10 Ten - I missed out on lunch?

After the audition, Ken and Endo were sent to rejoin the rest of the teenagers, while Stacey was ushered into the doctor's office. There was a medical team on standby in the crew, in case of injury. Apparently, the program had learnt from its years of experience that where there were young people pushing themselves hard and where there were people trying to get things done in a hurry, there were likely to be all sorts of accidents or minor injuries.

Borrowing a the local hospital and its equipment, Stacey was given a full physical and mental health checkup by the crew's doctor. Her blood tests were analysed immediately. Despite the hours the checkup had taken, the blood tests were done by the time all the other tests had concluded.

"It's likely that you have suffered some sort of trauma and so your brain is protecting you by causing you to forget most of your previous memories," the doctor said, pointing at various scans for Stacey to see. "See, your brain scans show some sort of relatively recent trauma although we don't know what type of trauma. There's a bit of swelling near your hippocampus which may account for some of the memory loss. Your brain activity is also somewhat unusual and the specialists I've contacted couldn't make anything out either. Whatever the reason, you may experience some unstable emotions and get tired easily until the brain injury and everything settles down. We'll keep an eye on you in case its related to a type of epilepsy or something. Tell us if anything happens, won't you? We can't tell what happened to you exactly, only that you definitely have been injured at some stage within the last few days."

Stacey heaved a sigh of relief that there was a physical explanation to back her story up. The only problem was that she didn't remember hitting her head, so when had she gotten a brain injury? Was it a result of being teleported from Earth to Gaius through the black monolith? Surely it wasn't a big surprise that there might be side effects to using the black monolith.

"Other than that, despite having lost most of your memory prior to coming to Wistledown, you're pretty healthy. Your immune system being a bit low though. You just need to make sure you take care of yourself and get plenty of rest and you should be fine. A low immune system could be related to all the stress you've been under since you woke up and realised you had lost your memories. You're also slightly overweight, so you must have been eating well."

Stacey narrowed her eyes at the print out on the desk in front of the doctor. Was he telling her she was fat? People said that cameras made a person look like they had more weight and fat than they really did. So did this mean that she should go on a diet?

"Your low density cholesterol is a little high but you should be fine if you watch your diet," the doctor continued. "Your vitamin D levels are on the low side, so try and get more sun. Someone must have been taking care of you or you must have been doing all right out there on your own," the doctor mused. "More urgently, your blood sugar is low and it looks like you're a bit dehydrated, so make sure you eat and drink something after we get back to the program building. Ok? Do you remember anything at all before you got here? What can you remember?"

"Just waking up alone under a bush outside town," Stacey said, feeling the sweat trickling down her neck, "and feeling lost and confused."

Making a believable lie was almost impossible for someone like her who was not a good liar. The best she could do was emphasise what she did remember and look lost for all the other questions.

Stacey hugged her tummy and wondered when they would get to eat. If they ever got to eat. There had been so many tests. She was starving here.

"Hmm," the doctor hummed to himself, checking his documents. "You're definitely still a virgin according to the nurse who checked."

Stacey didn't understand what her virginity status had to do with anyone or anything but then this was another culture. She had been shocked when a nurse had told her to cooperate with an investigation of her vaginal health and status. When Stacey had hesitated, the nurse had informed her that it was a routine part of a full physical checkup and then her ordered to strip. It been a somewhat embarrassing experience. Even more so now that the doctor had mentioned it. Did that mean that chastity was considered very important here?

"You're older than you look," the doctor examined black and white x-rays, and using his fingers to circle the end bits of some of the bones where a slight gap could be seen between the shafts of the bone and the end bits of the bones. He tapped a few spinal vertebrae. "L

Definitely less than twenty-five, I'd say, from your bone radiographs. Good news, you still have the potential to grow taller. My colleague reckons you must be at least eighteen to twenty years old, so we'll make a call and say you're nineteen for now. Twenty is the cut off age for the program anyway. We'll tentatively put today as your birthday. How's that? At least until more of your memories come back."

Twenty was the cut off age? Then Stacey was definitely not telling anyone that she was actually twenty-three. She was surprised at what the doctor had said about her bones. From her shallow understanding about bone growth from those health science classes in high school, she ought to have stopped growing by now and not be able to grow any taller by now. Maybe she was just special? Or travelling through the black monoliths had somehow reversed her bone age a bit, so that they looked younger than they actually were?

"Honestly, I'm inclined to think that somebody has had you in captivity for the past few years and you escaped," the doctor speculated, "but then I'd expect to you to have remembered something of that and to have lost your virginity. As for your mental health," the doctor gave her a concerned look and glanced down at the results of multiple questionnaires she had filled in, "take care of yourself. Come and seek help or find someone to talk to if you need. We're all here for you. You are not on your own."

Staff led Stacey back to the main building where the program was being filmed. Ken and Endo met her outside the doctor's office doors.

"Come on. The first assembly's about to start. They sent us to get you," Ken said. "How are you feeling?"

"Hungry," Stacey said firmly. "Very hungry."

"You didn't have lunch?" Ken asked in concern, his eyebrows rising.

"Everyone else has eaten," Endo said, ruffling his hair and smoothing his sideburns down.

"There was lunch?" Stacey grabbed Ken's arm tightly. "I missed out on lunch? I only came here for the free food and you're telling me I missed the first meal?"

"Owowow," Ken winced, prying her fingers off his arm. "Let go. That hurts. I'm sorry you missed lunch. I'll let someone know for you. Put up with it for now, ok? We have to join the assembly first."

Stacey was feeling lightheaded and annoyed now. Her hunger pangs were making themselves felt again, now that Ken had mentioned lunch. She'd missed lunch? It must have been because of the checkup. The checkup had taken so long but she'd only been able to guess how long it had been because she couldn't read the weird clocks here. Now they were making her join some boring assembly. All she wanted to do was eat. Forget anything else. She didn't care about anything else. She just wanted food and some water. Was that too much to ask?

"Here, have a seat," Ken sat her down beside himself on the giant steps that rose like in a stadium or amphitheatre. Endo sat on the other side of Ken.

Stacey had Ken at her left and a blonde haired boy was on her right.

There was noise happening all around her and it looked like she'd been seated on the male side of the room, while most of the girls were on the other side of the room, giggling and sizing some of the boys up. Some of the boys were doing the same to the girls. There was only a small scattering of boys on the girl's side of the auditorium, just as there was only a handful of girls already sitting amongst the boys. In fact, there was one boy/girl whose gender Stacey couldn't even figure out who was sitting right in the divide between the boys and girls.

Down on the floor of the stage below their seats, crew arranged five seats facing the teenagers.

After looking around the room, Stacey began imagining what kind of food she might have just missed out on. She imagined beef and salad sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches and ham rolls. Salad would be good too. A good garden salad with balsamic vinegar or a caesar salad sounded good right now too. Oh, and pumpkin soup. A spiced pumpkin soup. Or a stew. Lamb or beef stew with hot, crusty buttered bread. She could almost smell the food she was imagining.

"Hey, Ken, what's with this girl? Is she deaf or something? She looks a bit pale," a boy with blonde hair leaned over past Stacey to ask Ken.

"Stacey? Hey. You ok?"

Ken shook Stacey by the shoulders when she didn't react to him waving his hand in front of her face.

"What?"

Stacey reluctantly let the festive spread she'd been imagining dissipate into thin air.

"You're kind of out of it," Ken told her.

"Am I?" Stacey asked, hugging her tummy. "I'm starving. When is this thing gonna be over?"

"She was getting her medical checkup done and missed lunch," Ken explained to the blonde boy.

"Oh. Your blood sugar must be low or something," the blonde boy beside her shouted above the noise in order for her to be heard. "I'm Flail."

"Stacey," Stacey nodded at him.