Piper's POV

There she was standing in front of me like a dream. Is this actually happening? I move toward her but she just pushes past me, so maybe it is a dream after all. To test my luck I call out for her, "Alex!" I wait and nothing happens so I try again while running after this possible ghost, "Alex, wait!" Finally, she begins to turn around and…

"Piper, wake up!" I open my eyes and see Red standing above me. "Are you trying to wake up the whole damn prison?" She whispers in her thick Russian accent. "You had another dream of her." I simply nodded my head yes, in order to help me ground myself back to reality. I got so close to her this time Red, as if she were actually here. This is driving me crazy. They refuse to tell me anything about her. I don't even know if she's alive." "Well you won't find you while screaming in your dreams, so try to dream about something else and you can think about her all you want in the morning." I just stared at Red not sure if out of anger or out of understanding and the desire for my nightmares to stop. I turn around and try my best to think of something else, like my panty operation, but that just makes me think of Stella and how I fucked up and picked her over Alex. All of a sudden wrestling my mind away from yet another awful memory of my manipulative ways, I hear Red whisper, "I'm sure she is ok Piper."

I stretch out after hearing our call to get up. I throw my legs over the bed and am painfully reminded that Alex isn't here. After weeks of nightmares, I always have this brief feeling as though everything was normal and life was fine and then much like a crash it falls away. Ignorance is bliss. So I get up and grab my stuff for the morning and get ready for another day.

So far it has been a typical day at Linchfield. It's pretty much what anyone could expect from a bunch of caged up women. Though we did get new inmates today and well I haven't heard anything about Alex. Red has been incredibly nice to me, alarmingly so. I just walked into the cafeteria for dinner and she had the girls give me an extra…Wait a minute, who is that? Alex? Great, so now my daydreams are becoming nightmares too. It must be someone else; I mean it was just the back of someone's head walking out. Fuck, I can't take this; I need to check if it was Alex. So I run out and of course the guard yells at me for running, but once I turn the corner I see her again.

I feel crazy. I'm following this woman who probably isn't even Alex and now she is heading into the bathroom. I slow down my pace so I don't creep her out, even though now I am just awkwardly washing my hands painfully slow. The door opens and I hold my breath, Alex? Of course not, it's just some new inmate. I walk out of the bathroom angry at myself for getting my hopes up and disappointed that it wasn't her. As I turn the corner, I crash head on into someone and fall to the ground and all I hear is the person yelling a painful drawn out, "FUCK!" At that moment my heart falls to my stomach and I force myself to look at the person I just knocked over. Alex.