. We’re going to cure it,”

“What illness?” I asked.

“You- have a reaction to certain things, and it causes you to stop existing for a minute, meaning we can’t do certain tests. We try to treat it and you don’t respond to medications, so we need to cut it out,”

I felt something cold on my wrist and whimpered, “No, not again, don’t look at my brain- please!”

“What? No. The procedure requires you to be awake or you’ll die, we’ve already tested it, and it’s painful. We’d give you painkillers, but that’s unsafe until after,”

I shuddered and hissed when he brought his hand to my tail. I tried to bite him as he tied it under the bed and shackled my other three wrists and my ankles to the bed.

“Please! NO!”

“It’ll all be over soon,”

He called for Doctor Fletcher and Doctor Amatris. Doctor Amatris held my chest down and Doctor Fletcher attached electrodes to my skull, and I felt like I exploded a few minutes later. I shrieked and thrashed around, when I heard something snap.

“Oh shit!” Doctor Amatris shouted.

I felt the pain dull a bit, and Doctor Harland whispered, “Its over, you’re going to have morphine tablets now,”

“Okay,” I mumbled before changing form to my more human self and laying back, my forehead caked with sweat. They undid the shackles, and Doctor Amatris took my hand in hers and the trio set my leg in a splint. 

I cried out and whimpered, “Hurts,” when Doctor Fletcher shoved a capsule into my mouth and held my lips shut until I swallowed, then gave me water.

I rolled to my side and shivered, still in deep pain. I started crying and Doctor Harland sat me up and started hand feeding me between each sob. It was cold, barely seasoned chicken, like always.

When I was done, I dove under the bed, where it was calmest, no one trying to talk to me, even though it was dark.

“One-two-seven-three, don’t be like that,” Doctor Fletcher said. “Do you want to undo all the progress in training out that habit?”

I hissed at him and swatted at his ankles, then curled into a ball and continued crying into my fur.

Doctor Amatris kneeled in front of me and held out her hand. I didn’t take it. She very gently petted the fluff on my neck, and I continued sobbing, though it made me feel a bit better.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “The pain’s over now,”

She very slowly pulled me out, as though acclimating a fish from one tank to another. At one point I had a couple fish and a snail, and in a rage, Doctor Harland smashed the tank, killing all three of them. I cried for weeks after that, as at that point, I’d been taking care of them for four years.

“There, how do you feel?”

“Hurts,” I croaked, my voice raw. It felt like the color red to speak.

She lifted me and set me back on the bed, tucked me in like a mother would her child, and kissed me on where my forehead would be, and when she left, Doctor Harland inserted an IV into my skin. She wasn’t allowed to see it, for some reason, I wasn’t even sure if she knew.

I closed my eyes and let sleep take me.

—

What was supposed to be a dreamless sleep became a nightmare, one where I was playing with a child, and we were about the same height. It was all flashing lights and pain and fear when someone grabbed me, and-

I woke up, screaming for someone whose name I didn’t remember. The IV had broken.

I took off my oxygen mask and sobbed in the dark. Normally Doctor Harland stayed to make sure I felt safe at night, it was too dark for me. I wished I had control of my lights, but past lights-out, they couldn’t be turned on unless Doctor Harland or someone else swiped a keycard.

I heard rapid footsteps, and a woman in a dark blue uniform with a thick black stick and a big spiky club opened the door, then said into a strange black box, “False alarm. One of them woke up, over,”

A garbled voice came from the box, “How?”

“Its IV looks broken,”

“Which one?”

She stepped back and looked at the sign that said my room number with a beam of light that came from a black stick. 

I ran over and took the lightstick after a bit of back and forth, then clicked the button on and off as she said, “It just took my flashlight,”

I called, “Room 5-6-6 B!” and went back to playing with the ‘flashlight’, then grabbed my book and started reading with the concentrated beam of light.

The woman repeated the room number I gave her and said, “I’m gonna need back-up to get it back into bed, its strong,”

I got under my bed and continued reading, until someone else in a dark blue uniform grabbed me and bashed me with a spike on their club. I dropped the ‘flashlight’ and-

-

I came to with my upper wrists shackled to my bed’s headboard and my entire body numb.

“Okay, so, two hundred million watts can cause seizures. Duly noted,” the one who’d hit me with the spike muttered.

“Seizure? Watt?” I parroted, trying to get feeling back in my tongue. “Why’d you do that?”

“Holy shit it talks,” the woman said. 

“Yes I talk, why wouldn’t I talk? Also, I’m not an it, I’m- I’m a girl,”

“Someone get one of the night shift doctors,” the woman ordered. Another person left the room.

“It’s dark!” I complained.

The woman groaned and said, “Deal with it, how old are you, seven, eight?”

“Thirteen, fourteen in four months and two days,”

“How are you that old? Why haven’t you committed suicide yet?” the man asked.

“Suicide?” I’d parroted. I knew what it met at a base level, but in books they always said it in association with a stupid battle plan. 

“You know, killing yo-”

“I know what it means, I just thought it only went with wars?”

“What?”

“In books,” I chirped. I motioned to one that said it, then said the page number.

“Oh-kaaay, you can read,”

“Isn’t that normal? Well except illiteracy rates in fantasy places, but isn’t it normal now?”

The man who’d left returned with Doctor Amatris.

“One-two-seven-three, what’s wrong?” she asked.

“I had a nightmare,” I replied.

“Come here,”

“I can’t,”

She took a key from one of the security guards and unlocked my manacles, then lifted me into her arms, though it was much more awkward than when I was little, considering I was about as big as her now.

I laid my chin on her shoulder, and she carried me away, off to another room, this one with more light.

“We oughta get you a nightlight,”

“Nightlight?” I parroted. “What’s that?”

“Its a little light that plugs into a wall and makes the room brighter,”

She unhooked a little square that glowed blue until it exited the wall, “Normally they come in fun shapes, but until I go shopping tomorrow, we can use this one. I’ll get a bunch of them and let you pick them out, okay?”

“Okay,” I chirped.

She carried me back to my room and lay me on my bed, and I grabbed her arm and whimpered, “Don’t go. Don’t leave me alone,”

“I have to go back to work,”

“I’m scared,” I whimpered. 

She turned back around and fastened my oxygen mask on my mouth and nose.

“You’ll be fine. And if you wake up again, I’ll come back and keep you company ‘til you fall asleep again. Now close your eyes, goodnight, don’t let the bed bugs bite,”

“What’s a bed bug?”

“You don’t want to know,”

She shuddered and tucked me in, then kneeled next to me and rubbed my forehead to calm me. But sleep would be a long time coming. I didn’t fall asleep until all the lights turned back on.