This place, with its cool metal-framed furniture and fresh smell of bleach assaulting my sinuses, is home.

Sometimes there is a smell of flowers filling the room, a testament to their guilt. They sit and witter about inconsequential things: how cold the weather is getting, how soon the rain will stop, 'give it a few days, it'll brighten up.'

I smile and talk about how I am comfortable here, with my two pillows plumbed three times a day and the extra blankets.

Sometimes there are presents: warm, fluffy slippers, a soft bathrobe, stupid stuffed animals with squishy bean bellies, and cold glass eyes. God, I don't want to be reminded.

They all said that things would get better. Faceless voices, with heavy footfalls or clicking heels. They all said it would take time.

How much time?

You see, I don't have much of it.

Today is different, though. A new person is here, with a strong cologne I don't recognise. Papers are rustling at the foot of my bed. They never realise that words bring comfort; they bring texture and light.

"Good morning, Anna. My name is Julian." A male voice with a deep timber hums in the space around me. He knows I need his voice; I yearn for words.

"At last, an introduction. Thanks." I deliver a deliberately clipped response. "What are you here for? Another examination concludes there is nothing to be done." My anger trying to sabotage my oasis of sound.

I don't want to take the time to speak; I just want to exist in a bubble of unfeeling repetition until the day.

"No." One word. I want more than one word, but I am stubborn; I won't be pulled in. I have an exit plan, and it doesn't involve talking to this stranger.

"I am here to take you for a walk." A satirical smile eases its way onto my lips.

"Thanks, but I can make it to the bathroom myself, and I wouldn't want to go to the lounge area to sit on solid foam chairs surrounded by coughing and chitter chatter."

The stranger, Julian, laughs. Not the sort of laugh that skips along on the surface of the air to your ears, but the sort that vibrates you from your feet upwards.

"They warned me you would be a handful."

"Hmm. You have no idea." My thoughts glide to the first days. Moments of hitting out. Bruises on my fists and my feet. A broken toe here or there. Concussions. My outward war with change was evident then. Those days have quietened, as the battle has moved inward, laying the way for an invisible, even more brutal battle.

My body shifts slightly as there is pressure on the bed beside me.

"You gonna ask to sit down?" I bite. Liberties of their world, moving without asking.

Over these last five months, I have existed in this new reality; I can't say I have lived, as I have one foot firmly on the ground beyond this world, so as to not hit the ground too hard on arrival or to forget where I am heading.

My request is ignored.

"So your mum said that you are finding things tough?" Julian speaks again. More questions.

"Wow!" It slips out, as does the exasperation at twenty years of my mother underestimating my emotional state.

"Wow! You agree? or Wow! You don't agree?"

Heat is on my cheeks as my frustration peaks at the mention of her. "What do you think?" And there it was: a slip, a conversational opening offered, slicing through the air. You could hear the tearing.

"Well, good that you asked." I hear a slow intake of breath, and my body automatically responds with the same deep, steady breath. "I think you have given up."

What the actual hell?

What gives this stranger the right to come in here and judge me?

"How dare you!" I turn my head away from his smell. Feigning indignation.

"How dare I what? Tell the truth." Mint. I thought I could smell mint! It's like the potted mint plant on my patio. Well, what was my patio.

"I just wish everyone would leave me alone. I'm happy." I could feel my throat constricting and the pitch of my voice heightening.

"Let's go for that walk. I'll grab your shoes." Julian drops my shoes loudly by the side of the bed. "Come on, swing your legs around, and I'll take care of the rest."

"There's no way I'm getting out of this, is there?" My feet are dangling over the edge of the bed. I can feel hands on the heel of my foot. Strong, man-sized hands with long fingers. Firm but gentle.

"Right. I'll get your coat."

"Uh, just hang on a minute. I don't even know who you are."

"Well done, Anna. Always check. So I have Dr. Ishban here with me."

"Hello Anna." Dr. Ishban's smooth Indian accent glides over me. "Please take this in your hand. Our token." The small stone sits in the palm of my hand, its familiar coolness chilling my skin. I trace the carved lines that spiral inward towards the centre. To think this small stone could put me at ease. "Julian is one of the counsellors who works here at the hospital. I asked him to come and visit you." I shake my head violently. My curls are bouncing on my shoulders. "Just one hour. That is all I ask."

Of all the people in this hell whole of a life, Dr. Ishban is probably the one person I will miss the most.

"Fine." I mutter with a deep sigh.

"Great. I'll get the coats."

As we left the room, a room I had been in for what seemed like an unending amount of time, I could feel Julian's hand wresting at my elbow. Then came the words—his words, beautifully rounded in their subtle delivery. It was almost like every description or deduction was a poem.

He spoke about the corridor and its checkerboard floor, the people moving much like a chess game. The old woman coming out of her room three doors down from my room had blue rinsed hair and a sadness to her.

He took my hand and placed it on the wall, explaining that there were bumps showing the path to the end of the floor.

He spoke about how he remembered the day when there had been a fire alarm, the sprinklers had all gone off, and the mess there had been to clear up.

He asked me about what my favourite thing had been to do before the accident. I didn't answer. He didn't seem to mind, as he simply moved on to describe how the window at the end of the corridor was bathing us in light. My skin was warm.

"Anna, we are at the lift." I took an unsteady step back. A corridor was one thing, but what was he doing? I wasn't well enough for this.

"I can't" My breathing had quickened. "Where are you taking me? I don't want to go any further." I was getting dizzy and couldn't catch my breath.

"I'm taking you to see someone, and we need to go downstairs to do it. If you need a second to steady yourself, that is fine. There is a bench just behind us. Come this way. Julian's hand was at my elbow again, his warm palm guiding me. " Place your hand down, and you will find the edge behind you. I did what he said and sat. The metal was cold against my thighs.

"Why can't they come up here?" I didn't want today to be the day I said goodbye to all that could be.

"Sorry, Anna, no can do." I heaved in a deep breath that filled my healing lungs. "I will be with you every step."

"I've only just met you. How am I supposed to trust you?" I asked the question, but everything inside me was telling me that this man may just have the key to something.

"What have you got to lose?"

Julian began again, describing what he was doing. I raised my hand to the lift buttons. My fingertips noticed for the first time the differing feel of the up and the down. He moved my hand from the door, along the wall, to the button panel. I could feel the numbers and remembered roughly the order.

"Get us to the ground floor, Anna." I pushed the G button, and the lift started it's decent. I listened for any other breathing around me, but there was only Julian close behind me. I felt uncertain, but his breathing was comforting.

The lift pinged, and I heard the doors slide open.

'Ground floor.' I'd never truly heard a lift announcement voice until today. It was a soft, comforting, recorded female voice beseeching me to exit.

Julian began to describe the lobby that we stepped out into. There were white metal pillars that just kept rising above, and huge glass windows bathed the area in light. He said it reminded him a little of an airport. Travelling from life to death, I considered.

I began to drag my feet. My chest tightened, and my breathing began to falter.

"Julian. I feel faint." His hand gripped a little firmer on my arm. The sounds around me were so loud. Coffee being made, tannoys beeping and crackling into life with room numbers and names spoken in automated voices. People passed us while having telephone conversations. I could hear so much more than before. Sobbing, the bouncing of a ball, the vibration of Julian's phone in his pocket.

"Just a little further. You are doing brilliantly." I didn't feel like I was doing brilliantly; I felt like I wanted out.

He explained that we were exiting the lobby and would be going just a little outside.

"I can't do this." My footing faltered, and then I felt it. I was falling into a terrifying darkness. My knees hit the cool tiled floor with a loud thunk, bringing tears that soaked into the gauze covering what once were my eyes.

My hand found the floor, and I sat weeping. I heard whispering around us, but I didn't care. I felt hands slide into mine.

"Anna. If this is where you need to be and this is what you need to do at this very moment, you do it. I am here. My hands are in yours. When you are ready to stand, just let me know."

We sat for what felt like an eternity. God knows what people must have thought, but he didn't move. He didn't leave me, like they did. His hands were in mine the whole time.

It was after this time that Julian asked a question.

"Anna. Do you remember the accident?"

The strangest thing happened to me—something I neither want nor understand. That night, when it happened, was stuck in my head, like a freeze frame. I can't go forward or back. Like me, my memory was in limbo.

"I can remember being in the back of the car and that we were travelling home from my aunt's house." I swallowed back the sobs. "I can remember the driving rain."

"Do you remember who was in the car with you?"

I studied the freeze frame.

"They were in the car!"

"Your mum and dad?"

"Yes."

"You seem angry with them."

"I am."

"Why?"

"Because they left me." All my anger was just below the surface now; I couldn't stop it from coming up—a putrid wave of emotion.

"Anna. Your parents didn't leave you. They were badly injured and were both unconscious until the rescue team got to you."

I scoffed. "Well, how were we rescued then?" A flash of memory hit me hard.

I was there in the car, my head in agony. My eyes were on fire because of the glass, but I remembered my hand in my pocket searching for my mobile. My fingertips were feeling for the buttons, as if it were happening now. 999.

"I did it!" My whisper was like a release, a realisation that even there at that terrifying moment, I could help myself.

Then, like a Polaroid developing, drifting into view so slowly, she was there in my mind, licking my hand and barking.

"Sandy! Sandy was there. Oh God, she was in the car." I felt physically sick. How could I have forgotten her? "Please tell me she was okay. Please." My desperation is so acute now.

"Anna, you need to stand up now."

I didn't argue. I could do this; I knew I could.

Julian began to describe the walk through the front doors and what he saw outside, but he didn't have to describe Sandy; her bark was so excited and insistent, so full of delight and relief.

"I need to see her. Please." I wanted to run, but I knew these were my first steps, and I had to be patient.

Julian explained that we were walking across the grass to where my mother and father had Sandy. He explained that she was delicate because she had to have a leg removed. He explained that she had been thrown from the car, but that with a broken leg, she had pulled herself to the top of the embankment the car had slid down, and she had barked at the roadside in the driving rain until the emergency services had arrived at the crash site. She wouldn't leave my side. He said that she had stayed with me until the hospital. Then, with shear exhaustion and pain, she had become unconscious.

"I will help you sit down on the grass so it is safer."

Julian helped me down.

"It wasn't anyone's fault Anna. It was a freak accident. A landslide."

"Hello sweetheart." My Mum's voice is small, but firm. "Someone has been desperate to see you. She has only left your room for food and toilet."

My hands automatically reached out, not knowing where Sandy was, but I didn't need to know, she would always find me. I burrowed my face—a face changed forever—into the fur of her neck, breathed in her smell and touched her warm fur. I realised that although my physical healing had begun some months ago, today the healing of my spirit had taken its first step.

THE END