By the time we reached the hospital about ten minutes later, her skin had taken on a bluish hue. Frantically we tried to find someone, anyone to help us. It was fortunate that it was warm inside the hospital, as that prevented her body temperature from dropping any further. I held her, trying to warm her, as Collins ran to the desk, trying to get a doctor. It took about an additional ten minutes before someone arrived, which wasn't bad at all, considering how long we had waited in other instances. Which reminded me of another reason we had chosen to bring Maureen here ourselves-- the last time we had called for an ambulance, we had been on hold long enough for her to die and come back to life. Maureen would have been dead before anyone got to us, and I was certain we wouldn't have been that lucky again, considering that April's suicide had been successful.

When the doctors came, it was like a storm had hit. They took her out of my arms, putting her on a gurney, asking me all sorts of questions, some of which I couldn't answer, which caused me to curse myself for not seeing what type of pills she had taken, and additionally for not knowing what kinds of pills we had in the loft. There was a lot of medical babble going on between the doctors and nurses as we rushed along to an ER, Collins and I in tow, completely confused. One of the nurses told us that we couldn't go in with her, and actually stepped aside to tell us what was going on, which was a kindness that I had never experienced in a hospital. Usually nobody told me anything. I could tell Collins was taken aback by this as well, but clearly as grateful as I was, also.

"Her pupils are barely responsive and her pulse is faint. She has a pretty intense case of hypothermia, although they seem to be getting that under control, however there could be complications because of how underweight she is. They think that she must have taken sleeping pills or some other type of depressant drug, because of how developed her hypothermia is. Her temperature was 84 degrees when we first saw her, which is probably elevated already since you brought her in, but she'll need to get up to at lease 90 degrees or so to be fully out of the danger zone. They have to run a few tests, and probably pump her stomach to get any other pills out of her."

"Will she be okay?"

"We'll see." As I raised my eyes from my shoes to the nurse's face, my eyes caught on a glint of plastic from what I discovered to be an ID card. Angel. I couldn't make out the last name because of the glare, but I looked up to the sky and mouthed "thank you".

I was becoming more and more nervous with each passing second, unable to keep myself still, tears sporadically streaming down my face tempered by moments of calm. I didn't know what was going on with my emotions, but certainly had never behaved this way before, but I supposed that it was understandable considering that I cared for Maureen so much more than basically anyone else in the world, and had been with her longer than anyone else. I couldn't control myself as I paced nervously up and down a row of chairs in the waiting room with my erratic tears for what seemed like hours, though really it was only twenty minutes, until Collins grabbed my arm, saying that I was making him sea-sick and more worried than he already was. I went to the bathroom and threw up. After that, I felt oddly at ease—numb and detached. I fell asleep in an uncomfortable bucket seat. I felt my head drop onto Collins' shoulder, apparently much to his discomfort as he shrugged it off every time it fell there. One time my head fell to the other side, which caused my entire body to fall from the seat onto the floor. Collins chuckled, but his mind was preoccupied, the laughter partially subconscious, and partially forced.

"Mark Cohen?" I awoke to the sound of my name being called by a petite redhead, who reminded me of April, seeming to be her doppelganger from an alternate universe. A doctor.

"Yeah that's me." I stumbled up from the chair, Collins' head falling from my shoulder, causing him to awaken to a start. Ironic. The grogginess and stiffness from the uncomfortable nap I had taken were immediately replaced by the same nervousness as before.

"I come in peace. Your uh…"

"Friend?" I offered.

"Yeah. She's come out of the danger zone for hypothermia, and we have pumped her stomach. She's still chilled a bit. The condition was one of the worst I've seen around here. We think she has an eating disorder, and with it a tendency to purge by vomiting, which we could tell from the damage of her teeth and esophagus. She is about twenty pounds below what I would consider healthy for her body. Her body can't keep itself warm. Psychological evaluation will give us a little more insight into her mental condition. She should be all right in the sense that she will be alive and functioning as she was before. We'll need to keep her here for observation for at least a day, and we've hooked her up to a warm IV to keep her warmed up and hydrated. Early this evening, we'll insert a feeding tube through her nose into her stomach, and based on our assessment of her tomorrow, we'll see how we should proceed from there." Collins, who had joined me in standing and listening to the doctor, now joined the conversation.

"Is she awake?" The doctor nodded, and led us to the room that she had been put in, and I glanced at my watch. Visiting hours didn't start for another half and hour, and I knew it was unusual for the doctor to allow us in, but I got the feeling that she at least partially understood our relationship to her and the situation that we were in.

She looked so frail and fragile, more so even than before, which I hadn't at the time thought to be possible. Her bed was positioned at the far end of the room, past an empty bed and curtain divider, by the window. The doctor said that they wouldn't put anyone else in here if it could be avoided, but there were no single rooms available. She made it sound like a hotel, for heaven's sake, or a dormitory. Maureen was curled up tightly in the fetal position, and I could tell that she was crying again. Collins lightly pushed me towards her, encouraging me to go see her first, and sat on the unoccupied bed silently. I approached her bed cautiously, standing so that her back was towards me.

"Hey…" I sat down lightly beside her. I wasn't sure what to say, and my voice came out so softly that I wasn't sure that she had heard me until a small, cold hand found its way into my warm one. With a great deal of difficulty, she managed to turn to face me. I hadn't realized before that moment exactly how weak she had become. Her face was slick with tears, and she clung to me desperately, crying, not saying a word. I pushed myself a little farther onto the bed so that the two of us wouldn't fall off, and she curled up on top of me like a small child, pressing her face into my chest and wrapping her arms around me awkwardly. I wrapped my arms loosely around her, lightly rubbing her back and stroking her hair. "Shh…it's okay. You're okay."

"I'm sorry." Her voice was soft and shaky, and cracked when she spokethe two words that just a few months ago I would have least expected to come out of her mouth. I held her more tightly, my heart breaking at the evident pain and guilt that she felt weighing down on her, feeling as overprotective of her as I did, I hated to see her beating herself up.

"For what?"

"Everything." In that moment, in the way that she looked into my eyes, the raw emotion that she showed me, I knew that the Maureen that I had fallen in love with was forever changed; something within her was different. The regret and genuine sincerity that I sensed in this moment, mixed with her pain and shame from having been so selfish shone with an unimaginable beauty. It seemed as though she had hit her rock bottom and she knew, which caused an enormous wave of hopeful relief to wash over my body. Maybe she was (eventually) going to be okay after all…

Author's note:I'm not so sure how I feel about the end of this chapter. Overall it was kind of strange, I think, so I would really appreciate your critiques of this chapter, although I certainly always LOVE feedback...keep it coming, and I'll keep doing the best I can :)