September 7th 1996, 9:36am.

"Okay, I'll go wake her up now." I hear Michael's voice from the other side of the closed door in the hotel room. I look at myself in the mirror after I finish getting dressed into just a white t-shirt and jeans, when I hear the door open.

"Carm-" Michael begins saying as he pokes his head through the door. As soon as he sees me, he smiles. "Oh good, you're up," he says. "We're going out." He begins heading for the door.

"Wait, where are we going?"

"It's a surprise, Carmelon."

I smile at the nickname he gave me; Carmelon. I could get use to that.

♔

I'm now riding in a limo with Michael next to me, and he still won't tell me where we're going.

"Are you gonna tell me now?" I ask.

"Nope." He smirks.

"Okay, then let me guess...Is it at your rehearsal?"

"No."

"Is it a museum?"

"No, but good idea though."

"Is it...I don't know, tell me!"

"Keep guessing Melon."

The limo comes to a stop and I look outside. I see a sign that reads PRAGUE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL.

"Well come on, we haven't got all day," Michael says exiting the limo and opening my door. I step out and look around. The hospital building from the outside looks huge, but when we walk inside it looks adoring, warm and safe. Kind of like a sanctuary surrounded with children running up and down, excitement filling their bodies with happiness as they see the King of Pop arriving.

It seems like hundreds of little girls and boys reaching up to give Michael flowers, all of which security helps with.

"We've scheduled the bottom level first on the list, Mr Jackson," says a guard.

"Perfect. We'll go there first," he responds.

"Hey there," Michael says, walking into a small hospital room with two sick children, one boy and girl, in two separate beds. "This is for you." He hands them each a stuffed animal toy and a few other games for them to play with.

"T-This is for me?" the little boy asks, stunned.

"It sure is. I'll sign a picture for you too," Michael says with a smile.

"Oh děkuji, děkuji, Michael!" the boy beams. I'm pretty sure he's thanking him; I did learn a little bit of Czech when I was in second grade.

The little girl just stares up at him in awe. They don't look too well at all, but thanks to Michael, it looks like that's the first time they've smiled in a while.

Michael then tips his hat and smiles. "Next room?" he says.

♔

After a long time of visits from room to room at the hospital, Michael was asked to do a photoshoot with some children outside. He's now sitting down against a sort of shed like wall, holding up a puppet and making cute faces, as a bunch of children are gathered around him, smiling and laughing.

I smile and watch them all being so happy in his presence. Then a feeling washed over me; a feeling of being scared and panicked. Nothing can hurt me here though, right? I tried to ignore it and continued to admire the scene before me. But I couldn't. It kept coming back and I knew what I had to do; leave.

"Excuse me, is there a bathroom nearby?" I ask one of the photographers. He simply stares at me and shrugs his shoulders. It's then I remember that no one speaks English.

"Bathroom? You know? Sink, mirror, toilet?" I try shaping out some of the things I'm talking about as I speak.

"Uh, rovně dolů zpět do budovy, pak doleva," he says as he points in a straight direction back inside.

I'm slightly clueless trying to recognize his words, when someone tall, one of the guards I'm guessing, says to me, "Straight down back into the building, then take a left."

"Thank you," I say and make a run for it.

I'm running up the stairs back into the hospital, running back inside the doors – well more like attempting to walk fast. I make my way inside the restroom, and lock myself inside a stall. I sit on the toilet cover, trying to breathe as I can't help but spill out a few tears.

I miss my Mom and I even miss my older sister Lola. She's ten years older than me, and even though she left my Mom and me for college a few years back and hasn't even been present in our lives at all, I still miss her. And then there's my Dad. He and my Mom divorced a when I was nine, and it's affected me a lot. But I can't help think about him, my friends, and just everything.

A few minutes later when I think I've calmed down, I remember something; that incident with the stage light yesterday and how I actually saved Michael's life. Ever since last night, I felt this urge to protect him somehow.

I grab a paper towel, but it's stuck. I try grabbing it again, pulling, pulling, and pulling, but I can't get it out. I reach inside further and drag a towel out, put instead, the whole paper towel dispenser collapses onto the tiles, creating a loud crashing metal sound. I thankfully managed to get my hand out before it could fall, but the bad news is that I broke it.

"Oh no," I whisper. Thank God no one is in here.

Suddenly, I hear loud banging on the restroom door and a few people yelling, "Otevřít, Otevřít!" I know that means to open up, at least.

Instead, I look around and find a small, yet decent sized window. I step up onto one of the sinks and drag the sliding window across to the left. I reach up and quickly but safely shimmy my way out of it. As I look down on a fresh patch of grass outside, I notice that I'm not too far up, so there's a way I can jump down easily without getting hurt.

"Otevřít," I hear them yell again. I close my eyes and kind of glide down, stomach first, but managing to twist my body around the last second in hopes of landing safely on my butt – big fail. I barely make it to my side and landed on my shoulder hard. I wince and slowly stand up, then try to find where Michael and the others were.

I spot Michael at the far end of the building, this time surrounded by reporters and children scattered all over the place just like before. I had to run around the back and into the front door again, and then walk halls and halls down before I saw where Michael was.

"Michael," I call his name. "Mich-" but I'm cut off by people pushing and shoving, in desperate need to even just touch the King of Pop.

"Carmella," he calls back as he sees me. "Excuse me, move please." He tries politely walking through the crowd of people to get to me, and when he does he grabs my hand and leads me out the back door.

"I love you!" he calls before exiting the building with his security guards. But that didn't stop people from following. The only way I knew we were safe for sure was when we made it into the limo.

"So," I begin, "where are we going next?"

"Back to the hotel, I need as much rest as possible before my concert tomorrow." Cunsert.

"Wait, that's tomorrow?"

"Yes." He looks at me as if I should've known.

"Oh..."

"An artist needs as much rest as possible before he performs. And practice too, but that's something else, I need rest right now."

"I-" I don't get to finish my sentence as I hear fans screaming from the car window and begin banging on the door. I am pretty scared for two reasons: one is that there's a lot of commotion happening and noise around me, and two, I'm afraid that they'll get hit by a car or something running on the road like that.

"We love you Michael," they scream as they continue to bang on the window with papers, pens and CD's in their hands.

"Make it stop," I say and cover my ears.

"It's okay sweetheart, I deal with this kind of stuff all the time. It's their way of showing their love," says Michael.

I remove my hands from my ears as the limo picks up the pace a little bit and not too long after, one by one people give up chasing it.

"I'm glad that's over," I say.

"You're gonna have to get used to it, Carmelon."

You wish.