S.A.S.

I didn't know what else to do, so I left Tegan alone. She stared me off as I went, her puppy-dog eyes peering into my soul, letting me know that she would most likely spend the rest of her life sad.

But I couldn't afford to do that. I had to figure my way out of this conundrum I'd been thrown in, and that meant leaving the hospital I'd awoken in.

The elevator doors opened and an old man was wheeled out by a nurse. As he passed me, he let out three coughs, which was enough to make me shiver.

Tuberculosis. I bet he had tuberculosis.

His coughing echoed in my mind, its raspiness convincing me that me bursting into flames would be inevitable.

And with as much as I adored the idea of spontaneous combustion, it just wasn't happening. Nearly a minute passed since the man had exited the elevator, but I was still glued to the floor, feeling imprisooned in this awful place with all the germs... and the coughing... and...

I let out a screech right then and there, covering my vulnerable ears as I dashed to the restroom down the hallway.

I was going to die.

After throwing open the door and in turn, startling everyone inside the ladies room, I collapsed in front of the sink. For minutes on end, I scrubbed my hands clean with pink foamy soap.

I sung the alphabet in my head, but it didn't seem long enough.

No! I wasn't t clean yet! I had to keep scrubbing!

Once I had recited the alphabet a sixth time, I felt comfortable enough with turning off the faucet.

I stared at myself in the mirror, praying to goodness that I wasn't ill, and that my body back in Iowa was safe as well.

I had to check on my body. Now that I knew that I was missing, there was no telling what could happen.

I took a deeper glimpse at myself in the mirror, and well, I didn't look sick. But then again, this wasn't me, and how could I be positive? What if the boy I was today wasn't always this pale...

"Shut up," I told my reflection in the mirror, but its effects didn't last long.

What if I was already sick with an illness from when I was still in Iowa?

Truth be told, something had to be wrong with you if you were changing bodies everyday. I had discovered a whole new virus.

Or I was the virus.

It made sense to me. Entering people's bodies uninvited and leaving some minor damage, I was just like the human version of a twenty-four hour bug.

And while comparing myself to a disease was strange, it also gave me an idea for the best/worst pickup line ever: "Can I compare thee to a germ?"

It made me cringe, but I couldn't help but wonder if Dana would like it.

And with that aside, my virus needed to be known to the world, and the first thing to do was to name it.

I walked to the opposite wall of the restroom and snatched a bundle of paper towels from the machine.

Sadie Arlo Disease, I came up with as I exited through the restroom doors. Even though it was now the name of a disease, the fact that my name was in there gave me a sense of significance, like: "Look at me! I have a disease named after me. I'm better than all of you!"

Unfortunately, it appeared that all that fame from naming a disease went straight to my head, but the acronym would have been S.A.D., which was just unusable.

That left me with the decision of calling it a syndrome, but I still named it after myself. After all, I think I earned that much.

I took myself and my paper towels to the nurse's station, and in my head, the Mission: Impossible theme played. When no one was looking, I snuck a pen from the behind the desk and added it to my collection.

Now, it was time to get to work.

Pacing around the hospital became my activity yet again, but this time I was in search of a work space. I approached the room where I met Tegan, but she already had visitors, including the rhino mom from that I thought was from a nightmare.

I left quickly, hoping that Tegan wouldn't spot me and shoot me some more puppy-dog eyes. If there was a limit to how many pairs of sad eyes a human being could witness in one day, I must have maxed it out already, and all thanks to that girl who was too afraid to tell her mother that modeling wasn't her thing.

And so, I kept moving.

The room that I woke up in was visitor-free. However, the sleeping elderly woman was still resting and I knew that if I stepped one foot inside of her room, I'd set off another panic attack for myself.

I sat on the floor in the hallway with the old woman as my view. As she rested, I laid out my paper towels and began to write about my condition.

S.A.S. (Sadie Arlo Sydrome)

Symptoms: Waking up every morning as someone other than yourself. Lasts for all waking hours. Vessel has no memory at all of the day when Sadie took over their life. This disease can have lasting damage on vessels, but it varies from patient to patient. One might score a date while another might end up with some broken bones.

Known Vessels: Tegan, Clarke, Unnamed Girl in France, Paul, Allison, Mason, Melissa, Unnamed Boy in Hospital.

As I stared at the paper towels I had written on, I glanced upwards in the direction of the old woman. She shifted slightly in her sleep, assuring me that she wasn't dead.

Yet.

"I know it's pathetic," I found myself saying to her, "but I need to be myself again, and will need to find a cure to this disease."

Nothing on her part.

"Another lame thing is that I called the patients of S.A.S. 'vessels', but I don't know what else to call them. I was thinking 'hosts' at first, but that sounds like something from a Sci/Fi book."

The sleeping woman said nothing. All that came out of her was the occasional snore.

I shook my head. "But if these people I'm waking up as are not suffering from S.A.S., then there must have been a problem when I was born, right?

"I wasn't supposed to be born." I stretched my legs out across the floor. "That's a fact. My mom tried to have a baby for the longest time, but after five miscarriages, she gave up. But then I came along, so I was a bit of an accident.

"Once Mom discovered that she was pregnant, I became my parents' 'miracle', but that was a short lived title. I was born two months premature, and no one was confident that I'd live longer than a few hours.

"But you know, I'm still here, so its like I proved the doctors wrong. My parents were of course ecstatic and were completely convinced that I was their miracle baby.

"Thing is, is that while that's a good title, 'Miracle' is a not a good name. Mom will often tell the story that I wasn't always Sadie in her eyes, and if it weren't for Dad, my name would've been Miracle.

"You know what Dad said? He said: 'over my dead body'. He believes in practical names, like Bob, which wasn't all that great either. But then Mom suggested that Miracle be my middle name, and he actually agreed."

The old woman sleeping rolled over to her side and her eyes opened gently.

"But I'm no Miracle," I continued, "I'm just Sadie. I am still Sadie and nothing in this world can change that."

"Lou?" the old woman croaked out, "is that you?"