When Grace came to she could hear a consistent beeping coming from her side. Her heavy eyes opened with a groan and she realized that she was in a hospital. The beeping was from a heart monitor that she was hooked up to. She glanced at her arms, finding an IV in one and a blood pressure cuff on the other. There was faint murmuring past the curtain and she could see the shadow of people's feet along the floor.
"What… happened…?" she asked softly as a nurse checked on her.
"You passed out, so your workplace called an ambulance for you. Glad you're awake. Mind if I ask some questions so we can triage you? Any allergies or medications?" the nurse asked.
Grace closed her eyes a moment before opening them again with difficulty.
"No medications… but I do have an a-allergy to penicillin," she admitted clearing her throat. She could still feel the swelling but the pain was down to a dull ache. She took a few shaky breaths and focused on the nurse again.
"Any family?"
"No."
"What about an emergency contact, such as a significant other?"
"No, I'm a-alone…" Grace replied, shifting uncomfortably.
She was asked several more questions that she tried to answer to the best of her abilities. She was starting to get unfocused again as the nurse's words became muffled through the hum in her ears.
The doctor came in and the nurse turned to him. Grace tried to make out what they were saying, but the hum grew louder and her throat started burning again making her grimace.
The doctor reached to Grace and felt along her throat, his lips were moving but she couldn't hear a thing.
When he got to the lump she gagged heavily and threw up blood onto her own lap, sputtering some onto the tired emergency room doctor.
He flinched back in surprise and Grace's vitals quickly dropped making several alarms go off in the room. Her vision was swimming again between light and dark and her breathing became quick and erratic.
More nurses came in and they put an oxygen mask on her to try and give her air. She could only hear bits and pieces of what was being said around her through the deafening hum that was rattling in her head.
"… Her esophagus must've ruptured…"
"… Get her to the OR, she's still internally bleeding…"
"… Shouldn't we see what it is…?"
"… No time, her vitals are dropping too quick… I felt what could only be a tumor…"
Grace was rushed to the first open operating room, her heart racing within her chest. She was heaved onto the operating table and one of the nurses intubated her to ease her breathing while the anesthesiologist injected her with the sedative through her IV.
Everything became a murmur including the hum and her eyes grew heavy. She stared at the light above her and it flickered a few times. It grew and elongated into an almost humanoid shape.
Just as Grace's consciousness slipped away from her, she found herself floating above the operating table facing down. She jerked when she saw her passed out body being prepped for the emergency surgery.
"W-What's going on?" she asked in a fearful breath as she slowly floated down to stand beside one of the nurses. No one replied as the suited up surgeon asked for his tools as another nurse disinfected her throat. Grace could see redness and swelling where she'd felt the lump before. Instinctively she reached up and touched the spot along her neck. It almost seemed to be pulsating in front of her eyes as she lowered her hand back to her side.
Was that her imagination?
Grace stared at her body on the table in confusion and reached out to touch someone, but her fingers went straight through them with no effect. She jolted back and looked at her arms, finding them somewhat see through. Her eyes widened and she gritted her teeth.
"Can anyone hear me?" she whined dropping her arms to her side.
Again, there was no response as the surgeon stepped up to the table.
He picked up a scalpel and gently cut into her skin along her throat. Grace's ghostly visage grimaced, and she closed her eyes as the surgeon carefully peeled back her muscles and skin with the help of his nurses.
"What in the world?" the surgeon muttered when he uncovered the mass in Grace's throat. She perked up and peeked over his shoulder to see what he was looking it.
The tumor was like none she'd heard of before. It was pitch black and had almost a heart shape to it.
The mass was pulsating slowly, as if with a second heartbeat with its own pace as it spread darkness to the muscles and arteries surrounding it. The surgeon's brows furrowed and he went to try and cut it out of her throat. Just as the scalpel touched the mass, a pulse went out from it and the surgeon went rigid as if he'd been hit with a shock of electricity, jerking back.
His entire posture changed and he raised the scalpel back to where it had been before and calmly cut down from Grace's throat towards her chest. The nurses at the table gasped in disbelief.
"Dr. Neumann, what are you doing!?" one of the nurses screamed as the other's were too taken aback to react instantly as he kept cutting deeper.
When he didn't respond or stop, the seasoned nurse grabbed him.
The same pulse happened again and she went rigid before relaxing and pulling down the sheet covering Grace's body.
The beeping of the heart monitor became faster and erratic as her vitals dropped.
The assistant nurses tried to stop the two, but the same happened to them and soon they were all helping cut open Grace's body.
"STOP!! W-What's going on!?" Grace shrieked in a panic, trying to grab the surgeon, but she couldn't get a hold of him with her astral form.
No one reacted to her terrified screams.
The nurses and the surgeon were ripping out her organs one by one, simply dropping them on the ground with no regard for safety or contamination. Grace kept trying to pull them off of her body horrified, but they did not react to her as she kept screaming over and over at them to stop.
Grace backed away slowly from the gruesome scene, the heart monitor finally flat-lined into a constant, long, and deafening tone as the surgeon cut out her heart finally. He dropped it onto the operating table, where it slid off the edge to land with the rest of her organs on the floor, and everyone stood still staring at her mutilated body.
Grace collapsed into a sobbing mess in a corner in the room, hugging herself around the shoulders with her head down.
The room slowly became consumed by darkness, the strange, yet familiar, hum drowning out the heart monitor.
A soft touch along Grace's shoulder snapped her eyes open, but she wasn't prepared for what she saw. It was a glowing reflection of her with a soft hushed smile across the visage's lips.
Grace jerked back, the wall she'd been leaning against was gone and she had to catch herself with her arms. There was only darkness and the glowing mock of a reflection across from her.
"Ready to go?" the reflection asked in a hum, the voice like Grace's but overlaid with many others.
Were those her parents and grandparents voices as well?
"W-Who are you? What happened? W-Why did they do that?" Grace choked out through her tears.
The reflection smiled and large wings made of light covered in numerous glowing eyes opened from its back. Grace couldn't help but stare upon the flickering image of the visage in front of her. The face of it switched between young and old and everything in between as it kneeled down before Grace.
"Come with me Grace, it's time to go home," the reflection spoke again with its ethereal many-layered voice.
It extended a glowing inviting hand to Grace.
Grace trembled, still hiccupping from fear and how hard she'd been crying. Slowly she reached with a shaky hand towards the smiling reflection. The darkness lifted and the silence was replaced with the hum from before, but this time Grace could make out a distant familiar yet unknown sweet melody within it.
Grace took its hand and became engulfed within the warm light.
She closed her eyes feeling at peace, as if she were coming home.