Where am I? Everything is so bright and white. I feel like I am floating through an endless sky of fluffy white clouds yet also weighed down by bags of sand. As my eyes finally adjusted to the strange whiteness of the environment, I realized I was looking at my own body. Dark, scarlet blood dripped off my face and onto the crisp white sheets from my chapped lips and right eyebrow. My clothes were covered in random crimson spots that contrasted with the almost blinding whiteness of the room. Am I dreaming?

I am going to go out on a limb and assume I am in a hospital but for what? Nurses flooded the hallway pushing numerous different people on identical stretchers. I turned to the nearest official looking person and politely asked what was going on. He continued to yell orders at the other nurses completely ignoring my question. Bossy much? Annoyed, I turned away from the dictatorial nurse and followed my body into a small room crowded by beeping machines and colorful blinking lights. The messy pony tailed woman turned to the badly dyed red haired nurse and said, “We need to get her x-rayed and a CT scan to check for broken bones and internal bleeding. Cut her bloody clothes off and bandage her external wounds.” Unlike the male nurse, this woman sounded authoritative instead of demanding. I ran after the 2 nurses as they rolled my stretcher passed large doors reading TRAMA, my bare feet slapping the white tiled floor. Why did everything have to be so white? As the glass doors closed, I stretched out my hand to catch them, but my hand went right through the silver door handle.

I was stuck in the noisy, fast paced ER room. Fantastic. A shadow of a faintly beautiful woman sat crying on chairs that seemed much too bright for an emergency room. I could hear her sobs echoing through the busy hallway. Her sadness began to hurt my eyes so I turned away from her and walked toward the front desk to eavesdrop. A tired, pepper haired male doctor was leaning into an equally worn out female doctor. His hoarse voice said, “A newly licensed teenage girl was driving in her flashy, pink convertible when she ran a red light and collided with a city bus. The poor girl died directly upon impact. Her name was Vanessa Jimson, the champion swimmer who was in the news a year ago. That is her mother sitting over there. Three other passengers did not make it, two are in the ICU and one looks like she might have actually gotten away from the accident with minimal cuts and scratches, but she fell into a coma. She has a really strange name...Quimmy? Oh! Quinn, like the comic book character.” I rolled my eyes, like I haven’t heard that one before.

I turned away from the doctors as I spotted my body being rolled out of the trauma floor and passed doors reading COMA WARD in bright red letters. I ran through the doors just as they slammed close behind me. The red haired nurse rolled me into an even smaller room than before. This side of the hospital was eerily silent. Every squeak of a shoe, beep on a machine or slam of a door echoed throughout the entire ward. After they got me situated, I was left alone with my barely clothed sleeping body.

And I waited. And waited. And waited. Will I forever be stuck in this silent world between death and life?? The rebellious purple streaks were fading from hair, and my dark makeup had been washed away making my face an off white color. Not a beautiful serene Snow White white. It was the color of an uncooked turkey lying by itself on a silver plate. It was as if all the happiness had been sucked out of me, leaving behind a shell of the once glorious Quinn. A familiar comforting voice broke me out of my depressing trance. The owner was clearly yelling at the nurses, “I need to see her! I don’t care if I’m not immediate family!” The door to my tiny, private room burst open.

“Sir, you can’t be in here….” The dyed haired nurse from earlier stopped midsentence when she saw the broken look on Greyson’s face. She quietly said, “I’ll leave you with her. If anyone asks, you’re her brother.” With that, she gently closed me door.

I rushed over to Greyson expecting his usual warmth, but just as before, my hands went right through his body. My throat began to hurt as if I needed to cry, but my body betrayed me and stubbornly held in my tears. My usual snarky comments died before they had a chance to form. All I wanted was to feel his touch. I looked into his beautiful eyes as tears slowly trickle down his face and fell onto my white sheets. These were the same eyes that told me he loved me every time we fought. Right now, all I could read was immense fear and sadness. I whispered across from him, “Grey, please say something. Anything. I want to hear your voice.” He suddenly looked up. Could he see me?! As soon as that thought crossed my mind, he turned away.

He suddenly chuckled but without the usual spark. In a voice coarse from crying he said, “You would probably make fun of me right now for crying. Do you remember that time when you fell out of a tree sneaking out? Or the time we tried baking a red velvet cake for my mom’s birthday and set the fire alarm off? Or the time when you tore your favorite bear pajama pants, and we embarked on a journey to find new ones at 3 in the morning? Or the time we filled Dr. Beam’s desk drawers with Cheetos? Every time, I fell in love with you more.” At this point, his voice broke. He looked up once again and took my hand and kissed it. Greyson said, “Please come back, my panda eyed Rapunzel.”

Suddenly, I felt a tugging sensation. It was if the bags of sand had been lifted off my shoulders. The blinding light came once again and clouded my vision. When my vision cleared, I was looking up at Grey. With a voice barely audible, I said, “You’re a pansy.”