The IVs poke out of her arms like miniature trees. A weird simile, yes, but a rather true one. Amy is laying in the bed unable to move, and I can't bear to witness the scene any longer.

I tug on the IVs, which come out effortlessly.

"Amy," I say, knowing she's not fit to respond, "It's about time I got you out of here."

Her eyes are the only moving part on her body, and they're racing around at the speed of light, perhaps signalling that she doesn't think that this is a good idea, but I continue anyway.

Now comes the tricky part. I look around the room, and I see a wheelchair against the wall by the window, which should do the job.

I don't really know how to give someone a piggy back, let alone lift someone out of bed. I take one arm and place it under her knees, and I rest the other under her back.

"Hold on," I try to reassure her, forgetting that she can't hold on.

"Er--nevermind."

My arms are weak by the third attempt at moving her, and if I don't do it soon, one of the nurses is surely going to come by and check on her.

After doing some simple stretches, I replace my hands under her body, and lift her up. She's surprisingly heavy for a little old lady, and I'm not sure if I can lift her all the way across the room into the wheelchair.

I'm wobbling back and forth as I plant each foot on the ground, one after the other. It's a short distance of about two metres, yet it feels like I'm walking on a tightrope over the grand canyon.

I remind myself that it's only a few more feet, and not an entire gorge.

All of a sudden Mrs. McKutch's body slips out of my grasp. Her eyes look up at me in panic as her body lands on the floor with a bone-chilling crunch. I scream.

I'm awoken suddenly by a hand shaking my shoulder.

"Dear, are you alright?" A nurse asks me.

"Yeah--sorry," I reply as I rub my eyes,"I just had a nightmare."

I don't remember falling asleep, but as I look around I see that I'm in the ICU waiting room, and everyone in the room is staring at me. I can feel my cheeks reddening, so I decide to go and see Amy.

She's no better than she was when I had checked on her earlier, so I sit on the bed next to her to comfort her. This doesn't comfort me however, as I begin to cry. Amy is locked in her body, completely aware, but unable to move. I can't imagine how helpless she must be feeling.

A nurse enters the room a couple of minutes later. She sees that I am crying and takes me into a hug, not nearly as good as Amy's are, but still better than nothing.

"Listen. Often, sufferers of LIS do recover! Usually not entirely, but in the future she may be able to regain her strength in certain parts of her body."

"Will she be able to talk?" I ask, feeling quite dumb.

"We'll have to wait and see. For now, there is a way that we are able to communicate with her. Do you want to talk to Mrs. McKutch?"

I nod, and she gets a pen and a piece of paper from a table.

"Okay. The first step is to make sure that Amy understands what's happening," The nurse says as she looks at Amy, "Okay. Amy, we are going to be using a chart to communicate with you. I want you to blink once for yes, and twice for no. Understand?"

She blinks once.

"Now," The nurse says as she pulls a chart out from under the bed,"This is a chart that has all of the letters of the alphabet on it, divided into rows: Vowels, Rows one, two and three. Is there anything you want to say?"

Amy blinks once. The nurse proceeds to ask what row the letter she wants to use is in, followed by asking what letter it is that she wants. After the hefty process of writing down each letter, Amy spells out the word HOME.

"You need something from your house?" The nurse asks, and she blinks twice.

"Do you want to come home?" I ask her.

She blinks yes.

"Unfortunately, you will have to stay here for a couple more days, just until we can run some tests to determine the cause of your stroke."

"I'll come and visit you everyday until you're allowed to come home, okay?"

Amy blinks in agreement.

"So you're, Amy's—"

"Niece," I blurt out, "My name's Em-ily."

"It's nice to meet you! I'm Claudine."

After saying bye to Amy, I thank the nurse and leave her Amy's home phone number. As I get into a taxi, I am slightly relieved knowing what is happening, but at the same time I'm scared beyond words.

When I get back home it's nearly suppertime, so I take out some leftovers from a couple nights ago and heat them up in the microwave. By the look of how things are going, what I'm about to eat is Amy's last home cooked meal for a while, or even forever.

Harold stops in for his brief visit after I eat my food before going to Bingo at 5. He's the only other person that knows I'm staying with Amy.

"Hi Amy, it's just me!" Harold calls out as he opens the door.

I'm sitting in the living room reading a book when he walks in.

"Oh, hello Emerald!" He exclaims, "Where's Amy?"

I guess that he hasn't heard the news yet, so I break it to him.

After quite a bit of explaining, he thanks me for telling him and rushes out of the house. I can only hope that he is running off to visit Amy, but perhaps he is just late to bingo. It's none of my concern, so I open up the curtains, revealing a busy street.

A couple of houses down I see Jane Leblanc. The forty-or-some year old is just getting off work, and is pulling into her driveway.

Unlike me, Jane is a very religious person. I swear that every second word that comes out of her mouth is "Jesus".

"Oh Emerald don't be so silly! Jesus is watching over you!"

"Jesus will guide you!"

"Jesus has a plan for everyone!"

As I think back on that advice now, I highly doubt that Jesus is watching over me way up in the clouds. But if he is, I'd like a few words with him regarding the disastrous "plan" that he has for me.

Jane gets out of her car, but instead of going into her house, she grabs a bucket of cleaning supplies from her trunk and starts walking up the street.

Where is she going?

Only when she's standing at the bottom of Amy's driveway do I realize she's coming here. What in the world does she want with Amy and a bucket of cleaning supplies?

Her eyes scan the house, looking for any possible sign that someone is home, before she comes up and knocks on the door. I hide in the closet in my room, which probably isn't the best idea considering my previous incidents with closets, but I can't think of anywhere else to hide.

I hear a few knocks on the door downstairs, before everything goes silent. The door opens.

"Hello? Is anyone home?" Jane calls out.

I don't reply for obvious reasons, but that doesn't matter. It seems that she wants to be alone.

I can't tell if her intentions are malicious or not, but I remind myself that she is "A woman of Jesus" and that she wouldn't do any harm to anyone. At least I hope that she won't do any harm.

For the next hour or so, I don't hear anything else, other than footsteps in different parts of the house. It's creepy knowing that she's in the house doing something unknown.

I suddenly remember the cleaning supplies that she was carrying up to the house. She must've heard about Amy's accident and thought she could help by sneaking in and cleaning things up.

I feel relieved. The past few weeks have just been a nightmare, and I guess it was just a force of habit that I was quick to assume that Jane had come to hurt me.

I have to go and thank her, I realize. She's spent an hour cleaning Amy's house, and that's the least that I can do. I make my way out of my room and downstairs into the laundry room where she is putting clothes into the wash.

"Ja—"

"THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!" Jane screams as she turns around.

I scream as she catapults a bottle of bleach I'm my direction, splattering the substance all over me.

I stand there for a second and watch as she looks up, sees my green hair, and realizes what she's done. The bleach runs down my skin, and onto the floor, leaving a puddle of bleach, and my skin feeling tingly.

She apologizes once she realizes that it's me, and not Regan MacNeil; the girl from The Exorcist.

My skin begins to burn, but Jane reacts quickly and rushes me to the bathroom where she turns on the shower.

"Again, I am so, so sorry. Wash all the Clorox off your skin honey, it'll be alright," she reassures me.

She leaves the room to give me privacy.

After my shower, I dry off and put my clothes back on. Jane is leaning against the wall opposite of the bathroom door when I come out.

"You've got some explaining to do," She tells me.

Uh-Oh, I'm in trouble.

We sit down in the kitchen, and she interrogates me, asking me everything under the sun about where I've been, and the events surrounding my "disappearance".

"I understand," she says calmly when I'm finished, "I won't tell anyone your whereabouts, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist that you come stay with me until Amy is fit to return."

I try to decline, but no matter what I say, she thwarts me, telling me that Jesus told her that it's the right thing to do.

"Mrs. Leblanc," I protest when she stops rambling on to catch her breath,"I do not want to go with you. I'm perfectly fine here. Amy's son Harold agreed to come check on me every day.

"You will listen to the Lord, or he will punish you," she hisses at me.

"Fine then, I'll go with you, " I finally give in to her demand.

"Very good!" She suddenly turns her scowl into a toothy grin.

I go upstairs and grab a few of my items, but only the ones that I really need.

She then walks me over to her house, where she shows me to the guest room. There are braided palms over each doorway, and crucifixes and rosaries adorn her walls instead of paintings.

I feel intimidated by all of these religious items just lying everywhere, given that I'm not exactly a puritanical person.

After she leaves me in the confines of my room, I wait until I can no longer hear Jane praying in the room next to me, and I climb out of the window with my belongings.

There's no way in hell I'm staying with Jane Leblanc.

I suspect that she will march up to Amy's house sometime tomorrow morning when she notices my absence, but I don't care. I'll just have to think of some way to get rid of her, but that's a problem for another day.

My sock feet are numb by the time that I reach Amy's house, but instead of coming home to a nice warm house, I find the front door wide open, letting all of the cold air into the house.

That's odd, I think to myself. I specifically remember Jane having shut the door as we left earlier.

It must just be the wind.

I close the door behind me as I enter the pitch black house. I know that no one else knows that I'm living with Amy, but shivers still crawl up my back as I reach for the light switch.

I flick it on.

Nothing happens.

"No, no, no," I mutter, as I try some other switches in the living room.

The power is out.

The wind outside is cold, but not very strong, therefore it can't be a power outage. A fuse must've blown on the electrical panel.

Thankfully, we learned a bit about electricity in science, so I know a thing or two about blown fuses.

I grab a flashlight from the hallway closet, but there are no batteries in it.

Shoot.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a figure run across the hallway in the darkness.

It's just your mind playing tricks on you.

I try to console myself, but my mind won't cooperate. I start to panic, not knowing whether or not I should get out of here, or try to fix the blown fuse.

I quickly grab some batteries from the TV remote, and put them into the flashlight.

The flashlight flickers on, revealing a phrase spray-painted onto the living room wall.

WATCH YOUR BACK.