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bed.  She opened her eyes and the room slowly came into focus.  She was in the hospital.  There was an intravenous needle in her arm and fluids dripped from a bag hanging over her head.     She lay in a tiny isolation room with layers of clear, split plastic walls between her and the locked door.  A camera watched her.
    She tried to sit up, but every muscle in her body burned and ached.  She looked into the camera.  “Hello!  Somebody?”
    She tried to think back to her last memory.  Her head throbbed and her thoughts were fuzzy, but she was able to recall being in the bathroom.  She had gotten sick.  A black sheet had enveloped her when she had tried to stand up from the toilet, smothering out her thoughts.
    How long had she been unconscious?
    She began to panic.  She pulled the needle from her arm and forced her legs over the side of the bed.  Ignoring the burning and weakness in her muscles, she willed herself to sit up.  She slowly got to her shaky feet, fatigue tearing through her body as she struggled to hold her weight.  A medical associate and his manager, both clad in biological protection suits, burst into the room.
    “Calm down, miss!” the manager said.
    “Where am I?” Virginia asked.
    “Medical-Corp, District Hospital,” the manager said.  “Don’t worry.  You’re going to be okay.”
    The men helped her back into the bed, and the associate recovered the intravenous needle hanging off the side.  A small pool of saline collected on the linoleum, but both doctors ignored it.  They seemed far too concerned with making sure Virginia stayed in bed and had the needle back in her arm.
    “How long was I out?” she asked.
    “A little over twelve hours,” the associate said.
    “Where’s my family?”
    “We’ll need to keep you in isolation for a few days,” the manager answered.  “Whatever virus is going around, it’s a nasty one, and we need to contain it.”
    “Can I get you some reading materials?” the associate asked.  “Something to help pass the time?”
    The room suddenly seemed even smaller.  Virginia felt her body trickle with more sweat and the cold chills threatening to return.  “There isn’t any way I can just go home?”
    The two men exchanged glances, and then the manager replied, “You’ll only be here for a few days at the most, I’m sure.  There’s really nothing I can do about it.  I’ll voice your concerns to my manager, though, if you want me to.”
    “Don’t bother,” Virginia grumbled, knowing the system all too well.
    “Here.”  Virginia noticed the syringe just as the manager emptied it into Virginia’s arm.  “A little something for the pain.”
    “But I don’t want—”  Everything became a blur, and suddenly Virginia didn’t care that she was being held against her will under monitored confinement.  She didn’t care that most people who stayed in these small rooms only left after a date with the euthanasia machine.  She didn’t even care that the rest of her family could easily end up sharing her uncertain fate.  Nothing mattered now but the numbing bliss that pulsed through her veins.
    She didn’t see the medical associate and manager leave the room.  She was too busy watching imaginary little bugs scurrying across the ceiling.  There were colors, too, yellows and violets moving in odd shapes and patterns, as if she were gazing through a kaleidoscope.  The pain throughout her body vanished, and Virginia decided that the manager who injected her wasn’t quite as terrible as she had first assessed.
    She closed her eyes and watched the drug induced show, content enough for the time being.  Everything slowly became dull, fading to black, and she lay in a mindless fog for longer than she could measure.  Her mind took her to a field of wild poppies.  The air was fragrant instead of wet and grey, and there wasn’t a building or shuttle track in sight.  Virginia smiled.  There were no more walls.  They had