Months had gone by in the facility. The praise she once yearned for became dull and a nuisance. She wanted to return to her life; her friends, her college, and her bathroom.
Jess was being carted in a stroller by one of the attendants to what she believed to be a routine examination (shots, measurements, or just a regular old check up, it all felt the same to her), when she was turned down a new hallway that, during her entire stay at the facility, she hadn’t yet been brought down.
At the end of the hallway was an unpainted metal door, a sign on it, which read “Reversal testing|DO NOT ENTER WHILE IN USE.” Jess was filled with glee. She didn’t care that she was a lab rat, nor did she care about the potential dangers that that would involve, all she could think about was returning to who she once was.
Jess woke up to the sound of a window fan in her apartment and the beeping her smoke detector in need of new batteries. She felt like she had gone on a bender, and before she opened her eyes, had herself convinced that her dreams of being stuck as a toddler in a medical facility were just a result of her haze. As she slowly forced herself awake, she noticed that she was not in her apartment, and that she had not been dreaming in the slightest. Her “fan” was really part of a large boxy machine in the corner, and her “smoke detector” was a heart rate monitor attached to the machine.
Getting a grasp of her surroundings, Jess realized that she was strapped onto a surgical table, with overhead lights turned off and tucked away. She was full sized, an adult again. She felt giddy. There was a console to her right with a young, female lab worker stationed at it, who, just now hearing Jess’ movements, turned around to face her.
The lab worker smiled pleasantly to Jess, happy to see her awake, but her smile quickly faded.
“What’s wrong?” Jess asked, her heart sinking.
The lab worker spoke in a soft, somber tone to Jess. “We all knew from the beginning that things wouldn’t be perfect. We did the best we could, but there were just some things we weren’t able to fix.”