It was some time before she was even aware of the concept of time. Most of her days went something like this:
She woke up, she couldn’t tell when it was, but there was always someone who entered with a bowl of broth soon afterwards. She would eat as much as she could before she’d fall asleep again.
She’d wake up sometime latter to have a small repeat.
Sometimes when she wakes, the man who found her is there; sometimes he’s not. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to it and she doesn’t think much to try and find one. She’s too tired for that.
(Why is she so tired?)
Eventually, she notices that she has several different things attached to her person, but for the life of her she can’t remember what they are or what purpose they serve.
She doesn’t have it in her to do more than stare at them before she’s fallen asleep once more.
They’re still there when she wakes and after a moment of trying to remove one, she’s stopped by the man who’d found her and. presumably, brought her here.
“Leave them,” he speaks in a quiet voice that is very deep, but his touch is gentle, “you are still recovering.”
She falls asleep again before he can say anything else.
The next time she wakes, she ignores the things and eats her broth without any extra movements other than her eyes following the movements of the woman spoon feeding her the soup. She’s too tired for anything else.
By the time she’s strong enough to feed herself, there’s some kind of bread in the broth as well. She doesn’t bother with wiping up every time she spills as she’s too busy being grateful she can lift the spoon to her mouth without aid. The spoon is unsteady and she suspects that the bread is partially there so that there is less liquid to drip on herself.
This time, there is a smile of satisfaction on her lips as she falls asleep once more.
He’s not quite sure what to think of the young woman on the bed before him.
She is a pale thing, all red hair and dark eyes and thin cheeks. She seems wasted, as if she’d had an illness and had only recently been cured from it, only to face her body after the ordeal.
He wonders, not for the first time, where she has come from and how she came to be in the alley that he’d found her near. She doesn’t seem to be the kind of woman or even man that would frequent such an area and her body shows no signs of drugs or abduction. She isn’t malnourished and though she is thin and pale and wasted looking, she is otherwise healthy.
Alexander feels a buzzing in his pocket and withdraws a beeper. He hadn’t brought his phone in with him, hadn’t wanted to chance it messing with the equipment or going off when she was awake and startling her.
(She had been so curious about the wires and leads and didn’t seem to understand what they were for.)
He sighs at the code and, with a nod to the nurse outside the room, leaves the wing she’s being kept in. He stops at the end to retrieve his phone and his tablet.
At first he hadn’t been certain why he’d felt the need to talk her with him and have his own doctors look after her. Even when the reports of her physical condition were given he hadn’t known why. Alexander was a businessman, and he does give generously to charities as well as other organizations. He does not bring people in need home with him, no matter what the tabloids say.
He still does not know why she is here, yet he makes no move to send her away, though in her state, it would be very easy to do so.
She has been there for half a year already, but her physical improvement is slower than initially projected by his doctors. No one knows why.
He doesn’t even know her name.
Written for this week’s Daily Post’s weekly writing challenge: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/10/weekly-writing-challenge-golden-years/
I’m not entirely sure why it didn’t mention much about age and only about how time is relative to different people due to perspective, but it would only be written like this.
Breathing In 