Coma. Surgery. Bullets. Shattered bone.
She was pretty sure she was paralyzed, or at least her muscles weren't working. She felt the weight of the sheets on her, the sweat that built behind her neck, the thickness of the air. She heard mumbles; nonchalant statements of her condition since the surgery. She felt some pain in her shoulder blade from loose bone moving around. Her jaw stung if air touched it roughly when a nurse would walk by. She would sleep. She slept even while awake.
The doctors were wrong; she was not in a coma. No, she just had no strength. Her physical strength drained away that night. It was the night Angela and the others talked about. But Booth was not one of the talkers; he was the topic. It was as if they sat around her, thinking she could understand everything. They would deliberately speak to her, raising their volume and changing their tone, but it didn't matter. Sometimes she heard their whispers to each other and sometimes she heard what she was meant to hear. Apparently her ears didn't care about the meaning of things.
Temperance knew one thing; Booth was away. He was gone, but maybe she would see him soon. She felt sad sometimes when she thought of him, but she could never remember why. All she knew was that he was never one of the voices. But why? Why did he never visit, and why did they always talk about him?
If she really concentrated on remembering Booth, she felt warmth. Hot liquid pouring over her. She could hear a small grunt in the back of her mind. She felt weight upon her, especially in her arms, as if she were holding something heavy. Then there would be flashes of light, bursts of bright coloured lights would explode in her memory. Sirens would sound, and she would hear the words 'coma' and 'surgery'. Never once did she hear the word lucky.
Then one day she just stopped. She stopped hearing, feeling, remembering. It was as if she were being erased. One minute she was whole, then a piece was missing. Then another piece went missing, and then another and another, until she just stopped; Until she stopped being.