SANCTUARY
BY
AMY SADLER
© 2015
Queen’s Street Train Station, London, 1982
A man wearing a typical black 3 piece suit, a crisp white shirt, white socks, black shoes. He had short brown hair, hazel brown eyes and had a black umbrella, just in case of a rainy day. He was your typical English man and no mistake, he was waiting for his daily tube train to arrive at platform 5 of the underground tube station. His train soon arrived, many people got off and many people got onto the train.
Meanwhile, at No. 23 Victoria Street, also in London, a woman with past shoulder length black hair, blue eyes and reasonably good figure, sat at a table along with a boy who was sat across from her, who was 13 years old. He had thick bushy black hair and blue eyes. Rachel, who was the boy’s mother. Rachel was 30 years old, as so was the boy’s father. The boy’s name was Tom.
He did not look too happy. “I take it that father has already gone off to work?” Rachel found that remark to be a bit odd, the day was like any other day, Tom had never said anything before. So why now? “Of course he has. He has to leave early every day, you know that.”
“I know, but it is as though he never has any time for me, or for you, for that matter.”
“I know that he gets very busy, I accepted that when I married your father. But he does sometimes get the occasional time off work, to spend the time with us.”
“I would not call a few days here and there spending time with us, proper spending time with us, he seems more happier when he’s out playing golf a whole lot more times with his fellow work colleagues, than when he does spend time with us, mother.”
“Your father has always been that way, I accept that about him and you should do too.” Tom did not like that reply very much, to which he left his half eaten breakfast, got up out of his chair and stormed right out of the kitchen. Rachel gave a heavy sigh, wondering if Tom’s behaviour was one of those typical teenaged phases that most teenagers seem go through.
Charles Bailey, sat and read his daily newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, as he always did, on his journey towards where he worked. Charles worked at a bank, The Royal Bank Of Scotland, one of the high chain of banks, the bank was in the heart of the City of London itself and Charles lived on the outskirts, miles away from the city, near to the countryside, away from all the noise of the heavy traffic etc. The lights of the tube train suddenly began to flicker as it travelled miles underground, with only tunnel walls on either side, which was not much to look at, but that pretty much was what was expected to see. Which was why no one ever bothered looking out of the window of a tube train.
Very rarely do tube trains travel above ground, though on occasions they do stop at some topside train stops, but mostly they travel underground, hence why they are known as underground trains. The lights of the tube train flickered wildly and then everything all suddenly went dark. The next thing Charles was aware of, was voices, he could not quite see anything yet, everything to his field of vision was black. He could not quite hear what the voices were saying, they seemed a little faint. He tried to get up, but found to his dismay that he could not even move.
“Woe.. easy there sir. Try not to move.” Came a sudden female voice, this time her words were clear to his ears. “I… I can’t see!” Replied Charles in a fit of panic. “Don’t worry, your eye sight shall return, just give it a few moments, your body needs time to adjust.”
That last comment made Charles panic even more. “Why’s that?”
“You have been in an accident sir…”
“An Accident!”
“Now, now then sir… Panicking won’t do you any good. Just please remain calm, as best as you can do so sir, let your sight return and I shall tell you what has happened, okay?”
The voice was soft and soothing and Charles found himself being quite sub settable to it, he instinctively did as what the female voice had told him to do. True enough, his field of vision came back to him, things were a blur at first, but the more calm he became, the quicker everything became clear for him and stood before him was a nurse with long blonde hair, blue eyes, wearing quite a short pink and white nurses uniform. To his shock and surprise, on the nurses long legs were stockings, which had pink bows at the top of them, but the dress itself, was oddly made out of PVC.
“Are you a, a Nurse?”
“Yes, of course I am.”
“But you are wearing a sexy version of a nurses uniform.”
“I beg your pardon! I will have you know sir that this is no such thing. This is a standard uniform that all of the nurses wear. You are clearly mistaken and I am not surprised, considering the kind of accident that you have had” Charles looked shocked, but was clearly confused and not wanting to cause a scene, he calmly asked.
“Yes, what did happen? You were going to tell me about that.”
“Yes sir, I was. The tube train that you had gotten onto sadly crashed, it had come off the rails, as of yet the reasons for that are not known, but a full and complete investigation has begun to find out the cause, you are among sad to say, only a few others that have survived the crash.” This news was a shock to Charles. “Oh my God… My wife, does my wife know?”
“Oh yes sir, she will be arriving here as soon as possible.”
“Thank goodness for that. Which hospital is this by the way nurse?”
“Why Sanctuary Hospital of course.” Charles looked at her confused. “Sanctuary, is this some kind of a new hospital that I do not know about? I have never heard of it before.” The nurse before him smiled and battered her eye lids at him and replied in an almost demure like tone of voice. “No, of course not sir, this hospital has always been here and it the only one in all of Sanctuary.”
“What? Where?” Remarked Charles, who was really confused by now. “Don’t worry sir, everything will all come back to you. Some of your memories have been affected, but not all of them, like you can remember that you have a wife, for example.” Charles was sure that he had never even heard of a place called Sanctuary, there never has been such a place in all of London called Sanctuary, yet, oddly he could not be quite absolutely certain about that. How so very strange things seemed to be, not aware though that everything was about to get a whole lot more stranger…
