At this moment, with my whole body screaming at me to stop, I tried to think. There was no room for dreaming, nor was there any room for hope. Think, all I had to do was just that. I didn't have the luxury of emotion right now. What I needed was energy and that required me forming a plan. Something small to get the wheel turning again.
I already knew this body I'd ended up in was malnourished—no, that's putting it gently. It was wrecked. Every muscle fiber felt thin and brittle, like old paper soaked through.
My stomach was a pit, not of hunger, but emptiness so deep it made me sick. You'd think the first instinct in this kind of situation would be to find food. It's what most people would do. Hell, it's what I would've done before med school.
But that's not the right move. Absolutely not. Not in this condition.
See, when the human body goes days without food, it doesn't merely get hungry—it starts shutting down systems. The digestive tract slows to a crawl, then a full stop. Enzymatic activity reduces and gut motility decreases. Even stomach acid production dips. Basically, the body redirects energy from anything non-essential and focuses on staying alive—heart, lungs, brain. That's it.
If I stuffed anything heavy in my stomach now, I could go into something called refeeding syndrome. My blood sugar would spike, and there would be an electrolyte imbalance, also possible cardiac failure might arise. In layman's terms? I eat the wrong thing too fast and I die. Simple as that.
What I needed now was water. Clean fresh water. Just enough to keep my organs from drying up like old leather. Maybe later, small portions of something light. Broth maybe, if I could find it. Anything heavier than that, and I'd be digging my own grave.
But even before water, I needed to stand.
I tried again, hands pressed against the broken wall behind me. My arms shook. And the Knees buckled. It felt like trying to lift a collapsing house with bare hands. My chest ached with every breath, my ribs creaked, and even the air felt thick. Like I was inhaling something heavier than oxygen. I dragged one foot beneath me. The sole of it scraped against the gravel. And still, I rose.
But Barely.
I stood there for a moment—half bent, half upright—swaying like a drunk. My fingers clenched around the stone, the skin already raw from earlier. Blood was beginning to dry under my fingernails. Every part of me was yelling to sit back down, just for a second, but I didn't.
Then, a cough punched its way out of my lungs. It was wet and violent. The kind that doesn't ask permission.
I doubled over, and for a few seconds I couldn't breathe at all. There was only immense pain. My throat burned. My chest felt like something had split open inside it. That sealed it. I needed medical attention. I needed someone who knew what they were doing, someone who could at least tell me if I had an infection, maybe pneumonia, maybe worse. But even that thought felt too far away, like asking to win the lottery when I hadn't even bought a ticket.
I looked around again, and the people walking past... they didn't care. Not even a glance. It was like I wasn't even there. Like this street had seen so many people in my condition that one more didn't make a difference.
The kid whose body I was in—he must've died here. On this same street. Unnoticed and alone, just like any other self-respecting street urchin should. How very sad!
I felt my throat tighten. But Not from the cough this time.
He died, and no one cared. Not the merchants. Not the passersby. Not the guards who probably walked past him like they walk past garbage in the gutter. And now I was supposed to take his place. Breathe the air he couldn't. Use the life he left behind.
It was unfair. Utterly, brutally unfair.
I clenched my teeth, this time to keep myself together. The sadness came in waves now, thick and slow. I thought about home. Home not referring to the planet, But home.
I thought about her, Teresa.
She was not my blood. She wasn't the kind of mother you see in old photos wearing aprons and smiling by the stove. But she was mine. She gave me her name. Jane. A wonderful name, and it meant something. She made me feel like I belonged in the world, even if the world didn't agree.
I remembered the little things—her singing when she cooked, the way she tapped the steering wheel when she drove, and how she looked out the window for too long some nights when she thought I wasn't watching.
She'd lost her husband. That much was already established. But when she looked at me, she did not see a replacement. She saw me. And I saw her. She didn't need to say it. We never said it. But I loved her like a son should love a mother. And now I was gone. Just like that. And she wouldn't even know what happened.
'She's okay,' I could only hope.
I took another breath—shallow and painful—and forced my foot forward. One step. Just one.
The ground tilted under me and my vision pulsed with a dull grayness. I felt like I was fading, like my body wanted to collapse into the dirt and be done with it. I wanted to. Part of me did. But I couldn't. Not yet.
Because even if this world was hell, and even if I was alone, I had a promise to keep. I had something to fight for. Teresa. My mother. My vow to save lives. My need to go home. Whatever that meant now.
So, I kept walking.
One broken, trembling step at a time.
…
That one step—just that single shuffle forward, barely more than a lean—gave me something. Maybe it was the adrenaline. Maybe it was spite. Maybe it was God. I don't know. But it was something, and it let me move again.
Second step. Wobble! wobble! My legs twitched like they'd forgotten their job. Third step and I was murmuring to myself, half-crazed encouragement slipping out between dry lips. I told myself it was working. I told myself I only had to keep going. That was all. Just get there. Just get to the stall.
The stall was small. Cramped even. It Looked like it sold junk no one wanted. I saw ceramic vases, sun-faded wooden figures, a few dusty trinkets that might've looked valuable once. Might've. A man stood behind it. He was thin-framed. Middle-aged. And wore light clothes and leather boots that were too clean. His face was sharp in that way where everything seemed pulled a bit too tight. He was already scowling, even before he noticed me.
He was talking to a woman. A mother, I think. She had a boy clinging to her hand. The kind of boy that hid behind skirts. They were haggling over something I didn't recognize.
I dragged myself closer. Didn't even make it all the way before I coughed again, deep from the chest. That same ripping sound, like my lungs had thorns inside. My body doubled slightly and the sound came up wet.
The salesman noticed. He recoiled—only a little—but it was there. A twitch backward.
The mother lifted a handkerchief to her face. Her nose all scrunched up. Her hand then tightened around the boy. Pure disgust. That was what I saw in her eyes. Clean, righteous disgust.
"What do you want, you street urchin?" The words came out coarse, full of contempt. The kind of tone that's already written you off before you speak.
At first, I didn't understand him. The sounds were twisted and foreign. But then something shifted. I couldn't explain it, but the words started to make sense, like my brain cracked them open and rearranged them midair. I attributed it to a strange trick of whatever brought me here.
"Water," I rasped it out but barely.
He squinted and even sneered.
"Don't waste my time," he snapped. "Can't you see I'm trying to run a business?"
Business? I looked around. Was this really what counted as commerce here?
"Please…" I forced the words out, each one dragging its feet like my body. "I only… need water…"
He ignored the tone nor did he care about the effort.
The woman had stepped back now. Her son peeked from behind her dress, stupefied and wide-eyed. She whispered something to the man, too low for me to hear, but I got the gist from her expression.
Deal with this. Or I'll walk.
The salesman didn't waste another second. He grabbed a broom from beneath the stall and jabbed it at me. He didn't outright swing it at me. Just nudging me. Like I was dirt that needed sweeping.
That did it!
Anger. It came from somewhere behind the pain. How utterly insulting.
"I have money…" I wheezed. "Please… Just take it. Four coppers… all I have…"
I held out my hand. My fingers trembled. The coins clinked against each other softly, too light to matter but heavy to me.
His eyes shifted. Greed overrode disgust. He snatched the coins like they might vanish if he hesitated. He then stuffed them into his pouch, turned around, and grabbed a small gourd from behind the stall.
He tossed it at my feet.
"Take it and scram, you low-life," he said, then went back to the woman like I never existed.
I crouched—more like collapsed—and picked up the gourd. Shook it once or twice. Sloshed. There was water in it but not much, it didn't matter though. I had what I came for.
I then turned back, step by step, one hand dragging against the wall for balance. I returned to the same broken spot in the alley I'd started from and sat down, albeit with difficulty.
The second my back hit the stone, it was like someone pulled the plug.
My body then gave out. Everything I had ignored hit me at once. The fatigue. The pain. The dizziness that had been circling the edge of my vision finally took over.
I chuckled. This chuckling wasn't the result of something being funny.
It was just the last sound I could make before everything went black.