Page 106 of Ruby
A strange, electric exhilaration floods my chest.
I am free. Whoever I might be… I am free.
Free. Not in the dramatic, break-the-chains way. In the quiet, almost disorienting way of walking through a crowd and not feeling it close in around you.
No expectations. No prewritten narrative. No one assuming they know my politics, my heartbreaks, my worst mistake, my best performance.
I can introduce myself and mean it. I can choose what to share. I can choose what to leave buried.
It’s because of the transformation.
The irony almost makes me laugh.
The thing that stripped me of control… of familiarity, of certainty… is the same thing that has erased the version of me Earth thought it owned.
Not marketable. Not recognizable. Not searchable. It’s just me. Raw. Strange. Unfinished.
A clean slate.
The thought makes my pulse quicken, but not with fear.
With possibility.
I don’t have to live up to anything I used to be. I don’t have to defend it either. If I want to be quieter, I can be. If I want to be sharper, I can be.
If I want to build something entirely new out of these bones and wings and claws, no one is standing there comparing it to an older draft.
I feel giddy. For the first time in years, I am not being watched.
Unless I invite it.
I tilt my face toward the sun and let myself smile. Not the practiced one, not the trained angle.
Just mine.
No one here knows who I was.
And for the first time, that feels like a gift.
“No, there is no reason to know me. It was just a turn of phrase,” I respond to Eli, who’s looking at me like I’ve lost my mind after staring into space as I thought through all of that.
“Oh…” Eli responds, voice trailing off.
Thankfully, Ree seems to be particularly skillful at rerouting a conversation, her eyes boring into me like they can see far more than I will ever say, but in a way that lets me know she will take whatever she sees to the grave.
“This place is crazy, but you should see an ER,” she comments. “Hectic is an understatement. It’s a whirlwind of experiences, each coming at you faster than you can blink. You can’t imagine just how stupid people can be until you visit an ER. That’s not to talk about the sheer number of cases I got daily from people who decide to stick various things up their rectum.”
“Up their ass? For fun or… ?” I ask, eyebrow raised.
“The most bizarre case I ever saw was from a plastic femur, you know, the leg bone, stuck up a teenager’s rectum. Male, of course. Said his classmates dared him. Safe to say, it was an educational day for the both of us.”
My eyes widen as I try to imagine such a sight.
“What the…” Eli remarks, her face cringing in response.
“You can bet he won’t be doing that again,” Ree chuckled. “What about you, Eli? What’s the most bizarre thing you’ve ever seen while cleaning?”
“Hmm, let me think,” Eli muses, rubbing her chin.
