[Currently untitled, trigger warnings for car accidents and comas] The lights were the first thing that I remembered. Big, flashing lights that penetrated into my mind, which left me throbbing and aching on the inside. And the pain. The world spun before my eyes, blurring with both tears and illusions. I remembered the pressing, the endless pressing on my forehead that wouldn’t go away. I remembered the jerk of the impact, the way the seatbelt was pressed up against my throat. I remembered the screams that were stuck, unable to find their way out of my mouth. And then, after all the dizziness and pain, I remembered the blackness. The nothingness and sweet relief of it being over. I thought I was going to die, but they were good enough to save me, or at least that’s what I tried to tell myself. The second thing that I remembered was the white. White walls, white floors, white ceilings, white coats, white masks. I remembered the too clean, too stiff feel of the sheets and the smell of antiseptic that I couldn’t escape. I remembered them telling me that it was okay, that I would be fine. They have always been liars, haven’t they? They told me to breathe in and out slowly. I listened. Everyone listened. I thought as I drew the air into my lungs, It hurts, but that’s what I remembered being especially strange. They were only thoughts, not words. You see, I never knew privacy. Every thought, every word, every whisper, it was all there for anyone to listen. And there are many, many listening ears who would give another person up for a little extra food or the slightest chance to get onto the good side of the government, our “gracious” rulers who are responsible for this all in the first place. Of course, this was something that I should never even think about, because if I were to think the words, I would say it. Or that was what was supposed to happen, what they expected to happen, and what happened to everyone else. But the fact that I could think it without being killed is a sign that this wasn’t the case, at least not for me. The coma changed everything. They said that before I woke up, I breathed by machine for a month. A month. In one month, something about the accident rewired my brain to change it from how they rewired it in the first place. I had to talk more, just so that they wouldn’t take my silence for rebellion. They retaught me the skills I was supposed to learn when I was young, the ones that my body had to be retrained to do after such trauma. They said that I was making progress, but really, I had never forgotten that in the first place. They repeated my name back to me, over and over and over until they were sure that I had it, but I never truly lost it. /Artemis/, they had told me, pronounced and carefully enunciated. /Your name is Artemis./ Will was the first one to visit me when I woke up. I appreciated that he didn’t tell me that I was going to be fine, like the rest of them, but he listened, listened to every fear and detail of my recount of it. I was driving back from the store. It was raining heavily. Maddie was in the car with me. I looked back for an instant. Lightning flashed. Thunder roared. She screamed. Light exploded everywhere. I couldn’t think, couldn’t hear, couldn’t do anything but lie where I was while she frantically attempted to wake me. She was scared I was never going to wake up. But I did. /Dead girl walking/, I thought. /That’s what I am./ I think I might have heard one of them say it too. But I didn’t say it. After a lifetime with a lack of secrets, it was so impossibly freeing to have some. Though maybe it was not freedom. Maybe what gave me my freedom was the very thing that locked me in a cage. /Dead girl walking./
