Chapter 7 - I Must Be Dreaming

Greg awoke to dead silence. Silence in his room, silence in the halls, the entire hospital was silent. It was almost as if he was the only one there.

His finger pressed down on his call button, but after waiting 10 minutes he realized that no one was coming.

Curiosity over took him and he rose from the hospital bed, slowly making his way over to the door. He peered his head outside to get a glimpse of the hallway, but he saw nothing. No nurses, no patients... nothing. One slow step at a time he made his way into the hallway. The floor was ice cold on his bare feet.

The walls in the hallway were painted a paleghost white, the floor was tiled in the same shade and the ceiling as well. The lighting in the hallway was dim and gave everything a slightly yellowish tint. Off in the distance, at the far end of the hallway he saw something. It was a light glowing withthe mostvibrant shade of white.

He felt drawn to the light, the rays that it gave off were warm and Greg wanted more than anything just to walk into it. Putting one foot in front of the other, he made his way closer and closer to the source of the light. The closer he got, the warmer he felt. The warmer he felt the more he wanted to get closer.

He started to hear quiet murmurs, coming from the direction of the light. As he got closer the murmurs got clearer and it sounded like a bunch of people having a large conversation filled with laughter and happiness.

Just as he thought he was about to reach the source of the light, something stopped him. A large glass wall. On the other side of the wall he saw the lab, and everyone was seated around a large table smiling and laughing. Their conversation was somewhat muted, but he could pick out bits and pieces.

"I'm sure glad that Greg is gone. His childish antics were so annoying," Grissom said with a huge smile on his face.

The rest of them laughed until Ecklie came into the room.

"Guess what I have," he announced with an unusual cheery voice as he held up a large piece of slate, "I got Greg's tombstone today!"

Everyone roared with laughter.

"No... this can't be happening... I'm not... I can't be..." Greg said out loud to himself.

He began tapping on the glass. "Hey! Can you hear me? I'm not dead! You guys!"

His friends didn't see or hear him, and continued laughing.

"Hey look everyone! I bought a mini-skirt!" Sara smiled as she got up to show everyone.

Greg slumped down onto the floor. He turned around and saw that there was something heading in his direction. Inch by inch, the hallway was becoming engulfed in a cold blackness. Inch by inch, it was getting closer to him.

"You guys! Please! You have to hear me! Please help!" Greg grew frantic as the blackness came closer.

He began pounding his fists onto the glass, hoping that he would knock it down, but it didn't budge.

Suddenly, he felt a tickle rising in his throat.

No... not now... he thought.

Soon enough, the tickle grew into a full on coughing attack. He tried to continue hitting the wall in an attempt to break it, but his coughing made it that much harder.

He felt a pain deep inside of him as he continued to cough, clutching his chest. The sounds of his coughing echoed through the hall. The cold blackness drew near.

More than anything he wanted to scream, but his coughing made that impossible. The more he tried to stop, the more he coughed. After moments of this torture, Greg decided that he just didn't have the strength to fight anymore. He looked up and saw that the darkness was just inches away from him. It felt as if icy hands were just waiting to snatch him into the cold unknown.

Greg closed his eyes as a scream finally escaped him.

"Mr. Sanders! Mr. Sanders, wake up! You're having a bad dream," a nurse who was in the room with him said. Greg opened his eyes to see that he was in his hospital room again, only this time he wasn't alone and it wasn't silent. He let out a sigh of relief.

It was just a dream... just a horrible, terrifying dream...

-------------------------------

"His body is starting to resist the medication..." the doctor explained to Grissom.

Grissom had come in to get an update on Greg for the rest of the lab, since Ecklie had told them that they all couldn't go in at once when they had to work.

"Well, what are you going to do?" Grissom asked.

"We'll have to ease him onto another type of medication, and just hope that his body doesn't resist that as well."

"And if his body does resist to it?" Grissom was almost too afraid to ask.

The doctor sighed. "He won't get better."

Grissom felt a lump forming in his throat. He still felt guilty that Greg was the one in that hospital bed and not him. Either of them could have picked up that tissue, and Grissom wanted more than anything to turn back the clock to change it so that Greg never would have gone near it.

He nodded as the doctor walked away.