The first thing I notice when I wake up is the horrible pain in my head. Then I notice the millions of tubes sticking out of me. What the? I try to sit up, but I get a major head rush and have to lie back down. What happened?

And then it all comes flooding back to me. The feast. I promised Cato that I would kill Katniss slowly and painfully if he let me have her….ugh, Katniss. And then that oaf from District 11 came and blamed me for killing that girl…and then what? I can't even remember.

I'm in a stark, white room. It's completely empty besides the uncomfortable bed I'm laying on, a table next to the bed, and a single white chair in the corner of the room.

I try to tear the tubes from my arm, but I feel a restricting hand on my shoulder. I whip my head around, automatically reaching inside of my jacket—but then I remember I don't have a jacket on, I have a hospital gown on. I have no knives. I am no longer in The Games.

I look up to see a familiar face. "Enobaria." I say, my voice hoarse. I'm guessing I've been out for a long time.

"About time you woke up." My mentor says.

"Where am I? What's going on?"

"Where do you think? A hospital, smarty pants." She turns around to glare at me full on, her deep grey eyes boring into mine. I can tell she's mad at me for what happened.

"I don't…." I trailed off, not really sure what to say. A hospital?

Then, the door to the room opens and a man in a white doctor coat walks in holding a clipboard. "Clove?" he asks, looking at me. I just blink. "How are you feeling?"

I see a few nurses walk past the open door before the doctor closes it again. I think about his question. How am I feeling? Confused, angry. "Crappy." I decide.

The doctor chuckles. "I guess you want to know what's going on?"

"That would be nice."

Enobaria stands next to me with her arms folded, face in a disappointed glare, throughout the whole story. The doctor, who tells me his name is Dr. McDonald, explains that I got hit in the head with a rock. Well, that's kind of embarrassing. What a lame way to almost die. I can just picture the conversations in heaven: "Hey, how did you die?" "Oh, I got hit in the head with a rock." Lame. Now I know why Enobaria is so mad. Not only did I lose, but I lost to a rock.

Apparently the rock hit just at the right spot to avoid being fatal. So when my cannon went off, announcing to the world that I was dead, they took me up in the hovercraft and took me straight to the hospital. This is the part where I'm really confused. Dr. McDonald tells me that sometimes they bring a tribute back to life, but mostly only the careers. I find this impossible—all of these people clearly died. All the people I killed—that was real. Real knives, real blood. I just don't get it.

Now they tell me that I've been brought back to life, and it sounds like a stupid plot to a soap opera or something. It's just impossible. I don't want to listen anymore, I just want to continue on in the dark, but Dr. McDonald has a way of talking that just pulls you in. I almost wanted to hear him talk more, so I let him.

He says that the capital has a special medicine—it's a very involved process, and they use it mostly on the career tributes. But what about my friends that have gotten killed in the Games? Why haven't I seen them alive? Because no one can know. No one can know that the Games are kind of…fake. Even though they're real. This is so confusing, and it's making my brain hurt.

"So, I did die?" I ask, trying to make sense of things.

"Yes, but—" Dr. McDonald is about to go into another explanation when Enobaria interrupts.

"Yes, you died, Clove. You failed. I can't believe you! I was so sure you would win! You are the most talented tribute I've trained by far! AND THEN YOU GET HIT BY A FRICKEN ROCK!" Enobaria screams at me.

I recoil at the harshness of her tone. "It wasn't—"

"I don't wanna hear your crap, Clove. You should've been more careful." Then she stomps out of the room, slamming the door so hard that the tubes coming out of my arm shake. Dr. McDonald sighs. I close my eyes, wishing I could go back in time. I didn't want to let Enobaria down, and I definitely didn't want her to think that I was a failure.

After a minute, Dr. McDonald says he has to make sure everything is working correctly, because, well, I died. He has to make sure my spinal cord is in tact, so I have to bend over a bunch of times, and then I have to walk on my toes from one side of the room and back, and a bunch of other pointless stuff. He uses his hands a lot while he talks, and I can't help but notice he has pretty big hands.

After my tests are over, they move me out of the "Special Room" that I was in and into a regular one. There were two beds in here, separated by a thin blue curtain, but the other bed was empty. They tell me to stay in bed, but I ignore them and once they leave I get up and walk out of my room.

I wander the halls aimlessly, opening doors that I'm probably not supposed to open. I find myself in what looks like a kitchen a few minutes later. I'm not very hungry, so I just get one of the super-good capitol frappucinos. As I walk out the kitchen door, ready to continue my journey, I hear a familiar voice that almost makes me choke on my coffee. "Clove?"

I turn around and see who spoke my name. She looks the same; her light blond ringlets falling to her elbows, her big green eyes bright with curiosity.

"Glimmer?" I ask, smiling a little. Her face breaks into a grin, and then she runs forward and hugs me. I just stand there for a moment, but then hug her back.

"Oh, Clove! I can't believe it! Can you believe it? You're alive!" she exclaims, like we've been best friends forever. "We watched the rest of the Games here, you know! I woke up the day before the feast. When you died, Clove, I cried. I cried and cried, because I felt so bad for you, but then I realized they would probably bring you back to life, too!" She jumps once excitedly, her grin impossibly wide. "Oh, I'm so happy you're awake!" a wave of worry washes over her features, then. "Have you…have you seen Cato?" she asks quietly.

I frown. I kind of forgot about Cato. He obviously made it farther than me; but did he die? "No." I said, shaking my head. "Did he…die?"

Glimmer looks as if she's going to cry. "Yes. He made it all the way until the last three. Him, Katniss, and Peeta. And then they were on the cornucopia, and I thought he would win because he had Peeta kind of hostage, and then Katniss shot him and—"

"Wait." I say. "Katniss and Peeta made it to the end?" I hate them! District twelve never wins! It's useless! Glimmer nods. I can't believe Katniss shot Cato. That bastard. It's not like I was best buds with Cato or anything, but when you spend weeks in the Hunger Games together, you definitely bond. Suddenly, I want to see him. "So, what? Katniss killed him?"

Glimmer purses her lips, looking like she's trying not to cry. I sigh, wondering how she ever survived in the Games. But then I remembered—she didn't. Haha. Oh, well. "I…I'll see you later, Clove. I'm gonna go take a nap…I'm kind of tired. My room is on the sixth floor, if you need me…." she looked past me then, and I turned around to see Marvel. He gave me a crooked smile and a half-wave, and I narrowed my eyes at him, but then waved back. Marvel and I weren't exactly best friends in the arena. He took Glimmer's hand and they walked away.

Now I'm wondering. How did Cato die? Is he here? I feel like I want to look for him. I might as well. I decide to start on the floor that my "Special Room" was on. When I get up there, there's a door that needs the swipe of an access pass to open. Someone will come along with one of those sometime, right? I lean against the wall and wait. After a few minutes, a nurse comes up. She opens her mouth to say something, probably to tell me to get to bed, but I punch her with as much force as I can muster, which is enough because she falls to the ground, unconscious. Wonderous. I open a maintenance closet and sort of kick her into it. No one needs to know about this.

I slide her card through the thing and walk quietly through the empty, plain hallways. There are different sections, and the main hallway branches off. I follow the one that has a big red "2" on it, figuring this must mean District 2.

Sure enough, I see the room I was in, and a door identical to mine a few feet away. I go over to it and hesitate with my hand on the handle, but then I turn it and go in.

I almost throw up. Really. I don't know if it's because it's so horrible, or disturbing, or if I'm just shocked. Cato is lying on the hospital bed, and he's horribly scratched up. It looks as if they literally had to sew his body parts together, it's that bad. He has huge gashes all over, and one of his hands is missing. I cover my mouth with my hand. Since I woke up with no scars whatsoever, I'm guessing Cato still has a lot of time before he wakes up. I cross over to the room and lightly touch his hand. His eyes flutter open, and I jump back, shocked. I hadn't expected him to wake up.

He stares at me with a look of pure terror on his face. "Clove." He says shakily. I stare at him, and I can tell my expression looks a little scared, too. Then he groans. "Stop! It won't stop!"

I'm thinking twice about my decision to come in here. "W-what won't stop?"

"Make it stop, Clove!" he begs me, and then he reaches forward with the one hand he has left and grips my arm so tight it cuts off the circulation.

"Ow! Cato, let go!"

"Kill me! Please!" he cries. I'm so horrified I don't know what to do. I'm thinking I actually might kill him, because he sounds so miserable. "Now! Kill me!" I'm thinking he might not be mentally stable. Not yet. "Clove!" He keeps yelling my name now, and I'm trying desperately to shush him. But it doesn't work, and Dr. McDonald bursts through the door, followed by a few nurses.

"Get out of here." Dr. McDonald says, the kind tone of voice he used gone, all business. He rushes towards Cato's side, and they shoot something into him and he slowly falls back asleep. A nurse grips me by the arm and leads me back through the halls to my room. I casually drop the nurse's access card along the way.

The nurse shoves me into my room and slams the door shut. I sit down on my bed, defeated. I stare into space, not bothering to get rid of the horrified expression on my face, as I go through the terrible events that happened in the last few minutes. However Cato died, it must have been much worse than my death.

I don't even notice Enobaria in the chair in the corner until she speaks. "Where were you?" I don't even turn to her, but she walks over and grips my face so that I'm forced to look at her. "Where. The hell. Were you?" she asks me again.

I push her away. "Go away, Enobaria."

"Don't tell me to go away." She says. "Don't you ever listen, Clove?"

I think about how I left my room without permission, knocked out a nurse, and snuck into the intensive care floors. I shake my head. "No."

Enobaria sighs, but her expression softens a little bit. "You remind me of myself, when I was your age, Clove."

"Is that good?"

"Maybe." Enobaria says. "But I got into lots of trouble, too. Just…just watch what you do, Clove."

She's about to leave when I stop her. "Enobaria?"

"Yes?" she turns around.

"How…how did Cato die?"

Enobaria frowns, and looks almost sorry. "He…he was tough." She said tightly. "He stuck through it." I just look at her, waiting for her to continue. She sighs and sits on the bed beside mine, and explains to me how Cato died. I listen through the whole thing. He was chewed to smithereens, beaten to a pulp, tortured. From afternoon to morning, until Katniss finally shot him. That must've been what he was talking about.

When she's finished, she looks worried about me. "Clove? Are you okay?"

I nod numbly, even though I'm really not. Enobaria gets up and leaves then, leaving me alone.

What is going on?