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blame. How they must be
feeling, and it was all my fault.
    I'd gone to the hospital to see Grace.
I stood outside her room, unable to open the door, unable to walk
through it. Her sister was there - she looked just like her. She
looked lost, broken, her eyes heavy and dark and red, stained by
countless tears. I didn't have the heart to go in there, to tell her
the truth.
    Grace was in a coma. She had been since
the crash. I'd found out from a nurse, found out that the side of her
head caught the door as it crumpled in, cracking her skull. They said
she was stable, but didn't know when she'd wake up, if she'd wake up.
I wanted to die for the guilt, sinking every night into a sea of
alcohol to knock me out.
    I continued to go and see Grace every
day. It became a habit, a form of therapy for me. She looked so
peaceful lying there, the cuts on her face gradually healing, those
pretty features of hers once again unspoilt. I never went in though,
always in fear of running into her family. I just stood there
outside, looking at her breathing for a few minutes each day. That's
all I could manage before the nurses became suspicious.
    She seemed like a popular girl.
Everyday there was someone different there: young, old, men, women,
family, friends. They all talked to her, trying to get her to react,
trying to get her to wake up. I was jealous. If I was in a coma, no
one would come. No one.
    At this point in time, I'd say that
would be fair.

Chapter 6
    September 26 th 2012
    Grace
    I opened my eyes, the world slowly
coming into focus. It was bright in the room, the lights hurting my
eyes, the beeping sounds around me thundering through my head.
    I
was in a hospital bed, doctors and nurses rushing around outside my
door. I lifted by left hand to my head and felt a bandage around it,
heavily dressed on one side. Oh
how my head ached.
    There was no one in the room but me, a
spare bed over to my right. I saw a shadowy figure through my blurry
eyes looking at me outside the window, or at least I thought it was
looking my way.
    I turned away for a moment and it was
gone.
    Suddenly the door opened and a nurse
rushed in. She started doing some checks, asking me some simple
questions.
    “ Grace,
can you hear me?”
    “ Do
you know where you are?”
    “ Do
you remember what happened?”
    I was having trouble remembering. The
last thing I recall was being in a car, in a car with my mom. We were
driving, and then we...
    A sudden realization hit my face, my
hands shaking. I spoke for the first time in weeks, the words brittle
on my tongue, struggling to get out. “Where's my mom?”
    The nurses eyes dropped, her expression
telling me all I needed to know. “WHERE'S MY MOM?!” I shouted
once more, my voice coming back, still croaky from it's slumber.
    “ I
- I'll just get the doctor.” She ran off quickly outside the door,
leaving me alone again.
    My eyes were stinging with tears
already, my breath short. I remembered hearing her scream, the car
crumpling around us as we rolled along the highway. I remembered her
scream suddenly strangled of its life, cut short as we tumbled and
came to a halt. Then, nothing, there was nothing else until now.
    The doctor came rushing in as I cried
out in my bed, tears shooting down my face. “She's dead, isn't
she,” I wailed as he approached and took my hand. “She's dead,
isn't she,” I repeated, needing confirmation, needing to hear it.
    “ I'm
so sorry Grace,” he said, his hands reaching for mine, trying to
comfort me. “There was nothing anyone could have done.”
    I shook my head violently, the pain in
my head increasing. “Please try to calm down,” he said, “your
head is still badly hurt.”
    I didn't care, no physical pain was
worse than this. I continued to thrash and wail, my heart cracking as
my skull had, a searing pain in the pit of my stomach. The sensation
in my head grew more intense as nurses came in to restrain me,
injecting me with something to calm me down. My body relaxed,