"Sweetheart, sweetheart... Sweetheart, how are you?"

My sister's voice, speaking to me with such tenderness, calls out. That is, it pulls me toward her, toward where she is.

I can't see her.

All I can feel is a weightless heaviness, something pressing down on me, dulling me.

"Sweetheart, sweetheart... Sweetheart, can you hear me?"

Her soft, loving voice, calling to me, is a warm relief amid the confusion. She sounds so much like Mom.

I want to ask about my niece—her daughter—but my voice won't come. It drowns in my throat. I can only think of speaking, but I can't actually do it.

I can't see my sister, but I can feel her, right above me, hovering over my face—yet somehow, also so far away.

"Sweetheart, sweetheart... If you can understand me, move a finger, blink, do something, please, for God's sake... please, love, do something, please/please/do/something..."

My soul shatters at her pain.

I'm worried for my sister.

Her pain hurts me.

I'm afraid of what might have happened to my niece. So many doubts swirl in my mind.

Why is my sister here with me and not with her?
Where is she?

"Sweetheart, sweetheart... Please, don't go..."

In the darkness of my soul, amid the thoughts trying to take shape within my consciousness, a chilling emptiness overtakes me, a void that suddenly fills with my own doubts.

Far away, now very far away, I can still hear my sister calling me, speaking to me with a warmth far greater than usual, pleading with me to respond—but I can't.

Besides the cold, I'm trapped in a lethargy unlike anything I've ever felt before.

I'm not exhausted, but an overwhelming fatigue seeps into my being, a deep, undeniable urge to surrender.

There's a moment in water, when you're floating—when a thought, lurking behind all others, suggests that you stop trying to stay afloat. A whisper inviting you to exhale and sink, peacefully, into the depths below the surface.

That thought pulses in my mind now.

A relentless temptation to stop floating, to let myself sink deeper and deeper into this weariness, into this numbness, to indulge in surrender.

But my sister's voice becomes a lighthouse in the drowsy darkness, and the surrounding cold snaps me awake.

Then, suddenly—suddenly—a sickening sensation creeps over me.

An abhorrent presence is watching me.

My nerves jolt, and I half wake up.

The emptiness within me is suddenly violated by a gravitational pull that rattles my consciousness.

It feels like intruders are trying to force their way into my mind, as if my very thoughts are a home that thieves are attempting to break into.

That feeling—
Like looking out a window and realizing people are staring inside.
Like sensing someone wants to take what's yours.

Startled, I wake up with a violent gasp, suffocating, gulping down all the oxygen I can, like I've just surfaced from drowning in a cold, still sea.

Confused, I see my sister leap toward me, throwing her arms around me, kissing me, before running out the door.

An unbearable nausea churns inside me.

Just as I think I'm about to vomit, a violent spasm seizes my body—
and then she returns, this time with two doctors and three nurses.

They speak to me, but I can't hear them.

A piercing, agonizing ringing drills into my ears...

They attach devices to my arm, shine lights into my eyes, snap their fingers in front of my face—
but I can't understand anything.

I reach out, clumsy, trying to push them away.

I mean, sure—I understand that, somehow, after the crash, we ended up in the hospital and that I must have lost consciousness.

But I don't understand why everything around me is moving in such unbearable slowness, trapping me in this agonizing delay that keeps me from communicating.

I try to move, but my sluggish limbs crash against everything.

I want to speak, but all I manage are strangled, pitiful sounds.

I need to exist, but it's as if everything happening around me has already happened seconds before I even process it.

I am displaced—
Suspended in reality, but in a different time.

That is to say—perhaps I have returned to myself, but I am out of sync.

There is a lag between what happens in the outside world, where everyone else exists, and my trapped mind, my sluggish being, my emotions dragging behind reality itself.

I try to vomit, but there's nothing left in me.

A dry heave racks my body, and I collapse onto my side.

I don't pass out, but I have no strength to sit up.

My eyes dart wildly around the room.

I roll onto my back, surrendering again.

The others—doctors, nurses, my sister—
they're trying to prop me up, as if I had lost consciousness again.

But my exhaustion is so immense that I can see the world—
but the world cannot see me.

From the corner of my eye, I watch my sister clutch her face, sobbing in the chair beside my bed.

Then, she starts punching a table.

Then, kicking, thrashing.

Then, she starts screaming, hysterical, until the nurses pin her down.

Meanwhile, a doctor shines a flashlight into my eyes, his expression contorting in pure disbelief.

Once again—

That cold emptiness takes hold of my body.

Then my mind.

Then my spirit.

And it's as if I'm drifting into a deep, endless sleep.

Far away—

I hear something.

A whisper.

"Jump."

Or...

"Let go."

Or...

"Kill yourself."

Or something like that.

I can't quite understand.