Ethan rushed through the hospital hallway in full sprint, his mind in chaos. His thighs pained from running. The hallway knew no end. It felt as if the faster he ran, the longer the hallway got. He rested momentarily, his hands dropping to his kneecaps. Ethan panted like a dog as his lungs were on fire.

He noticed the door come closer to him and the hallway shortened with every second he stood still. The damaged sign on the white door read ‘ICU’ in bold red letters. Ethan waited for the door to slowly slide in front of him before swinging it open to reveal one patient lying with a speck of life on a bed. His mother.

“Mom!” he shouted.

She snapped her head to Ethan in response and, despite her state, sat up in her bed. She looked just like the day he lost her. Her skin was rotted and peeling off, her eyes were sunken in and she had barely any muscle mass on her.

He tried to walk towards her, but the floor became sand making his feet sink. The more he struggled, the quicker he sank. From the sand emerged a pair of hands grasping his shirt firmly and pulling it into the sand. Ethan tugged at his shirt with all his strength trying to free himself from the hands that dragged him down.

His mother slid her legs to the side of the bed, disconnecting the ventilator mask and standing up on her two feet. Walking towards Ethan as he was sinking, she stood on the edge of the sand pit. Ethan met her gaze. One that had only a hint of life in it that burned bright in her. I can still save her, he thought.

Ethan extended his hand asking for her help, but her eyes merely shifted back and forth between his eyes and his hand. Ethan’s eyes pleaded, his entire body except his face consumed by the sand pit.

“Please,” he begged.

His mother finally grasped his hand and with one firm yank, pulled him out of the sand pit. Ethan looked at the woman dressed in a hospital gown up and down. She took a step closer to him. Swallowing the accumulated saliva in his mouth, Ethan resisted the urge to move a step back. She, with her frail, bony body, embraced him. Tears began to rush down his cheeks dripping onto his mother’s skin. He felt her skin soften at the touch of his tears, returning to their original color and texture. When she released him, she had recovered; the effects of the virus were nowhere to be seen as if it never happened. This was how he liked to remember her.

He wiped the tears from his face and cleared his misty eyes, a small smile appearing. His face lit up like a lamp. Suddenly, he heard the slice of a knife slicing through flesh. His mother’s eyes widened, and her face froze. She collapsed at Ethan’s feet, blood pooling underneath him. The blood flowed to the extent that Ethan began to feel it seep into the soles of his shoes.

“No, no, no…Not again!” he said grabbing his mother’s body, trying to stop the bleeding.

The faceless hooded figure stood with his arm outstretched holding the bloody knife. Underneath the hood was a dark and deep abyss that made Ethan dizzy. The hooded man dropped his head to face Ethan’s feet. The pool of blood had widened and somehow deepened.

“It’s time to go, Ethan. She’s not coming back,” the man said.

The hooded figure removed his hood revealing a familiar face. His eyes were green and his hair brown with many strands of white as well. Ethan stared at an aged version of himself. He had wrinkles around his eyes and his cheeks sagged. He may have looked frail, but Ethan saw the same eyes of vengeance in his future self.

He advanced towards him. Ethan took a step back for every step his clone took forward until he hit the hospital wall. The hospital closed in on him until he was in a white box accompanied only by his clone and his mother’s body, the pool of her blood growing by the second.

Ethan fell into the blood as if he was just dunked in the ocean. He flailed his arms trying to keep himself afloat. His heart raced and pounded in his ear. His limbs burned from exhaustion. His breathing spiraled out of control. He had always feared drowning in the sea but drowning in his mother’s blood was even worse. The figure turned his head to Ethan’s outstretched arm just like his mother did only he didn’t grab it.

“Wake up,” he said watching Ethan’s face disappear beneath the blood. A red tint washed over Ethan’s gaze as he tried to make out what the man was saying.

Ethan heard a muffled voice. It became clearer over time until he could hear exactly what the man was saying.

“Wake up.”

Ethan’s eyes snapped open, and he sprung off the bed he was sleeping on. A skinny man about a head shorter than Ethan (which was still average height) stumbled backward and hit a lampshade with his elbow.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t mean to startle you, but the boss asked me to come to check up on you. Are you feeling better?”

At least I’m not drowning, Ethan thought. “Uhm, yes, I am. Tell him I’ll be in the kitchen in a few minutes.”

The man chuckled, “Actually, he asked me to tell you to take the day off.”

The man scurried over to the door and exited the room leaving Ethan all alone.

“Just a dream, Ethan. Just a dream,” he muttered to himself as he neatened his apron and went to the sink to wash his face.

He opened the tap and cold water rushed out into the sink. He waited for the water to warm up. It was the middle of winter and there was no way he’d dip his hands or any part of his body in that. Ethan stumbled back as he looked in the mirror. His face was dripping with blood. What the hell, he thought. He shut his eyes tight and rubbed them with his hands thoroughly before opening them again. Nothing. His face was clean as a blank canvas.

“Thank God,” he whispered under his breath. Ethan noticed the water was boiling when the mirror began to steam up. Much better. He washed his face, the water stinging his skin which he didn’t mind. It was much better than his face turning numb from the cold. After drying his face with a towel, he grabbed his cap and headed out of the room.

“Order number thirty-five! Thirty-five! Two steak specials, medium-rare and medium fries!” shouted the waiter from the entrance of the kitchen.

A man with a platter rushed past Ethan, the steam hitting his face. “Prawns platter, table four!” the chef shouted as he placed it on the counter for collection by one of the waiters.

Ethan always had a passion for cooking ever since he was nine. His goal in life then was to become a chef. Little did his nine-year-old self know, that cooking in a restaurant isn’t as quiet as cooking in your mom’s kitchen. In fact, ever since he’d left the lab, he’d been getting recurring headaches from noise and dizziness. He’d always attribute it to the chaotic kitchen and its suffocating environment that he had still not gotten used to. Nothing to be concerned about, he told himself. A bit of Ibuprofen tablets and a quick nap took care of that.

He looked at the clock above the entrance to the kitchen. Damn it! He cursed. He had slept through most of his shift.

“You okay, Rider?” the owner asked as he passed by the kitchen.

“Uh, yeah. I’m fine now. I can still work, sir.”

“You will do no such thing,” the owner insisted. “You need to take care of yourself.”

“But I don’t have any sick leave left and I need to pay my b—”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll pay you in full, okay?”

Ethan smiled, “Thank you, sir!”

The Boss patted him on the back. “Go see a doctor, kid. You’ve been getting sicker too often ever since you joined two months ago. A check-up isn’t going to hurt. I’ll even pay for it if you want me to.”

“No thanks, sir,” Ethan said with a grateful smile. “What you’ve done for me is more than enough.”

“Good,” he said with a chuckle. “I want to see you back to normal for the end-of-year celebration with the staff, okay?”

Ethan nodded and greeted everyone before leaving. On his way out of the restaurant, he picked up his backpack from the locker. It was late in the afternoon and Ethan had one more place he needed to stop before he could go home.

Ethan rushed over to the teleporting station to meet Sarah who would be returning from work soon. He jogged to the entrance and walked through the glass double doors.

The ground floor of the building was a roofed courtyard that looked like a mall. The spotless white tiling reflected Ethan’s image as he walked across it. Small stores lined themselves in aisles on the ground floor forming a path to the back of the building. People gathered in mass at the elevators waiting patiently. At every elevator, there was a security check to ensure that your possessions were safe for teleporting and that your access card was valid.

Ethan walked through the small market, people calling for him to visit their store. He would often buy something for his lunch from the market in the morning before heading for work. He approached one of the shops selling fresh fruit.

“You’re back early from work, aren’t you?” joked the old lady sarcastically behind the counter.

Ethan returned a half-hearted laugh before turning his gaze to the assortment of fruit before him. He picked up three deep red apples examining their ripeness before weighing them on the scale next to him.

“That’ll be twenty Rand,” the old lady said placing the apples in a transparent plastic bag and handing them over to Ethan.

Ethan slipped out a note from his wallet and handed it over to the owner.

“Thank you,” he said taking the bag of apples from her hand and leaving. He walked through the aisle to the end of the market, shoving his way through the crowds of people rushing towards him. Ethan emerged from the chaos, fixing his hair so that he looked presentable at the least. He jogged over to Sarah who leaned against a wall adjacent to the elevator.

“Hey,” Ethan greeted picking an apple out of his bag and throwing it to Sarah.

“You’re back early from work?” she asked in disbelief, taking a bite into the apple. “That’s probably rarer than Halley’s comet.”

Ethan laughed nervously. “First time for everything, am I right?”

She shot a suspicious look at Ethan, her eyes squinting. Ethan returned it with a wry smile before quickening his pace ever so slightly. Sarah looked a little relaxed that evening. Her shoulders weren’t tense, and her forehead wasn’t wrinkled as it always was after a long day of work. It seemed as if a huge burden had been lifted off her shoulders.

“Well, you don’t have a wi-fi bar on your forehead,” Ethan teased. “That’s probably rarer than Halley’s comet.”

“A what?” she asked.

“A wi-fi bar. When you’re stressed your forehead gets wrinkles. It looks like the wi-fi icon...or something like that.”

Sarah’s brows furrowed, “How on earth did you manage to compare a wrinkled forehead to a wi-fi bar?”

“Saw a photoshop on Reddit,” Ethan shrugged.

“We finally got another doctor in the ward today. He knows his stuff, so things should be getting less stressful for me now.”

“So you won’t have a short temper when you come back from work anymore? That’s great!”

“Shut up, would you? I do not have a short temper.”

“I take that back,” Ethan said.

Sarah reached her apartment and walked up the steps, Ethan trailing closely behind her. She hesitated before unlocking the door and turning around to face Ethan.

“Um, may I help you?” she asked furrowing her eyebrows.

Deep breaths, Ethan. Deep breaths, he told himself. “Do you have a minute?”

“Um, Sure…” she hesitated.

She opened the door. Her apartment was a two-bedroom unit for when her sister would visit for business. Even though her apartment was larger than Ethan’s, the untidiness of the place made it feel smaller than his. The door opened into a living room and a kitchen similar to his only the kitchen was far smaller. The walls were painted an avocado green which contrasted with the maroon couch and TV cabinet on either side of the room.

There was a long hallway–too long, in fact–which was decorated with various frames of ancient coins. Sarah was a coin collector ever since she began earning a salary. She always told her sister that if she hadn’t become a doctor, she’d be a historian traveling the world. On the sides of the hallway were the entrances to the two bedrooms and two bathrooms.

Ethan resisted the urge to clean up the crumbs on the couch and put away the out-of-place wash basket randomly sitting in the middle of the living room. It wasn’t too untidy but to Ethan, it was borderline unbearable. He clenched his jaw as he turned his face away from it. It’s her apartment, not yours, Ethan reminded himself.

He heard the door close gently behind him. Ethan stood at the door; he wasn’t planning on staying for long.

“Okay,” she huffed. “What is it you wanted to tell me?”

“I had another incident today. I’m going to see a specialist. I think the dizziness and the headaches aren’t just random. They’ve been getting worse over the past two to three months,” Ethan said.

“Thank goodness you’re finally seeing one. I’ve been nagging you to go for months. Which specialist are you going to see?”

Ethan rubbed his forehead. “An oncologist.”

Sarah’s smile vanished in an instant and her face went pale. “An oncologist? Ethan, do you think you have cancer?”

“Leukemia, to be specific. There’s a small chance I have it and an even smaller chance that it’s terminal but I have to get it checked out.”

“Okay, I’m taking leave from work tomorrow and I’m coming with you,” she said.

“Sarah, you have an operation to oversee tomorrow. You can’t.”

“It’s always recommended to have someone with you when you see an oncologist. If things come out looking bad, at least you’ve got someone there to immediately support you.”

“As I said, there’s a really small chance it’s something major. The last thing I want is to drag you away from a crucial operation on a critical patient only for the results to come out normal.”

“Bu-”

“Sarah, remember what you told me. The patient comes first, right?”

“So then why tell me if you didn’t want me to come with you?” she asked.

“Because you kept nagging me to see one. If I didn’t tell you, you would’ve kept nagging.”

“Okay, fine. But you have to call me and let me know if everything is okay. Deal?”

Ethan opened the door and turned to leave. “Deal.”