The Uninvited Patient

Clara lifted the chest X-ray under the light, as she had for the past decade. Routine. Mundane.

But even eyes as experienced as hers found this sight hard to believe. The patient had offered more than he should have possessed.

Behind a first set of vertebrae was a second arrangement of bones. The radiographic machine had been erratic lately; off-tangent, like its productions.

She held another patient's X-rays under the blue fluorescent light, scrutinising each bone. Again, there was another behind each one. She hadn't realised how humorous the machine had become.

She laid both images side by side. Another anomaly piqued her curiosity; both patients had different physiques, but the same proportions and posture.

But her trained eye noticed a subtle difference. The guest skeleton was drawing closer to the patients, as if trying to cross its bounds.

Flummoxed, she reached out to the lab technician.

"All's well. Better than well, since we just serviced it yesterday," he explained, scratching his head.

Thoroughly annoyed now, she asked herself the discomfiting question again: Why would a perfectly functional machine produce such an anomaly?

The near-death experiences of Clara's patients lodged in her mind. Then, a discomfiting recollection made her pause mid-examination.

A childhood memory, buried under routine. A near-death accident on her father's motorbike when she was a child. With wounds gushing blood, paramedics airlifted her into a waiting helicopter and took her to the nearest hospital. She had lost enough blood for the waiting ER doctor to consider stopping resuscitation.

Her own medical history left a discomfiting footnote. She retrieved an old X-ray taken as she nursed her wounds over the next few months.

She held it up under the light. Only her own skeleton was visible, much to her relief; no secondary arrangement. It was just an assurance of healthy, ordinary bone.

Then, at the bone's edge, an uncanny shadow. Whether it was an anomaly or something else, Clara couldn't tell. It remained at the edges of uncertainty, unresolved.

Visions of her father's motorbike, careening on a coastal highway. Then, screeching to a stop. Herself, flung near a road divider. Her father, thrown under a vehicle.

Clara recalled the barely audible words, "blood loss considerable..." then being airlifted to a nearby hospital. A dark emergency room filled with doctors and nurses, exuding professional demeanour and barking instructions. "BP fluctuating..."

Her eye fell on a box under her desk. Her own films, captured during her recovery. Her own medical history, a discomfiting reminder.

She held each up to the blue light. Only her own skeleton showed; the reassurance of a young woman's healthy bones. There was no second arrangement.

And at an indistinct corner, barely discernible, was the same shadow. An imaging artefact, or anomaly, she couldn't tell. It was unresolved at the fringes of certainty.

With the shadow starting to devour her mind, Clara arranged a new examination. How persistent was this strangeness?

Then, the latest X-ray, delivered by the hospital's newly acquired digibot. A complete skeleton. Every bone accounted for. Nothing had abandoned it.

She laid her X-ray with the childhood films, the familiar architecture of her skeleton now foreign. The skeletal intruder's structure synced with one in her childhood films.

She glanced at herself in the mirror. The body was hers, but not quite.

There had been a shift. The intruder ceased to remain one. And there was no room for two.

Only for her.

For Mikeydred's Challenge on World Radiography Day.