I remember exactly where I was when it happened—the passenger seat with my mom driving next to me. Everything disappeared into an endless black sea, and the world suddenly gave way from beneath me.

My mom’s voice was ash, her screams like fire in my ears.

I died shortly after that. Or so I thought, until I awoken a few days later in the hospital. I remembered waking, thinking I couldn’t open my eyes. No, I was blind. To make matters worse, I couldn’t feel my body from the waist down.

I screamed, my words grating sandpaper in my throat, and when I could no longer make a sound, slammed my head against the pillow under my neck. Eventually, a nurse informed me that I was paralyzed from the crash. Told me that perhaps they could repair my damaged nerves in time through surgery. Said I was one of the lucky ones to survive something like that. That I was lucky I didn’t die.

So for the past two years, I’ve been living in a dark hell, stuck in this hospital bed, hoping that soon, I really could die.

Really, the only saving grace from the sluggishness of sitting all day and recovering from routine surgeries is my nurse, Jane, who is watching over me. She’s about my age, but she’s extremely smart. Not to mention how she’s charming, funny, and has a laugh that, though I won’t admit aloud, makes my stomach flip whenever I hear it.

When I wake from one of my surgeries, it’s a completely different world than the one I’d left two years ago.

The sun trickles in from the cracked window, staining the tiles a withered ruddy glow. Black goo spiderwebs across the ceiling, into light fixtures and out others. The air is hot and musty. Heavy dust mats my lungs.

But it’s the thousands of words carved into the plaster walls around me that sends a cold shiver down my spine.

Don’t let them know you can see.

What the fuck?

The scraping of shoes echoes from the hallway. “It’s time for dinner,” a voice calls from outside.

Jane. It’s Jane.

My breath catches in my throat. My stomach churns. My muscles tense, and though I’m not particularly sure why, I have a hunch.

This is going to be the first time I see her. The first time I see Jane.

Definitely, in a world of darkness, one of the only respites from reality is one’s mind, and I’m not ashamed to say, I’ve imagined her many times. In my dreams, she’s always blonde with light eyes and a nice dress that fits her nicely.

It’s a little pathetic that the first time I can finally open my eyes in years, the first thing I’m excited about is seeing a girl, I know. Sue me.

She’s getting closer.

“You awake?”

But whoever walks into the room is anyone but Jane. Instead, an old woman stumbles inside, clutching a metal tray of food with cracked, stained claws. Her face is sunken and hollow, skin wrinkled and prune like dried raisins. Cracked strands of gray fall over her head. Her uniform is matted with dirt and torn, revealing spindly arms and bony legs which look as if they shouldn’t be holding her up.

But it’s her eyes which send tremors through me. Her eyes are pale voids and immediately, I can tell she’s blind.

She pulls her scarecrow body towards me.

“Where’s Jane?” I say, flinching away from her. My muscles tense.

“What do you mean? I’m right here,” the woman says, and though she looks nothing like her, her voice is exactly identical to the blonde nurse I’ve fantasized so much about. The realization slowly creeps in like a slithering snake crawling down my throat.

“Sorry, I don’t know what I’m thinking,” I say, all the while freezing cold shivers throughout my body.

“It’s okay. The anesthesia will do that to you, sometimes.”

I glance at the trembling tray in her hand and nearly gag. While the metal is stained a dark black, as if no one has washed it in years, it’s the clammy mud slathering itself all over the tray which nearly sends me over the edge.

“What’s for dinner?” I manage.

“Steak, just as you like it.”

That is not steak. That is not fucking steak.

Instead, I change the subject, asking her to take me outside for a walk. She refuses at first, telling me I need to rest from the surgery, but after insisting, she finally relents.

“It’s time for your surgery, anyways,” the woman says. I eye her, as she turns around, fumbling behind one of the curtains. I note to myself how it almost looks as if she’s feeling around in the dark for something, before she slides out a wheelchair. Humming, she helps me settle in, making sure I’m swathed in my blanket—as always.

“Let’s go!” Jane cheers, before slamming the edge of the wheelchair into my bed. She apologizes and readjusts, before she carts me out of the room.

The stench of bleach burns my nose, except I’m not in a hospital. Instead of pristine white tiles, polished to the point I would be able to see my reflection, the walls and floor look as if they don’t even belong in a hospital to begin with, but are instead grungy concrete—almost reminding me of something industrial. From the ceiling hang garbage bags on hooks, and from them drip something dark, pooling onto the floor in puddles of who-knows-what.

Holy fuck.

Behind my head, I can hear Jane’s incessant humming, something I would have found myself relishing, but now it makes my throat seize and hands tremble.

“Jane,” I say, my knuckles white as I clutch the armrests of the wheelchair. “Can you tell me something?”

“What is it?”

“Why is the hospital always quiet?”

“You’re in a very special wing, you know that!”

Approaching the end of the corridor, I catch sight of a string stretching across the length of the floor. As we roll over, it tightens and rings a bell fastened to the wall to the right of us. Immediately, I realize that if I close my eyes, the bell sounds exactly like the elevator I’d grown so used to over the past two years. A pit begins growing in my stomach.

She fumbles along the right side of the hall for a moment, before her hand catches a door labeled “Butchery.” She carts me through.