Yay! Ch. 2 finally! I have been trying ever so diligently to work on this, ever since I posted ch. 1, but I may have been distracted by the airing of Episode 2 of this show. Hopefully Ch. 3 won't attack me with writer's block like this one did. Thanks for all the fantastic reviews and for reading! It thrills me beyond belief to open my email and see fifteen emails from all of which are either reviews or people adding this to their favorite stories to me to their favorite authors. You guys (and girls) are mindblowingly awesome.

Chapter Two

Alice's Point of View

I knew it would be rough for my brother when he woke up. Nothing I could have done could have prepared me for how rough it would be, though. I'd been sitting by him for four days, waiting for him to wake up.

The doctors had already given me the news about Auggie's sight. I still couldn't really wrap my mind around it. I halfway believed that when he woke up, he'd be just the same as usual, laugh at me for being so worried, give me that puzzled look with his keen brown eyes. I really couldn't believe that he'd never give me that look again. that thought started my crying again and I fell at his bedside asleep still trying to grasp the fact that my brother was now blind.

I was abruptly woken up by what I could only identify as a whimper. I was awake almost instantly, remembering how much pain Auggie would be in and how panicked he would be upon waking up unable to see. I opened my eyes to his hand reaching for my throat. I assumed my movements upon waking had triggered his Special Ops reflexes, but his inability to see, as well as his very bruised and bloodied body's inability to move as well as it should have, caused him to miss wildly, and fall out of the hospital bed.

God, he looked even worse conscious than he had before. Every bruise and every stitched up place stood contrasted sharply with his skin. His face was a bit of a mess. There were stitches everywhere and I knew there were about seventy more, hidden by his hospital gown on his upper body. His wide staring eyes, looking for things they would never see again, still haunt me.

"Auggie!" My own voice startled me. I'd kicked into big sister mode without noticing, and my voice sounded commanding, and hopefully familiar. I hated the thought of my little brother waking up in a strange place, unable to see, and not knowing who was near him. I knew that he must be near panic, especially if he hadn't known my voice.

Sure enough, he was trying to move away from me, trying and failing to rise to his feet.

"Auggie!" I said again, trying to get him to listen to my voice and recognize me. I had to get him calmed down before he hurt himself.

"Stop it now and calm down!" I was trying to calm myself down as well. It terrified me how much fear I could see in his every movement. I reached for him silently, not knowing if he wanted my help or not. "It's ok. I'm here."

"Alice?" He finally recognized me. The relief in his voice was audible. "What're you-How- Where am I?" his questions fought with each other to get asked first. "Why are the lights off?"

The question I most dreaded.

"Auggie, you-"

He cut me off again. "Where am I? What's going on?" his desperation made my tears start up all over again.

"Auggie, you were in an accident. The explosion-" He was getting up, heading towards to door. Presumably he wanted to find somebody who would tell him what was happening, and had heard the people outside the door. He'd pulled the IVs out of his arms by going too far away from their stands, I saw. Blood dripped down his arm from where the needles had been. I grabbed for him, but he pushed away my hands.

Auggie stopped when he reached the light switch, positioned to the side of the door. He flipped it down. The lights went off. He flipped it up. The lights came back on. Not that he would know. He'd have seen no difference in his newly permanent darkness.

"Are the lights out?" He asked. There was very audible pleading in his voice. He knew, in the back of his mind, what happened to him. But he couldn't grasp it yet.

He finally let me reach out to him and so I took both his hands. "Auggie, you were in an accident. The explosion, and-and the schrapnel, and-" My voice broke.

"No." It was a statement, a simple denial that held all his hopes in it, "No, no, no."

I finally steadied myself enough to say those hateful words.

"Auggie, you're blind."

"No, no, I can't be-this- this can't be happening- I'm not- Oh, God." He fell then, and I fell right with him, and held him as he sobbed onto my shoulder, just like he had when we were children, and he'd scraped his knee. Only this wasn't a scraped knee and neither I nor our mother could fix it with a Band-Aid and a kiss.

A nurse eventually showed up and, giving me a dirty look (for allowing him to make this much of a mess of himself, I was sure), put my little brother firmly back into his hospital bed. He cried for a while longer, not caring who saw him, I guess, because he could no longer see them. I held his hand until a different nurse appeared and sedated him. His condition was still too poor for them to allow him to get as worked up as he was. And I was left alone, with no one else to hear the sound of my own crying.