Here I lie 6 feet from my grave Running on adrenaline going through my veins I do not know where I do not know why White colored walls trap me inside I wished to live, not to exist I am coded in pain Colored by scars Artwork a child could’ve made Droplets fall from the clouds Through the walls, last whispers Prayers told from ear to ear Love radiating all within here Life will begin or it may end However, I am still here Durning the darkness night And the brightest of day The world may end While I still wait for my life to begin.

Tracey opened her eyes slowly, the distant hum of medical machines welcoming her into a strangely familiar environment. The sterile white light of the hospital assaulted her pupils, and a white curtain separated her from the other patients. She tried to move, but a dull pain radiated through her right arm. Her muscles felt heavy, as if she had run a marathon. Where was she, and more importantly, why?

She swiveled her head, and saw a nurse in the shadows, adjusting an IV.

“Where am I?” Tracey asked, her voice hoarse.

The nurse gave her a sympathetic look before slipping away without answering.

A feeling of panic rose in her. The last thing she remembered was spending an evening on the naval base with her comrades. There had been laughter, drinks exchanged… and then? Total emptiness. Why didn’t anyone tell her what happened?

A few hours later, a man entered the room. He was a naval officer, imposing in his impeccably pressed uniform, with a strict look in his eyes.

“Tracey Aurora?” he asked, though it was clearly a formality.

She nodded, her heart pounding.

“You had a… eventful night,” he began cautiously.

Tracey felt worry creep up her throat.

“What happened? I don’t remember anything,” she said, almost pleading.

The officer exchanged a look with a doctor who had just arrived. He hesitated for a moment.

“You’ve shown great courage, but right now, we can’t tell you everything. You’ll understand soon enough.”

These words left Tracey even more lost than before. Courage? Why? How had she ended up in the hospital after an evening that was supposed to be just a normal outing?

Days passed, each conversation as enigmatic as the last. The medical staff avoided answering her questions, and even her classmates gave her looks filled with mystery and respect. But none of them revealed the truth to her.

One morning, as she began to regain her strength, a local newspaper landed on her bed. On the front page, a headline immediately caught her attention: "U.S. Navy enlistee foils bombing in heart of Ardenia."

Her hands shook as she held the newspaper. She quickly read the article. Tracey Aurora, an enlistee early in her career, had unwittingly intercepted a madman who had infiltrated the base with an artisanal bomb. In the confusion and adrenaline, she had reacted instinctively, neutralizing the threat before others could intervene. She had saved lives. But at what cost?

The memory came back to her abruptly: the man, the altercation, the bomb disposal team, the bomb... and the shadow of fear.

No one would tell her the truth because they were waiting for her to be ready to accept it herself. The recruit she had been yesterday no longer existed; she had just been born a heroine, and with that, she had to face the consequences of a night she had never asked for glory.

{Hi!!! I’m sooo sorry i haven’t been on here in like forever, I just wasn’t feeling very creative. I’ll try to keep up with it more though!}

It’s dark. There’s nothing. And I. Can’t. Breathe. With a violent gasp, I suck oxygen into my deprived lungs. Then I’m coughing, big, hacking coughs that rack my body. I attempt to pry my eyelids open, but I immediately slam them shut again when I’m confronted with a blinding light. Okay, I think. I can do it, just slower this time. At an almost imperceptiable pace, I inch my eyelids open, flinching as the lights sear into the depths of my soul. After what seems like hours, I can finally see…blurry blobs. My heart begins to beat faster. What if I’m blind? What if I’m dead? I feel a hand wrap around my wrist and a soothing voice reassure me.

“Breathe, Melanie. You’re okay, you’re safe.”

I blink a few more times and the blurs sharpen into objects. Carefully, I allow my head to flop to one side and look at who spoke. A woman in light blue scrubs leans over me with a sympathetic smile.

“I’m Nurse Lorraine and you’re in the emergency care unit at St. Rita’s Hospital,” she tells me.

My desert-dry lips separate. I try to make words come out, but I only hear a croak. Nurse Lorraine’s eyebrows furrow in concern as I try again to make words form.

“It’s alright. Should we try to sit up so you can sip a bit of water?” She asks, lifting a small plastic cup of water with a bendy straw off a side table.

I start to nod, but quickly put my head back down on the pillow when a sharp pain arcs through my skull. I hear a buzz and the top half of the bed begins to gently raise me upwards. I close my eyes and breathe deeply as the sudden change in position makes me horribly nauseous. Nurse Lorraine makes a sad noise and places a cool hand to my forehead. She clucks her tongue disapprovingly and holds the straw up to my lips. I close my lips over the straw and take a slow sip. The first trickle rushes down my throat and I start sucking the water down greedily. But before I’ve had enough, Nurse Lorraine takes the straw away. Next, she smooths some cherry flavored chapstick over my lips and instructs me to press them together.

“More…wat-water,” I ask in a raspy voice, rusty from disuse.

She smiles, genuine joy.

“I’m glad your talking but you can’t have anymore water now. You haven’t eaten for two days and too much will hurt your stomach.”

“What…what happened?” I wonder.

She compresses her lips together into a thin line.

“You have some friends outside worried about you. I think I’ll send them in,” she mumbles, clearly avoiding the subject.

I don’t even try to nod this time, I just lay limply on the hospital bed.

Not even a minute after Nurse Lorraine leaves, two girls come rushing into the room.

“Ohhhh Melanie we were so worried we didn’t know…”

“We hope your okay it was so stressful waiting out there and not knowing anything…”

Their words lap over each other and the cacophony makes my head hurt.

“Gia…Liv,” I manage to say.

Gia starts to cry and Liv places a hand over her mouth. My two best friends.

“Why-why am I here? What happened?”

Liv shifts uncomfortably.

“Um, what do you remember?”

I see flashes of memories dance through my mind. Tight dresses, pounding music, so so so many people. There were red Solo cups and that good, warm feeling. Bare feet on the floor and snacks raining like confetti. Laughter and smiles and so much fun.

“We…There was a party,” I say.

Gia nods slowly.

“Anything else?” She asks me.

I shake my head gently.

“Well,” Liv says hurriedly. “That’s all that matters.”

“But, why am I hurt? What… what happened to me?”

I’m pushing them at this point and their both visibly uncomfortable.

“I think the nurse should come check on you now,” Gia says and Liv quickly nods.

They blow kisses and practically run out of the room. Nurse Lorraine comes back in with a grin.

“Wasn’t it nice to see your friends?”

I struggle against the wires holding me down and machines beep in protest. Nurse Lorraine hurries over, begging me to stop wriggling.

“They won’t say what happened to me.”

Nurse Lorraine sighs and adjusts my IV. She swiftly replaces the bag dangling from the stand and starts to pump the liquid into my arm.

“Why am I here?” I push.

She glances at the bag, emptying slowly but surely. I start to feel heavy, like I’m melting into the bed. I want to fight the dark, but it’s so comfortable. Come on, Melanie, it says. Your safe with me, it tells me as it wraps me in its arms. My eyelids are. So. Heavy. My blinks slow and my eyes begin to close. I can’t form words and my body won’t listen to me. Nurse Lorraine places a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“Some things are better not to know.” She whispers.

The darkness pulls me into its embrace and I can’t escape. I’m sinking down, down, down. And it’s dark again. And there’s nothing.

My eyes blinked open to the harsh fluorescent lights. Everything was white, and too bright for me. My head ached.

I went to move up when something held me back. I slowly glanced over to see an IV sticking out of my arm. Was I in the.... hospital? How did I get here?

I blinked a few times and attempted to stretch when a nurse came in. She smiled when she saw me. "Great, you're awake!" I tried to respond, but instead ended up coughing trying to clear my throat. My voice was painfully raspy. "Where am I?" She smiled, far to chipper for my liking, "You're in the hospital! You've been here for 6 hours, since five in the morning." I was confused, five in the morning? I tried to remember where I had been last night, but I couldn't. I remembered it being loud, and glitter for some reason, but nothing else. "Umm, what happened to me?" Her smile faded. "I can't tell you that right now. I'm not permitted to." "What!? Why?" She left without answering, leaving me alone in a hospital room.

Thirty minutes went by before I saw anyone else. I had looked around the room, a small painfully white place with a tiny television and a window displaying a parking lot. There was a curtain separating me from the rest of the room. The IV continued pumping some sort of liquids into my arm, and something beeped annoyingly, but I couldn't find the source. I tried and tried to remember why I was here, or where I was last night, but to no avail.

A stern looking older man walked into the room, standing in front of me. Finally, someone I could get answers from. "Kate Jones?" "That's me." He smiled, "Hello, I'm Dr. Mallard, and I'm here to help you. We, as of right now are unable to find out what's wrong, but we'll just be running some tests later today. Anything I can assist you with?" "Uh, yeah, why am I here?" He sighed. "I'm afraid you aren't allowed to know that. Not yet." I was getting annoyed now, feeble as I was. "Why does everyone keep telling me that?? Why not?!" He grew cold, his mouth setting into a straight line. "Listen, it would not be good for your well-being to hear anything right now, consider it confidential. Now, anything I can assist you with?" I rolled my eyes. "I have to use the bathroom."

Once I had finally made it to the bathroom with my IV's, I stared in the mirror, trying to piece together what had happened through my looks. My hair was a mess, a big brunette frizzy mess. My makeup was smudged, and I looked like a raccoon with black and glittery eyes, and I had bruises on my arms and face.

What happened to me?

“What’s going on?” I said. “Oh, nothing” replied multiple people, including doctors, huddled around me. “Tell me why I’m here, staring at the ceiling” I demanded. “She has the most serious case of Cala syndrome.” I overheard a doctor talking to my family. Cala syndrome. Never heard of_ that __before. _I thought. I felt rolling wheels. I was getting kind of sleepy. I closed my eyes.

I woke up at home, in bed. I got up and searched through my books, throwing the ones I didn’t need out of the bookshelf. I found my book of serious disease and syndrome. I looked through the contents. Page 132. I flipped it open. All of the pages mentioning it were ripped out. No one wanted me knowing what had happened.

(If you guys want, I’ll do a Part 2)

The IVs in Brian’s arms looked like snakes to him. He was slowly coming back to life, quietly waking up and taking his time, after a three-day coma. He didn’t know any of this, of course. He just stared at the snakes that were coming in and out of his arm and wondered why he didn’t feel any pain, and what they were doing there.

He blinked his eyes and saw that the snakes were indeed IVs bringing fluid into his body. He tried to shift his posture and found that he was in a hospital gown in a bed - and that he couldn’t move. He tried to shuffle his feet from side to side, shake his arm, but nothing. The will was there, but the movement wasn’t. His heart slithered around in his chest, and he swallowed.

A nurse rushed into the room to take his vitals. “Where am I?” He asked her, but she ignored him, calling in a doctor. The doctor ignored him too, probing him with tools as if he were a science experiment. He asked again, but again received no reply.

“Shut the TV off,” the nurse shouted to an assistant. He hadn’t even noticed it was on. He glanced up to see footage of a seven car pile-up caused by a drunk driver, the aftermath still closing down highways. He saw his name listed as the driver, saw his photo, smiling, next to pictures of the deceased. And the TV snapped off leaving him in the hospital bed, hopeless, with the snakes slithering in and out of his arm.

The persistent beeping is what I notice first. Steady and unstopping and entirely too loud.

That’s how I notice I’m awake. By becoming annoyed at the beeping.

My eyes crack open, instantly blinded by the harsh fluorescent lighting. I can hear low voices around me, but no distinct words or phrases penetrate through my groggy gaze.

“He’s awake,” my brothers face swims into view before me. Connor’s eyes are pinched with anxiety, and though he tries to give me a tight smile, he’s never been very good at masking his emotions. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I got mashed into the ground and scraped back off it,” I grumble, pushing myself up onto my forearms. “What happened? Where am I?”

Connor exchanges a look with someone out of my view. “You’re safe. You’re at the hospital.”

I roll my eyes. “Obviously I’m at the hospital. But which one? And why?”

He fiddles with a knob on my hospital bed, avoiding my eye.

“How much of last night do you remember?”

I pause, trying to silently shift through the blurry bits and pieces of memory that came to me. “We were at Duke’s - it was pinball Friday.” We’d been going to the dive bar every Friday for close to five years now, so I felt reasonably confident that my disjointed memories of the sticky bar top and PBR cans were accurate.

Connor nodded in confirmation. I continued, furrowing my brow in the effort to remember. “There were those two guys we were playing against - they thought we heckled them…” Flashes of angry faces, spit flying, sprang to mind. “Connor, what happened, why am I here?”

I went to rub my pounding head, but my hand caught. I looked down, taking in the handcuff attaching me to the hospital bed, slowly raising my gaze back to Connor.

He blew out a breath. “We fucked up.”

As the character character slowly regained consciousness, the sterile scent of the hospital enveloped them, mingling with the remnants of a distant, hazy memory. Blinking against the harsh fluorescent lights, they struggled to piece together the events of the previous night. Fragments of laughter, music, and a sense of exhilaration danced on the edges of their mind, but the details remained frustratingly elusive. Questions swirled, unanswered: Why was I here? What happened last night? With a mounting sense of unease, they realized they were adrift in a sea of uncertainty, grappling with the unsettling notion that something significant had occurred, something they couldn't remember. regained consciousness, the sterile scent of the hospital enveloped them, mingling with the remnants of a distant, hazy memory. Blinking against the harsh fluorescent lights, they struggled to piece together the events of the previous night. Fragments of laughter, music, and a sense of exhilaration danced on the edges of their mind, but the details remained frustratingly elusive. Questions swirled, unanswered: Why was I here? What happened last night? With a mounting sense of unease, they realized they were adrift in a sea of uncertainty, grappling with the unsettling notion that something significant had occurred, something they couldn't remember.

“what the hell is going on?” a ray of blank stares, all around the room fidgety and guilty and someone’s crying but i’ve never seen them before “what’s going on?” the woman with scary eyes and a face i don’t know walks up to me “do you remember my name?” “get away from me” i’m scared “im your mommy. do you remember me?” “why am i here? let me go! let me go let me go let me go!” shaking and sobbing and im thrashing in the sheets of the hard bed a needle in my arm, a sharp prick in my heart the people i’ve never ever seen are the last things i do see before the darkness swoops down my eyes i don’t remember what comes after that and i don’t remember what came before all i can say is there was a moment of clarity in the haze, and that was that moment it’s all i have for i am gone now and that’s all i have

Bleach, that is the first thing I noticed. Needle sharp smell punctured my consciousness. Coarse cotton was next. It scratched my neck, my breasts. I raised my hand at the itchiest place at my throat. Nothing happened. The third thing I noticed was I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t move a thing, not my arms or legs. From the toes up, I made a body inventory. Nothing. Nothing. The nothing hammered in my chest leaving me hollow. Tears rioted down my cheeks. What happened to me?

Falling through the air and black asphalt feeling my vision, those images flashed in my mind’s eyes. Where had I been? I heard a rustling.

“Good morning Lucy, I am Drew and I am your nurse this evening. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Someone is here. Help me, help me, I thought. I could feel my words thick and sluggish congealed in my throat. Gentle hands padded my face. Light burned my eyes. I realized my lids had been opened a sliver.

Barely I could make out the nurse moving around me. He was talking to me like I was a favorite doll. How long have I been here?

Blurry green scrubs navigating a hospital room, I was in a bed. Through my lashes I tried to take it all in. Why am I here? I screamed in my mind.

The nurse’s face loomed over me. A beam of light stabbed me. I was a bundle of broken glass as I willed myself to move within my frozen body.

“Lucy, Lucy. oh my God. Are you in there? Can you move your eyes again? Good girl.”