You can go back to any time in history. What time would you go to? What would you do there?”
Maria Abigail Effendi
Hospitals. The only place where the strong scent of alcohol and medicine would tangle with each other and suffocate you. The only place where people inject sharp objects into your body and cut you open. The only place in the world that I absolutely despised.
Ironically, as my eyes fluttered open and expected to see the familiar surroundings of my bedroom, I was greeted with the sight of nurses rushing around and patients on different devices instead. It was then that I had realized where I actually was. It was then that I had realized where I actually was. I was in a hospital.
Millions of questions flooded into my brain in that single moment. Why was I here? How did I get here? When did I get there? Who am I here for? Tense, I looked around desperately, but there was no one I knew. As a nurse in a spotless blue uniform passed by, I stood up.
“Excuse me,” I called out to her, but was met with only silence.
“Excuse me!” this time, I strained my voice to become louder.
Confused at the lack of response and slightly frustrated, I stomped up to her and was about to tap her on the shoulder when something strange happened. My hand passed right through her body as if it was thin air. Immediately, I froze. With a trembling hand, I attempted to tap her again, but the same thing happened.
My heart started to beat against my chest furiously like a wild beast fighting against its cage. As the panic built up, I tried to touch several more people, grabbing their arms, shoving their shoulders, kicking their feet. Anything that would tell me that what I had seen was just my imagination, but I was wrong. This was real.
Giving up, I decided to wander aimlessly around the hospital. As I trudged through the clean hallways, I realized that people wore different clothes and had different hairstyles. A man even passed by with a phone as big as a block in his hand. Why were there no flat-screen TVs? Or smartphones?
I gazed around curiously at the people around me until a possibility appeared in my mind. Had a I gone back in time? Walking up to the stairs by the corner of the hospital, I realized that here were no modern elevators here either. A few minutes ago when I had tried to walk out of the hospital through the doors, it had refused to budge at all. At first, I thought that there must have been a problem with the sensors, but there were no sensors.
As the different scenarios emerged in mu head, I tried to figure out the date. Entering a small waiting room, I noticed a mini calender on the table and picked it up. In the middle, there was a small, red circle around today’s date. March 27th, 1994. My eyes widened at the familiar date. That was my birthday.
Without another thought, my feet moved on its own and I dashed through the hallways, remembering the particular hospital room that my mother had told me countless stories about. Panting, I pause din front of a door. Beside the door, there was a shiny, metallic plate that I scanned over quickly. Room 409. With a deep breath, I shut my eyes tightly and stepped right through the door.
“Wahhhh!”
My eyes opened, watching the scene before me in absolute amazement. There on the hospital bed, looking seaty and exhausted, was a beautiful, younger version of my mother. Beside her, I noticed my father with a head full of black hair that would turn bald later in the future. In his arms, there was a little creature wrapped delicately in a soft blanket as it wailed loudly.
With tears of joy streaming down her rosy cheeks, my mother smiled widely as the bundle was passed to her. She cradled it gently, staring at it with an overflowing amount of affection.
Gulping, I walked slowly to the couple. Placing my hand on the railing of the hospital bed, I looked down. Huge, black eyes gazed up at me curiously as a small head wriggled in the bundle. Its chest rose up and down as the little baby breathed the air of the outside world for the first time. It was during that moment that I had figured out who this fragile newborn baby was. I was staring straight down at myself.