I realize that I am awake at the same time as I realize that someone is looking at me. I also realize that I am sitting in a puddle, and look down. The water is brown and muddy. I look up at the person looking at me and see not one, but two pairs of eyes watching me. A grown man that I hate and a boy my age, maybe 17, that I have the deepest dislike for. I don't recognize them. I don't think I have ever seen them before, but those feelings for them are there anyway. Utter dislike at first glance. The boy looks surprised to see me sitting Indian-style in a mud puddle, but the man has a stony face, betraying no emotion. I scowl at them. I know they don't like me either.

'What are you staring at?' I spurt at them, my face turning hot from dislike, rather than embarrassment. Although that had some say in it as well. 'Never seen… anyone sitting in a puddle before?'

I look down. I feel the oddest malaise going through my whole body before it decides to settle in my stomach to stay. I hardly notice the boy answer my question laughing, before the pair hurries off, because I am too focused on the reason why I had hesitated.

I don't know whether I am a girl or a boy.

I don't dare tap my chest until the two are gone. My puddle is by a country road leading to a town. There are more people coming so I quickly raise my hands to my flat chest, and I am a little surprised to find nothing there. I'm a boy. Why is that surprising? Don't I want to be a boy? Or am I simply more used to grab a females' bust rather than a man's? A female. A girl. Woman? How old am I?

I feel physical pain; this is too much. I sway and see dark spots floating around. I am on my hands and knees now and decide it would be a good thing to crawl out of the puddle and sit down somewhere dry. I don't care that the grass is wet from rain, it's better than the puddle.

The people I had seen are coming up to me now, giving me weird glances. Please go away.

'Are you all right?' asks a concerned woman in her fifties.

I raise my hand and try to regain my breath. I give her and her friend a wave saying 'I'm fine, don't you worry about me, just go on about your stroll.' She doesn't buy it.

'Are you all right?' she asks again, putting emphasis on the 'all right' part.

I nod my head and look up at them. Sitting down I take a deep breath, closing my eyes for a second.

'I'm fine,' I lie, 'I just had an asthma attack. Don't worry.'

My voice sounds rough. I haven't used it for a while. I hope that's what asthma sounds like.

'You sure?'

I nod my head and begin to stand up.

'Don't worry. I'm ok now.'

The ladies still seem concerned, but they leave me anyway. With one last glance back, to make sure that I am really all right, they go on with their business, heading out and away from the town. I decide to go the other way.

Again the fear and malaise seizes me and grabs my stomach. Where am I? Who am I? I look down at my clothes. Very distinguished. Blue-jeans and a white T-shirt. There is a sign on one side of the shirt. Some letters around a cross, I think. I pull at the shirt to stretch it out and try to read the blue letters. St. Thomas's Hospital it says. Oh-kay. Why St. Thomas's?