Thanks to the lovely QueenDiannaAgron for being my beta-reader :)


The first thing, that was some sort of whirring. A dead, monotonous sound. It didn't have a lively rhythm at all. Disappointing. Most unpleasant in her ears and body. Still plunged in darkness, Brittany clung to this mechanical buzzing despite it all. There was nothing else to hold onto anyway. She felt the room – was it a room she was in? - spin on its axis. Everything was in rotation around her. No stopping, no way to get off the carousel just whisking her away. 'Round and 'round she went. Something told her she needed more. Something more concrete to hold onto before she'd be thrown out of the spinning ride, and where would that leave her? 'Round, and around again.

As she opened her eyes, everything was too bright but blurry – the kind of brightness that sends daggers through your eyes directly aimed at your brain. Do brains hurt? Can they? Hers did. Too much. Too painful. Eyes closed again, leaving behind a sticky feeling on her lids. She felt trails of wetness on her cheeks.

Trying to stay conscious, she focused on what exactly she was hearing next. Not too easy. She was so tired. Maybe sleep would... No. Sleep would be darkness again. No darkness, better to stay with the sounds. A high pitched ringing, some beeping. Sometimes, a high pitched alarm sound. That one hurt a lot, too. After a little while, she realized there was a pattern to the sounds. Rhythmical beeping, alarms every twenty beeps or so. The ringing, that one was background noise and always there. It seemed closer, too. It was inside her head.

Slowly, carefully, she opened her eyes again. She had to blink a dozen times before the blurriness got any better. It felt like rubbing sandpaper over the eyes. They felt twice their size as well. Squinting, the first thing she saw were some sorts of tiles overhead. The pattern was oddly comforting, and regular. The rectangles were organized. Pretty. Fluorescent lamps – not so pretty, way too strong to be allowed to be shining down on her. Where was she? She tried to raise herself up but couldn't. Why couldn't she?

Turning her head proved futile as well. It was as if her neck was fused to the surface she was on. Had she been glued to the ground? It was soft, that at least she could make out. A pillow? Trying to find a reason why she'd be on a pillow, she came up short and decided to spare herself the hassle. Thinking was too much work. If she couldn't move her head, what about her hands? Could she move those?

She tried, and she felt her own fingers twitch, but it wasn't exactly the kind of movement she'd wanted to make. Something was so, so wrong. What happened? A thousand thoughts flitted through her mind but she was struggling to keep hold onto any of them. It was just flashes going by, or maybe those came with the beeping? She didn't know anymore.

Again, she forced herself to remember how she got where she was but it all ended in a huge sense nothingness. She had no recollection whatsoever, of anything. "Where am I?" she decided to ask into the void around her. She was surrounded by bright light and sounds only, but maybe there were people. Maybe she wasn't all alone. Hopefully, please. The sound she made was foreign even to her own ears and when she tried to speak, she felt like it wasn't her mouth that moved. Her mouth was different. It usually worked better than whatever this was. What she did feel was pain, and what she heard was a grunting noise. Barely an exhale, really. Could have gone better, that one.

Some sort of scraping. Metal scratching over a surface - the floor, perhaps. It felt like something was scratching at the her ears, deep inside, as if Lord Tubbington had found a way to set his claws into her ear canal. She felt something shift within them, like a pull to her eardrum, making it taut and tense. It set her on edge.

"Oh my god! Brittany? Britt? Are you awake?" If she could, she would have startled at the unexpected voice. It was difficult making out the words and assigning meaning to them. It was all too much. Step back. Think. The voice, first. A person talking.

She knew that voice. It was the voice that filled her dreams and days. It was the voice that filled her heart. Was she awake? That had been the question directed to her. Probably, she decided. She wanted to tell her that yes, she was awake, but only more gasping resulted.

Suddenly, brown eyes were in front of her and had mercy on her. The fluorescent lamps, eclipsed by a familiar face. A delicate, gorgeous face. Most of all, familiar – making it even more beautiful to Brittany. Lush, dark curls. The eyes were her chocolate eyes. Melted delicious sweetness, unadulterated love. There were bags underneath, though. Not important. For the first time since Brittany woke up, she felt somewhat at ease. The pain was still hammering away in her head, and she was still unable to form more than one coherent thought at a time, but that didn't matter, either. She was not alone.

She'd have cried, if she could have. She'd have grabbed the girl and hugged her. She wanted to feel her close to her, so damn much, but she was also so very exhausted. It was as if her energy had been sapped by the few attempts at moving she'd undertaken. She focused her eyes on the girl – Santana - slowly and deliberately. Her eyes still were covered by frosted glass or some other stuff. It was more blurry than usual, definitely. There was something she was supposed to do, supposed to say. It was so hard to remember, to think.

"Britt, it's me. Santana. I'm here, okay? Don't be afraid, I am here," the girl above her said in a pleading tone. Brittany was confused. Why would she be afraid? She wasn't much anything, to be frank. She couldn't remember how she got there. What was she supposed to feel? She willed herself to blink, slowly, at Santana. Wetness spilled from the corners of her eyes, and it burned so badly that she had to temporarily close them again. When she gazed back at Santana, she saw how the girl was frowning at her, the space above her nose scrunched in worry.

"Santana," she tried to speak, again, but the only thing she managed to get out was a groan. Beyond frustrating, that's what it was. Confusing, also. She knew the words, the name. It was a really beautiful name, too. It shouldn't be this hard to just say it, should it?

In response, Santana's eyes welled up with tears. Tears she didn't seem to allow herself to shed. A hand came into view, and she felt it a second later on her cheek, softly caressing her. It was warm but unpleasant. The pressure on her cheek made her feel like her face had shifted out of place. Brittany had to clench her eyes shut at the sharp electricity that coursed through her skull at the contact. Something was very wrong with her face but she couldn't quite fathom what it was. A painful whimper escaped through her lips.

Santana panicked and instantly removed her hand. She stuttered, "Are you alright? I, I- I should go get the doctor."

Please don't go, please don't go. Brittany forced herself to open her eyes again as she felt them fill with stinging liquid. Hoping that Santana would understand her silent pleas.

She never found out if her internal begging was heard as soon, darkness engulfed her again, and she fell into a deep sleep.


The next time she woke, everything around her was the same. Same whirring noises, same lights shining down on her. Same antiseptic smell, and the faint tinge of new plastic. So that hadn't been a dream, apparently.

That meant – Santana, she hadn't been a dream either! Brittany tried to look around her in search of the dark-haired girl. Unlike last time, she didn't have as hard a time moving her head, making the task a little bit easier to accomplish. There was someone sitting in a chair by the side of her bed. She was in a bed, and everything looked like a hospital room.

Hospital, then. That's where she was. Why she was there, she couldn't say. Maybe she'd fallen during some Cheerio routine? She just hoped she hadn't stumbled over Tubbs again. The last time, she'd gotten an ugly gash all across her forearm.

Looking down at herself, she saw that her arms were bandaged and there was some sort of tube sticking out. It didn't make any sense. Nothing did. Glancing back to the figure in the chair, she recognised the close-cropped dirty blonde hair. Her dad!

She moved her hand, trying to reach out to him. "Brittany! Honey, you're awake! How are you feeling?" he asked when he noticed her moving.

She didn't really have an answer to his question – her head was about to spill over from the amount of questions she had, after all. "Mhm..." she mumbled. Speaking was also strangely difficult and she didn't quite know how to make the sounds she wanted. Frustrated, she decided to forego speaking and just shook her head.

"Oh, sweetie. Can you hear me?" he asked tentatively. She nodded, slowly. Sudden movements sent a sharp pain through her head, so she tried to avoid that as best as she could.

"Good, great. You are doing great, my dear. I'll, uh- I'll just go get the doctor and your mom, alright? Try and stay awake, I'll be right back!"

She did as she was told, and soon enough, she saw a middle-aged man in a white coat along with her parents. It put her at ease, knowing both of them were there.

"Hello, my name is Dr. Campbell, and I'd like to do some tests and ask you some questions. Just try your best, okay? There's no rush, and there's no pressure," the doctor said. His voice was kind and he immediately seemed trustworthy to Brittany. She nodded.

She did her best – she really did - but if you asked her what the doctor had asked her about a couple of hours later, she wouldn't be able to tell you. She hadn't said a single word, either.


"You were in a car accident, Brittany."

The next few hours – or was it days? Flew by in a flurry, and she couldn't quite figure out how to keep a grasp of things.

"You were in a very serious condition when you were brought to the hospital. You had to be intubated on scene."

Every day, there was a barrage of tests, every day, she felt like she'd just failed. She felt like everything was just passing her by and it was the most confusing situation she'd ever experienced.

"The impact caused your skull to fracture and you suffered severe head trauma which caused a traumatic brain bleed. We had to operate to relieve the pressure on the brain. The symptoms you're experiencing are normal, and you have been showing some remarkable progress, Brittany."

People came in, people left again. Nurses, doctors. Her parents. Santana.

"You were placed in an artificial coma after your surgery, and you were in a coma for 11 days."

She'd met what they called a speech therapist, and another was a physiotherapist and then some more, all kinds of things that ended on -therapist, but she was still merely passing the time until she could get out of the hospital. Every day left her more exhausted than the last. She'd never been in so much pain in all her life. Her head still hurt, her chest hurt. Her first attempts at moving her body had been excruciating.

"You suffered from severe trauma to the chest as well. You sustained several broken ribs, and you were bleeding internally. Your lung collapsed. That's why you had a lot of difficulty breathing. We had to place a chest tube to help drain the blood."

She managed to retain some scraps of the conversations, but it was hard to derive any meaning from it. What she remembered most was the faces. Her mother's expression when she tried not to cry. There were quite a few times she didn't succeed. The pained smile her father wore these days. He was always smiling at her, praising her for every little thing.

"It's difficult to estimate the recovery process, as it's very variable development. It's important to give it time. We expect you to make some substantial progress over the next six months. It's usually when most of the recovery happens. We will be able to evaluate the extent of the damage better by then."

Santana's eyes. Almost always glassy, almost always watching her intensely. As if Brittany would disappear into thin air the moment she looked away.


After a couple of days, a week, then two, almost three: she had made a lot of progress. Her speech therapist was exceedingly happy with her performance. She was forming sentences and she was getting better and better at voicing out the words.


In other ways, she'd made no progress at all.


"Please, turn it off. Turn it off!" she begged. Santana was looking around in a panic, not knowing how to act or what to say. Brittany was clawing at the barely healed sutures on her head and she was afraid she'd manage to tear them back apart with the force of her scratching.

"Do you want me to get a nurse? Or a doctor?" she asked helplessly.

Brittany didn't answer and just started rocking on the bed, her hands on both temples, as if she were trying to hold her skull together. Maybe, in a way, she was. The buzzing, there had to be a way to get it out of her.

"Please, turn it off," she sobbed miserably. It was heart-breaking to see and Santana's eyes were also shining with tears – albeit hers remained unshed.


At three weeks, her physiotherapist had her shuffling up to the nurse's station with a walker, looking at her with pride. She had graduated from the wheelchair the week before. They all agreed, she was rocking this recovery!

At least, that's what everyone told her. She still needed help with the most basic things. Combing her hair on her own had proven an impossibility. The first time she'd seen herself in the mirror, she had cried. They'd shaven away the hair to operate on her brain, and a huge line of stitches had adorned the top of her head.

She couldn't really remember how to tie her shoelaces.

When asked if her friends could visit her, she'd said no. She didn't want anyone to see her like that. She didn't want any visitors, apart from her mom, her dad – and Santana.


Her parents were there, as well as a doctor. They were talking about possible rehab facilities for her. It was a good plan, having her in some in-patient rehab hospital, they agreed.

She didn't really care anymore. Every day was just another one she existed – another one to cross off the list. It had been weeks of meaningless days turning into even worse nights. Nights reminded her of the nothingness. It was all so tiring.

Once there was a lull in the conversation, she cleared her throat. It was only then that the other three people in the room seemed to realize she was still right there, sitting on the bed, looking quite lost in her now over-sized sweatpants and shirt. She'd lost quite a bit of weight over the past weeks. Just another thing she lost. She just kept losing.

"Where's Santana?" she finally asked the question she'd wanted to ask since the doctor came in.

It was her mother who replied, "Santana's at school, sweetie."

This made Brittany quite sad. She had expected to be able to see her best friend and talk to her. She could remember seeing her before, so why did she leave? "But- she was just here, like, an hour ago? We went to the cafeteria," she said, confused.

Her mother let out a little nervous laugh and scratched her neck, her gaze burning into Brittany.

"Brittany, she was here yesterday. But, don't worry, alright? I am sure she will come by later today. She visits every day," her father told her in what was supposed to be a soothing voice. It sounded pressed. Forced out.

Brittany nodded. That would work. As long as Santana visited, she'd be happy. She really missed her. Where had she gone, anyway? She decided to find out: "Where is Santana then? If she's not here, dad?"

She noticed how her mother and father exchanged a look, but she couldn't read it. They both looked quite worried, and her mother had her brows furrowed. It's become such a familiar sight, them being all frowny and wrinkly and it didn't feel very nice, to be looked at like that. It was getting old pretty quickly. With a small cough, Pierce Pierce cleared his throat. "At school, sweetie," he said.

Brittany blinked slowly. "Oh, okay."