Sitting in the white washed hospital room, I feel alone and trapped. It's been three weeks since the accident, and I was in a coma for a good amount of it. Most of my family is here, and I feel more and more claustrophobic as another family member enters the room. I don't want to be here, and don't want to be in this bed either. I want to be home, and hanging out with my friends, or, what's left of them anyways. I got the worst of it, but Aiden has a big scar across his lower abdomen, and Lila's face is alright, but her scalp is still healing, at least that's what I've been told. I pretend that I am sleeping, because if I'm awake I have to take medications and I hate it. I hate feeling like I need to take them, because I don't want them.

            A nurse in pink and purple scrubs walks in, and she nears the bed. I hunker down in my covers and actually try to fall asleep now, because I know what this means--what time it is. "Clare?" Nicole asks, "Clare, wake up Hun. You have to take these." She holds out three cups of different medications and I shiver. "Clare, I know you are awake!" She laughs, but I think it is far from funny. Those pills make me sleepy, and fall away from the world, and I have let them, for three weeks, take care of me. I think I'm fine now, so I want to make my own decisions.

            "No, go away, I'm not taking them," I say defiantly. I shift in my bed, and roll to face the opposite direction. I grimace, and feel my legs throbbing. My stomach hurts and my hips are still sore. My leg that's in a cast is stiff, and it's hard to turn over, so it's a slow process but I manage.

           "No, you are prescribed these. You know the drill." She tucks my hair behind my ears and rubs my back, "Okay, I'll make a deal with you. Just take the pain meds, please, for your own well being, and I'll ask the Doc if you can stop taking them from now on."

            Her deal strikes me with interest and I roll over slowly, and cross my eyes at her. "I think, you are going off your head." I say, "Since when do nurses make deals with their patients?" I ask suspicious of this.

            "Since now. But I will take back my offer if you do not accept, this is one time." She smirks at me as much as a forty year old, woman can anyways. "Come on, Clare. Please, we can still put it in your IV, we are just giving you the choice, you know this," she pleads.

            I am about to say no, when I cry out in pain from my right side, near my hip. "Augh!" I yell, nearly yanking my IV out of my arm.. Everyone looks over to my bed with worried glances and stares. "Ow!" I yell continuously. This pain is like my insides are exploding and I start to cry it hurts so much. I curl up into a fetal position and I wish I was dead, I have never felt pain like this.

            "Please, everyone, clear the room! Single file, please hurry!" Nicole half yells in a strict voice. Everyone, including my mom hesitates. I look around, and then the lights are too bright and I close my eyes shut. There is muffled shuffling and then silence, 'til I can only hear my own whimpering. A door bangs open, and I hear wheels squeaking on the linoleum or marble flooring.

            "Nicole?" I shout in pain, "Can I take those pills now?" I ask, hoping I can.

            My hopes are crushed as soon as Nicole starts talking, "No, we need to get you a MRI, or an X-ray to see if you broke anything, or have internal bleeding. You seemed fine, but maybe something ruptured." I close my eyes again and wished I was home, again. All this talk scares me, I hate hospitals anyway, this only makes me hate them more. I am lifted onto a gurney and clamp my mouth shut from screaming. "Sorry," Nicole says, then starts giving orders, "Michael, strap her legs and Cheyenne, get her arms. She can't move around too much for that MRI, she could damage something else." She says it like I already did.

            Of course I instantly try and struggle, when I feel hands clamp down on me, I cry out. Then I try to curl up but they won't let me. This makes the pain in my abdomen worse, and I nearly pass out. They open a door with the gurney and I brace myself. I get lifted once again to be slid in the machine to get a scan, and I try to lie still. It seems like it takes hours though it hasn't been more than one hour. Then, I hear the humming of the machine, and it drones on, in a rhythm and it lulls me to sleepiness. "Don't fall asleep, you have to stay up!" I hear in the background. I know somewhere in my head it registers but I want to sleep now, and my eyes feel like I am wiping them with sandpaper. They slowly close against my will, and then I am being slid backwards and out, and a light is shined into my eyes. I am slow to react to it, and begin to worry because that is bad, I shouldn't be lagging at all even if I am tired since lights get shined in my eyes and I instantly wake up, normally.

            "We need to look over her X-rays, and the scan but if you find anything, and I mean anything, you are to report it to me instantly." A gruff male voice echoes around in my head.

            Nicole speaks up, "Yes, Doctor, right away."

            Some odd minutes and an hour later, my pain has escalated, and I am about to die. I may be dramatic, but not about this. I hear light, quick, footsteps and I look up from the next bed they had laid me in. It's a male nurse, who looks bedraggled in his blue scrubs, and ruffled, sweat-streaked hair. The doctor, who I have learned is Dr. Shannone, struggles to his feet from his paperwork. He has been examining my file, trying to find anything since they can't just cut me open whenever they want. "Yes?" he asks anxiously.

             I cross my fingers that it is not bad, "I think we have found it." He walks to the Dr. and they duck their heads and nod every once in a while. They break apart, and the younger man walks out. I watch him leave, and grimace every once in a while.

            Dr. Shannone turns to me, and I force myself to meet his eyes, "Well, I have some good, then some bad news. Which do you want to hear first?"

            He asks me and I have no idea, so I say, "The good first, if you don't mind." As bizarre as it sounds I hope it's my period or something simple.

            "Okay, well, you don't have any brain damage." He folds his hands in front of him as he stands next to me.

            "And the bad?" I brace myself for a wall of suffocating news.

            "Well, the bad news is you are going in for surgery. For one of two things, your appendix, and internal hemorrhaging of your left lung." I look incredulously at him, with wide eyes, "Of course the latter was because of the pressure of the fall on you by the mast."

            "Why my appendix? I don't know, but I'm only a little concerned because I like to be able to say that I still HAVE all of my organs!" My voice is on the verge of hysteria, and it feels like my throat is dry as a desert, and it cracks on the last word.

            "Don't worry, it's an organ that you don't need to survive. It ruptured, and has been leaking so we need to go now. We are getting your mother's permission now, that is where the nurse went," he says as if reading my thoughts.

            "Oh, God! No! Why can't anything in my life go right?" I cry. A few nurses walk in, one is the nurse from earlier followed by two women and then Nicole, which makes me feel a bit more comfortable. "Wait! Wait!" I shout but no one listens, they all just ignore me and push me through yet another set of doors. I get lost in this maze, and I wish I was good with directions because I would have left, and probably died, but I hate hospitals-a lot.

            We round another corner, this one the same as the last except my mom was hidden behind this one, "Clare! Oh, my poor baby! Let me see her!" She rushes to my bed as they slow it to a stop and let her hug me. "I know it's a lot but they need to Hun, I'm so sorry!" She rubs my back in little circles which soothes my pain. "I love you, see you on the other side!" She yelps when the cart is pushed on her foot, and I don't know why but I laugh. The doctors give me a wan look and I know they think I'm crazy-or going that way anyways.

            A few corridors later, I'm in room 3B, on the first floor-for surgery. I am freaking out, I have never had surgery, well, once when I was a baby to get tubes in my ears. I don't remember that though, so this is really worrying me. "What if there is no other side for me? What if I don't wake up?" I yell, and start to hyperventilate. There is a few hands on me now, restraining me from moving. A mask is placed over my face, and I don't breathe because I don't want to go to sleep. I start to choke and open my mouth to breathe, and there is a sleeping gas poured into it. I breathe it in, not trying to but it does no good. The doctors always win.

            I start to slow my breathing and I look up, and see a bright surgical light, and stare at it. It's the last thing I see, before I am lulled to sleep.