I sat up with a start, pulling air deeply into my lungs with the urgency of a kid who swam underwater all the way across the pool. My brain was little more than static. I had to fight to open my eyes, which were matted closed.

The room was unfamiliar, but the annoying bug-zapper hum of the fluorescent lights and the battling smells of pine-sol and antiseptic told me I was in a hospital. The feel of my bare ass touching the bed through the opened back of the thin robe told me I was the patient. Yet, after a thorough inventory of my parts, I seemed whole.

I found my feet, as the cold tile met my bare soles.

“I hate hospitals,” I thought to myself. I looked around for my clothes. For a moment, I considered returning to the warmth of the communion-wafer-thick mattress and the white knit blanket, but I needed to learn more about my circumstances.

The blinds were open, but the window was glazed. I could tell only that it was dawn or dusk based on the oranges and pinks that flooded the room.

“Call a nurse,” I thought. I looked back to the bed, expecting to find a call button. I did not. There were no call buttons, no IV bags, no electronic equipment in the immediate vicinity. Yet, the room pulsed with ticking sound of an old-school electric clock, like one might find in an elementary school, a faint whine accompanied its incessant clicks.

“Where the hell am I?” I thought.

There were two doors in the room. I knew instinctively that one led to a small bathroom, the other would lead to the hall. As I reached for the door handle, I noticed it. Scratched deeply in the door and underlined thrice was a single word: “STAY.”

Perhaps it was the fresh splinters hanging from the etching, but something about the message made it look fresh and new. What felt like a full minute later, I felt a burning in the tips of my fingers. I looked down to find them bloodied and broken. My nails torn and chipped, as if I had carved the message moments before.

Something was very wrong. My hands shook through the pain. I powered through the pain and turned the handle.

The door led to a long empty hallway. More tile and relative silence. “Hello?!” I called down the hall. I jumped at the sound of my own hoarse voice. “Is anybody here?” I pleaded.

I trudged down the cold gray tile hallways. The florescent lights burned into my retinas. I suddenly felt overwhelmed, exhausted. Faintly, I heard a rhythmic beeping. I turned my head to try and find its source, but the sound stopped before I could place it. I looked behind me and noticed that my battered hands were leaving a trail of blood drops down the hall. Stranger still, a set of bloody footprints led down the hall in front of me.

My feet were drawn to the footprints, each step became my own. The soles of my feet began to burn as if they had been caned. “What is happening to me?” I cried to no one.

The nurses station lay empty. The desk was covered with papers and clipboards, but each one was blank or illegible. The text looked like words, but they ran together. I remembered someone telling me that you can’t read in dreams. “Maybe I’m dreaming,” I thought.

I was taken aback by the age of the technology. The computers looked ancient. In fact, one had a slot for a full-size floppy disk. I pushed the power. I powered one on. The dinosaur desktop kicked on with a powerful noise.

The screen read: “The Oregon Trail.” I almost laughed aloud. I flashed back to PTSD-laced childhood memories of building families only for them to die of snakebites or dissentary. Something was different about this screen: my options were limited to “travel the trail” or “end.”

“Sorry, computer… I don’t have it in me,” I thought. I pressed 2 with my bloody index finger.

Behind me, a dot matrix printer jumped to life. It whirred and buzzed harshly, with a robotic “tat, cha, tat, cha.” I recognized the message about halfway through: “stay.”

My heart sank. I wanted to run. I needed out of this fever dream. I looked up and saw a burning red “exit” sign over a door at the end of the hall. I dragged myself toward it. Each step was harder than the last. My bones felt brittle. I felt my leg snap as I took a step forward. I dragged it with me.

For the first time, I felt real fear. I was caged. I had to escape this place. I needed air. I reached for the exit.

From my right, I heard a woman scream. “Stay!” she begged. “Stay with me.” The sound was coming from a tv screen on the wall.

The images were horrifying. I saw myself lying in bed, battered and broken. My body covered in road rash and torn leather. Doctors cut the leather from my body. The love of my life knelt beside me, her small hands clutching the sheets of the hospital bed. She looked afraid to touch me. The doctors didn’t bother making her leave.

“Stay,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “Please stay.” I heard her voice as if she stood right beside me.

In this moment, I would have burned the world to get back to her.

But I couldn’t stay.