[ WP ] You die today and you are stuck in the last book you read . What will you do ?

The storm-washed road around me flashed in whiteness and the crunch of my car briefly filled my ears. I tensed, raised my arms to protect myself from the collision - and tumbled harmlessly on a hard surface. No pain, or little of it - bruises to my knees and elbows, but not the excrutiating pain I expected from a crash at 60mph. No massive bruise across my chest from the seatbelt, for starters. No sensation of a seatbelt at all. 
 
 I uncurled and looked around. Wood beneath me, curving wooden walls. A cannon. A huge black-painted cannon, far larger than I might have imagined. Another the other side. And beneath me the soft motion of boat on smooth seas. A ship, I corrected myself, for no mere boat would carry so many cannons as I could see by standing. Two rows of them, aimed outward at closed gunports. 
 
 Footsteps, clumping footsteps on wood, drew my attention to a steep set of stairs where a man in a gold-trimmed blue coat descended. 
 
 `` Boy, did n't you hear we have beat to quarters? Mr Reade, take that man's na- oh.'' The man swept off his hat, made a curt bow, and continued. `` Madam, you must leave the ship immediately. Mr Reade, the launch, if you please. Woman are not permitted aboard; you must have your custom on shore.'' 
 
 `` What?'' I asked stupidly. But there was something entirely familiar about where I was - familiar within my imagination, but alien to my true experiences. And something about the man who faced me - a scarred man in his thirties, perhaps, dressed in all the grandeur of a naval captain of the Napoleonic era. And that name, Mr Reade, associated with the boy - the one-armed boy - who had vanished up the stairs behind the captain to carry out the orders. 
 
 I swallowed. Formal language, respectful, that was what was needed. It was n't as if I did n't know it well enough from - how many books was it by now? Sixteen? 
 
 `` Sir, I apologise for my appearance here, I am as surprised by it as you are, but I assure you I am not here for, as you put it, custom. I appear to have been transported here by means unknown following a car- carriage upset. Could I beg your indulgence in telling me precisely where here is?'' 
 
 `` Madam, you are on the gundeck of His Majesty's Hired Vessel the Surprise, just arrived in port at Callao.'' 
 
 Confirmation, then. A coma, that must be it, and my brain had placed me in a different world, that most recently familiar, at almost the exact moment I had read to. 
 
 `` I gather therefore, sir, that you are Captain Pullings?'' 
 
 Another very small bow in confirmation. And it would only be polite to introduce myself, but whether to use a real name or a fake - a French surname certainly not a good idea, and being unmarried and clearly well into my twenties similarly ill advised. 
 
 `` I am Mrs Turner,'' I settled on. `` Mrs Elizabeth Turner.'' My brain clearly fond of the nautical tales, though I hoped the world that came from - the pirates and strange beasts it contained - would not leak into this. 
 
 `` Well, Mrs Turner, if you could come this way, and Mr Reade will escort you back to shore.'' 
 
 Shore would not be a good idea. Dressed as I was in twenty-first century clothing - I'd checked - which included jeans and a hoodie, with no local money, and importantly no Spanish with which to communicate. 
 
 I affected a stumble towards the nearest cannon, along with a gasp. Captain Pullings surged forward, hands out as if to offer help, but stopped short of taking my arm - a politeness, no doubt. 
 
 `` Oh dear. It seems whatever means I reached the gundeck of His Majesty's Hired Vessel the *Surprise* has made me quite unwell. I wonder, sir, if you might have a doctor aboard I might briefly consult before going ashore?'' 
 
 `` If you are unwell, of course,'' said Captain Pullings, but his polite words were underscored by a coldness, a reservation, that suggested perhaps he saw through my ruse and was not pleased with my intent to stay aboard a little longer. 
 
 `` This way, if you please.'' 
 
 As we descended, Mr Reade caught up, reported, with compliments, that the launch stood ready to take the lady ashore, and followed in silence to the sickbay, where the doctor I wished to see stood waiting, looking exactly as I had pictured him - short, dark-haired, otherwise much like Paul Bettany who played him in the movie, and I could n't tell if that was because my mind had mapped the book's Doctor onto the face of the actor who portrayed him, or because the movie was simply well cast. With him were two others, the larger of whom I took to be Padeen. 
 
 `` Good afternoon, Doctor,'' Captain Pullings began. `` Upon completion of the inspection I beg that you will allow our newest visitor, Mrs Turner, to consult you before she is taken ashore.'' 
 
 The Doctor turned his gaze towards me, his astonishingly blue gaze, bowed his head, and said `` Of course.'' 
 
 I stood out of the way as the inspection continued, the Captain talking to each patient or to Doctor Maturin where the patient was unable to speak due to unconciousness. 
 
 `` Mr Reade, remain with Mrs Turner until she leaves the ship, if you please, and wait outside the Doctor's room during her consultation.'' 
 
 `` Yes, Captain,'' pipped up the boy. 
 
 `` Mrs Turner, in here, if you please,'' said the Doctor, and I followed him into a cramped consultation room in which the shelves were crammed with stuffed birds and insects pinned to cork boards. 
 
 How to begin? A tricky proposition; I could hardly state the truth outright, and to reveal my knowledge that the Doctor was an intelligence agent might endanger me. How I might be endangered while in a coma I did n't know, but best not to risk it; I certainly was n't immune to pain, as the scraped on my elbows and knees testified. 
 
 And how to get out of the coma and wake up? Was it simply a matter or surviving long enough, or did I have to return home, or to the site of the accident, or the location of the hospital I would inevitably be lying in to wake up? How much of my knowledge should I reveal - about this world, about past events in the last few books I've read, about Stephen - that is, about Doctor Maturin, since it would be impolite to refer to him by his first name. 
 
 `` How may I be of service?'' the Doctor asked, and I did n't think it was the first time he'd asked it, but I'd been listening only to my own thoughts. 
 
 I licked my lips. `` Sir, I believe that while she was aboard you were a friend to Mrs Oakes, and I beg you shall be the same to me, for I have no other friends and know nowhere else to turn.'' 
 
 He looked at me with those singularly piercing blue eyes. `` You have met Mrs Oakes? I hope she was well when last you saw her.'' 
 
 `` In a manner of speaking, yes, and quite well to my knowledge.'' I licked my lips again. Close to the truth, but not quite there, that had to be my tactic; I could not lie to Stephen Maturin. `` The truth is I do not know how I came to be here. Here on the *Surprise* or here in Callao, for the moment before I found myself here I was in England, in the county of Shropshire, travelling at some speed along a road.'' 
 
 `` Hmm. You may be suffering some form of amnesia. Have you receieved any injury to your head? Will you allow me to feel it for bumps?'' 
 
 `` Yes, but I do not believe you will find any.'' I took a deep breath as the Doctor stood. `` Amnesia would not sufficiently explain my transportation here.'' 
 
 As he probed my head with his fingertips - firmly but not forcefully - he said `` Amnesia has been known to remove many months, even years, from a person's recollections.'' 
 
 `` I do not believe it could remove as many years as have been dialled back in this case, Doctor,'' I said. I would have to say something about my situation if I was to gain his trust - it was just a matter of finding out how to say it without utterly losing that trust first. 
 
 `` Please describe your most recent memory prior to your appearance on this ship,'' the Doctor instructed, continuing his examination of my head. 
 
 `` I was driving down a country lane near to the town of Craven Arms, in a storm, at night. I lost control and appeared about to hit a tree, and instead tumbled onto the gundeck at far less speed than I had been travelling.'' 
 
 `` Well,'' the Doctor said. `` A collision with a tree is certainly sufficient to prompt amnesia, even delayed amnesia, but you have said you spoke to Mrs Oakes, and that must necessarily have been more recent as she can not have yet reached England.'' 
 
 `` Ah, no, I have not spoken to Mrs Oakes, but I am aware of her time here on the *Surprise*. I should not have mentioned her.'' Now how would I explain it? I read it in a book that wo n't be published for nearly two centuries? In which you and Captain Jack Aubrey and Captain Tom Pulling and Mr Reade and Padeen are all fictions? 
 
 `` Are you keeping something from me, Mrs Turner?'' 
 
 I'm from the future. That would do it, pretend all this is well-recorded history, not fiction, and then the rest could all be truth. 
 
 `` I am, Doctor, but only because I am unsure how to reveal it. My memories of Clarissa Oakes are not more recent than my rainy night near Craven Arms, they are based on memoirs she wrote and which I read a week or so prior to my accident. The missing years I referred to are more than those required to circumnavigate the globe. The year, I believe, is currently 1813. Probably. My collision with a tree, that to me was merely fifteen minutes ago, occurred in the year 2016. Two centuries in the future.'' 
 
 -- - 
 
 Running out of space now. And time. This was fun while it lasted, but now I must sleep. More tomorrow, perhaps. 
 
 ( Note: not only does this prompt suit me down to the ground tonight, but also I have the perfect music for it: the soundtrack to Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. )
