I feel cold, and lonely, I feel isolated. I open my eyes and I feel so strange. I'm not in my room, I look to my left and see Kara sitting in her bed, I'm in Charlie's bed.
"Kara?" She does a double take at me.
"Oh my god you're awake!" She jumps out of her bed and runs to the door to yell to the entire floor. "She's awake!" She runs back to me.
"Is Charlie dead?" I well up a little.
"No he woke up and went home, it took a few weeks but-"
"Weeks? I've been in a coma, again, for weeks? How long exactly?" No wonder I don't remember seeing him in my dreams.
"Like 3 weeks? I don't know." Suddenly a cluster of people run in. Nurse Jackson, Brittany, Kenji, my dad, Emma, Jordi, Dash and Leo.
"Give her space." Nurse J says. I immediatley burst into tears when I see Leo. He tries to come to my side but Britt and Kenji hold him back, he has tears in his eyes too. "I'm serious everyone out." They push everyone out, close the door and the blind. "You too Kara."
"But this is my-"
"Now Kara." She stomps out in a huff.
"You're okay sweetie." My dad takes my hand and kisses my head.
"What happened?" I ask as Nurse J checks my vitals.
"You sort of passed out a few weeks ago, and we knew we had to get you to surgery as soon as we could, but we didn't have a kidney, so we put you in a medically induced coma, and luckily we found you a kidney last week. It just took you a lot longer than we hoped for you to wake up."
"I'm not gonna die?"
"No honey you're not gonna die!" He hugs me and rocks me as I cry what have become tears of joy. I've never felt happier in my life, until I realise that this means I'll be going home soon, and I still don't know where home is. "Do you want me to get Leo?" I suddenly remember the last time I saw my dad and Leo was when he walked in and we were in bed, I go a little awkward.
"Uh, yeah." He kisses my head again and heads out of the room, Britt and Kenji leave too.
"How are you feeling?" Nurse Jackson says.
"I don't really know." She just kind of looks at me, then Leo comes in and stares at me.
"I'll leave you to it." She walks out and Leo closes the door behind her, but one second later, dad comes in opens it.
"Keep it open please." I go bright red.
"I missed you." He says as he comes to my side and kisses me, hard.
"I missed you too, even though to me I only saw you yesterday. I heard you talking to me. Thank you." I adjust my bed so I'm sitting upright and move over to let Leo sit next to me.
"Are you okay?" He asks.
"I feel okay physically."
"But mentally?" He holds my hand.
"Not so good, I'm terrified, I'm gonna be out of here soon. I don't know what's going to happen, what if Gary wants to take Sammy? Oh my God, where's Sam?" I look up at him and he doesn't say anything. "He's with him isn't he?" Leo nods. I get a little emotional again. "I mean, he's a good man, but I want to be with my brother, but I also wanna be with my dad, and of course you."
"It'll all work out, it has so far."
"Wait, what date is it?"
"Uh, July 27th I think. Why?"
"I missed my own 17th birthday!" I can't help but laugh. "It was yesterday."
"What? Seriously? That's not okay, we need to have a party." I can see he's already started thinking of ways to get booze.
"Um, small problem, I'm probably going to bed ridden for the next 48 hours again." He shakes his head at me.
"No, that's not an acceptable answer, we'll carry you in up to the roof in your bed it that's what it comes to, it's probably best if you don't drink though." We laugh together.
"What's a party without alcohol?"
"Well there's other ways we can have fun, there's this guy Ruben on the top floor who can get us weed, have you ever smoked before?"
"No, and I don't plan on it, but I would kind of like to see what it's like to be high."
"Well, you can eat it, okay wait here I'll get it all planned, leave it to me." He kisses me and bolts out of the room before I can get a word in. My crazy boyfriend. I look to my right and see my old wheelchair is next to my bed, I reach over and pull it to the side of the bed, I do my best to scoot over to sit in it, I almost fall but I manage to catch myself. I take the blanket from my bed and wrap it around me. I hook my IV drip on to the chair and start rollin'. I take myself to my old room, the lights are turned off but I can see that someone's moved in there. I wonder who it is. I know Leo's probably rounded up the red bands so they're all busy, so I go to the Nurses station to talk to Brittany.
"Hey Britt."
"Hey Alice! You should really be in bed." She doesn't say it as if she's gonna make me go back so I stay.
"I was just bored, what are you doing?"
"I'm just jazzing up the new girls file, oh, I guess you haven't met her yet, her name's Jamie, she's a really sweet girl but she's kind of quiet." She sticks sparkly stickers on the file.
"Oh so she's the girl who moved into my old room, I went by just to see what it looked like but she's not in there."
"She's not?" I shake my head. Britt rushes to the phone. "Security, we have an emergency, Jamie's gone, again." She hangs up. "Nurse Jackson!" She shouts down the hall, she pops her head out of someone's room. "She's gone again." Nurse J runs down the hall to us.
"You were supposed to be on look out for her." She runs around frantically searching all the rooms on our floor.
"I'm sorry, she must have made a break for it when Alice woke up." Dash runs out of the elevator.
"Jamie's on the roof again!" He yells. We all rush to the elevator and go up to the roof. Dash helps me up the stais, even though I feel pretty fine. We get outside to see a girl in a hospital gown standing on the ledge. Jordi, Emma and Kara are standing a few feet back from her, and Leo is a little closer.
"Jamie, it's okay, it's Nurse Jackson."
"It's not okay. It never will be." She's crying, I think back to the time I was on the edge of that cliff, I didn't have anyone trying to stop me, let alone all these people.
"Just come back, you don't have to do this, there's better ways to deal with this." Leo says.
"What do you know? You haven't been through what I have." She takes a small step forward and everyone flinches. I get closer to her.
"Jamie?" I say. She looks back at me.
"Coma girl?"
"You will be okay, I promise. I've been in your position before."
"You have?"
"I was the one stood on a ledge, but I didn't have anyone who cared enough to help me, until I came to Ocean Park. This place is incredible." I hold Leo's hand.
"Give me one reason I shouldn't end it all right now."
"Look, look at all of these people trying to help," she looks at everyone, "You don't have to do this. It takes time, and it's difficult, but you can get better. I did it, and that was because of these people. They helped me see the light, and we'll all do that for you." She looks down. "I promise, and I don't make empty promises." She looks back at me.
"Okay." She turns around and carefully climbs down. Nurse Jackson comes closer to her, she reaches her hand out to Jamie, and she hesitantly takes it. "Thank you." She says turning back to look at me as Nurse J walks her back inside. Brittany follows.
"Good job." Emma says.
"I don't know her at all, but I know what it's like to be there, it's pretty easy when you just have to say what you wanted to hear." Leo puts his arm around me. "I don't think it's a good idea to have a party tonight, let's do it later in the week." He nods and we all go downstairs and sit in Leo's room. There's a really dark atomsphere going on, it's different hearing about suicide attempts than to actually watch someone spiral out of control. Even Kara is sitting there in silence.
"I wonder how she's doing. One of us should go talk to her." Jordi says. Everyone turns to me.
"Don't look at me, I don't even know her."
"Yeah but you know what she's going through, you're the only that can really understand how she's feeling." Emma says.
"I guess." I look at Leo. "Okay, I'll go talk to her." I get up and make my way to my old room.
She's lying in bed looking really down, Britt is at her bedside reading a book.
"Hey." I say from the doorway.
"Hi. Thanks again for earlier. I didn't catch your name." I walk over to her.
"It's Alice, and it's okay, I did what anyone would do."
"But not just anyone would know what to say, it really means a lot that you shared that with me." She gives me a small smile, I smile back.
"I want you to know that you can talk to me whenever you need to, any of us, we're your friends."
"Thank you." She smiles again. I look down and notice she has scars on her arms, just as many as I do.
"Snap." I hold my arm up to her. "Seriously though, I'm here for you." I shake her hand and go back to Leo and Jordi's room.
