Free Coma Girl: part 1 by Stephanie Bond

paranoia crept in. What if something had happened—a deadly virus unleashed—and we were the only four people left alive in the hospital, protected by our immobility? And as days went by and we lay starving and withering, the virus finally made its way into our ward. (It would have be a stinky virus in order for me to know it was coming.) Trapped, we would all inhale the putrid pathogen, and just as I was prepared to die, a miracle happened—the virus had the opposite effect on us, stirring our sleeping limbs and not only pulling us from our comas, but making us more healthy and powerful than before. And it was up to the Super Vegetables to corral and destroy whatever evil faction had released the virus city-wide.
    It could happen.
    I lay there and spun stories of doom and gloom until I put myself into a funk.
    So when the alarm first sounded, I actually thought it was only my imagination.
    But no, it was the fire alarm, as sharp and shrill as an ice pick to the ears. It sounded three times, then paused, then three times again… and kept sounding.
    So now I was sure a terrorist incident had occurred in the hospital, and a hostage had broken loose to pull the fire alarm and summon help.
    Actually, I was pretty sure the hospital was on fire.
    That notion was confirmed when the first tendril of smoke tickled my nose. Let me tell you, nothing is more frightening than knowing danger is near and not being able to move away from it. I thought about the man whose wife had injected him with a paralytic, then left him to die in a fire. This was how he felt, unable even to flop out of bed and lie in the floor hoping the smoke would rise.
    We would be tomorrow’s headline: Four Comatose Women Burned Alive in Brady Hospital Fire. The orderlies would be making jokes about roasted vegetables.
    The smoke was getting thicker and I wondered when my body would rebel. This wasn’t how I wanted to die, and frankly, it seemed extra cruel to heap this new indignity on top of our old one. Blue on black.
    So this was it, then. I would die alone.
    The door burst open and people rushed in—firefighters, I assumed from the sound of the heavy gear. From the noises around me, I had the sensation of my bed being pushed out of the smoke and into a clearer area. We were on an elevator, then some sort of underground space—a parking garage? It made sense if they were going to put us in ambulances and take us to another facility.
    But they didn’t. By and by, the commotion died down and we were returned to the ward, accompanied by giant fans to blow away the lingering scent of smoke.
    In the end, the source of the smoke wasn’t a terrorist attack or biological espionage—just a plain old unattended microwave fire in the nurses’ lounge compounded by a fire extinguisher that didn’t work.
    But I have to get out of here. There are too many things in a hospital that can kill you.
     
     

July 27, Wednesday
     
     
    “IS MARIGOLD OKAY?” my brother Alex asked from whatever device my folks had Skyped him on—my dad’s phone, I think.
    “Her doctor checked her out and said she’s fine,” my mom said.
    “But not better?” Alex asked.
    “No, not better,” my dad said. “The same.”
    “Does she have more color in her face?” Alex asked.
    In the silence that followed, I assumed my parents were looking at me to check.
    “No,” my mom said.
    Great.
    “Ah… maybe the scars have faded some.”
    “No,” my mom confirmed. “Same.”
    Great.
    “Poor thing,” my brother said. “She must’ve been scared to death. We gotta get her out of there.”
    “But it’s the best trauma center in the Southeast,” my dad said.
    “And her doctor is world-renowned.”
    “I don’t mean move her to another facility, I mean get her well.”
    “No argument there,” my dad said.
    “You said you had something to share that might be helpful?”
    “Maybe,” Alex said. “You know, the Army deals with more traumatic brain injuries than all other