Opening my eyes feels like lifting a ton of bricks. The pain is sharp, but dull and all consuming. I try to feel around for my body and take inventory: feet, pain, legs, pain, arms, pain, hands, cold. I try to move my neck to look down, but it feels frozen, like the connection between my mind and body has somehow been lost. Even moving my eyeballs around hurts, but I’m determined to address my current situation.
     The walls are white, almost luminescent because of the light shining in from the open windows on the left side of the room. The windows tower from the floor to the ceiling, and are covered with white drapes so sheer that they seem like vestigial parts. I try to look as far as I can outside of the windows, but can’t see much other than the light and tops of trees, slowly being pulled back and forth by the soft wind. At the base and the top of the windows is cheap crown molding desperately in need of maintenance. My eyes key in on one crack in particular, that runs through the molding all the way to the center of the ceiling. The crack is thin, but feels dire, like in a seconds notice, the crack will expand and the walls will collapse. In the middle of the ceiling, at the top end of the crack, is a small painting of a bouquet of daisies. It’s basic, like an art piece done by a young child. The petals are yellow, bright, and warm, and the stem is long and a dark green color, but the center where the petals stem from is black. The darkness in the center seems to detract from the beauty of the painting. It makes me wish reality could be forgotten and the painter could have pretended the centers of daisies aren’t black.
     Directly in front of me is a small television set, playing some mindless reality television show that I have a faint memory of having seen before. The room has a sterile, sharp smell. My head pounds. The light of the room shines in and out, with streams of color, then darkness. I feel a lump in my throat, like there’s something that desperately needs to come out but is being forced back inside. A distinct monotone beeping noise echoes in my ears in perfect synchronization. The beep seems to play every few seconds, but it lingers in my ears endlessly. I look down at my body as much as I can without moving my neck. Feet, still there. Legs, there as well. Arms, pale as ever. Left arm, accounted for. Right arm, tethered to the sides of the bed by cold, steel handcuffs. Suddenly, my vision begins to become increasingly spotty, then completely dark, as the beeping sound lulls into silence.
     “Charlie?” I hear a voice meekly ask in a high tone that startles me enough to wake me up. I’m assuming that name is mine by the way it’s said, like it’s in my possession, but it doesn’t feel familiar.
     The beeping I heard before returns, but this time sounds softer. I use all of my limited energy to lift my eyelids once again. My vision takes a while to return. I can feel that my eyes are open by the increasingly dry, burning feeling in them, but can see nothing but darkness, then specks of light, and then a blurry picture.
     I look directly to my right to find who the inquiring voice is. It’s a woman. She looks frail and small, definitely not measuring more than 5 feet tall. She has curly, blonde hair that’s clipped back into a slick bun on the top of her head. Her eyes have dark circles that look as though they extend from her eye sockets all the way down her face. She notices that I’m watching her, then wraps her arms around herself, as if to protect her from my sight. She’s wearing light blue scrubs with a faint pattern of flowers covering her top. Her outfit fits loosely on her petite frame. She has on old, worn down sneakers that have small holes in the toe area.
     “Do you know where you are?” she asks as she tries to avert my gaze. I can tell that she’s struggling to choose the right words by how she hesitates before spitting out each syllable.
     My mind wanders back to the big windows, the cracked ceiling, and the daisies. Each one of my senses is overwhelming. Too overwhelming, in fact, to take note of them. I think about shaking my head no, but the action seems like it would be much too difficult. I let my mouth fall open and try to let out any type of sound.
     “Nnnnnnn,” I manage to croak out, as the woman’s eyes begin to widen with obvious astonishment. Her eyes are green. Not a bright, vibrant green like the trees outside the room, but a green that’s more muted, like the stems of the daisies painted on the ceiling. It’s not too noteworthy, but it’s comforting, familiar even.
     Her eyes shut as she begins to run out of the room, her short legs scurrying on the tile floor, until she disappears out the half open door. I still can hear her tennis shoes make a squeaking noise when she exits, that sounds further and further away, and then closer and closer. I can tell more people are coming with her by the volume of shoes squeaking on the ground.
     The woman enters the room first, looking down at the ground while still crossing her arms delicately across her body. Next, a tall man comes in wearing dark blue scrubs. I assume he’s a doctor by his confident demeanor and greying hair. People in positions of power always seem to age faster than the rest of us. The last person to enter is a police officer, with a completely flat face, staring at me intently. He doesn’t infiltrate the room fully, but rather stands in the corner watching me like a hawk watches over its prey. The doctor walks over near my bed, while the woman remains at a distance.
     “My name is Doctor Scott Thompson,” he says matter-of-factly, as if I should have known that already.
     He stops talking for a second as he looks over at the small woman, still fixated on the ground.
     “This is Nurse Emily, she’s been taking care of you over the last few months.”
     I feel a twinge in my stomach as he says the word months. I haven’t even had the chance to think about time. It feels like a concept that’s very far away from this small room. Still, the way he says “months” makes it sound like a death sentence. The woman, or nurse, I guess, looks up at the doctor with grateful eyes, while the sides of her mouth droop down.
     His mouth opens as he confidently continues speaking, “You’re at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. You’ve been in a coma for the last three months. You were shot in the back of the neck at a slightly vertical angle, at the exact right spot as to not kill you. We will facilitate your care until you are able to leave the facility, but after that, you will be put into police custody. Officer Erikson here,” he points to the man in the corner, who nods his head slightly downwards before returning to his original position, “will need to question you as soon as you are physically able to respond.”
     As he talks, my mind races through the possibilities. Shot in the back of the neck? I think about a movie I faintly remember watching, where after a long chase, the good guy gets shot by the villain, but ends up being celebrated as a hero. I wonder if the questions are about the person that shot me. Maybe it was a thief in the street, who got angry after I stopped him from stealing an old lady’s handbag. Maybe it was a husky biker man with a long beard, who shot me from his motorcycle after I rescued a damsel in distress from him.
     I almost forget anyone is still in the room, but am reminded when I hear a sigh from the nurse, forcing me to leave my head. After a long pause, the self-assured doctor’s face falls as he begins to speak.
     “Charlie, you are being charged with murder.”
     My heart sinks to the pit of my stomach as my eyes scurry around the room, desperately seeking any answers. Murder? I close my eyes for a moment and am overwhelmed with sensations: light, screams, pain. The nurse glances over at me, her eyes looking disappointed, before she shoots them back to her feet.
     “We’ll be back to check on you later,” the doctor says, before shooting out of the room, jotting down things on his clipboard as he leaves. The policeman follows, looking back at me firmly as he exits. Emily lags behind. She slowly picks herself up to walk out. I’m suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to stop her.
     “W-wait,” I croak out, my voice sounding like a foreign language. It seems deeper than it does in my head.
     She jumps up a little, obviously startled. She turns back around and looks deeply at me. Her face softens a little as she walks over to my bedside and rests her hand on the right side of my bed.
     “Can you speak?” she asks, like what she heard may have just been in her own mind. “Yes,” I reply, my words sounding a bit more human this time.
     “I have to go tell the doctor, I-“
      I cut her off mid thought by moving my finger over just a few inches, as much as the handcuffs will let me, and touching hers. She looks down and back up at me, but does not move her hand. We sit there for a few seconds, completely silent, before she picks herself back up.
     “I have to go tell the doctor,” she repeats, sounding more determined. This time, I let her leave and rest my head back to my pillow. Sleep overwhelms me suddenly and harshly.
     Screaming. Falling. Thrashing. Silence. The scene plays back on repeat, over and over again in my sleep. I feel myself moving, but the handcuffs always bring me back down. The dreams feel so vivid that I can’t seem to escape them, even when I wake up. After awhile, I accept it and let the screams, falling, thrashing, and silence take me away.
     The morning slowly drifts in, light flowing into the big windows and pulling me out of my head. The room feels smaller than it did the day previously. Maybe it is something about the way the shadows seem to fall at this hour. It all feels hazy.
     Emily walks in the room a few minutes later. My eyes are already open, but she seems less startled by me than before. She walks over to write down my vitals and then to the drapes, beginning to open them slightly. I want to tell her that it doesn’t matter, that the drapes are already so thin that they make no difference anyways, but I decide it’s best not to.
     “Good morning!” she says in a high, slightly squeaky voice.
     “Good morning,” I reply back to her, much less enthused.
     “You’re going to have to be questioned today, now that you can speak,” she says matter-of-factly.
     I realize that I still don’t know what happened. The realization of yesterday suddenly returns to the front of my mind. Murder. It seems unimaginable to me. My questions start to overwhelm me as the desire for answers becomes the only thing on my mind.
     “So what did I do?” I ask, like the question doesn’t have the weight of the world resting upon it.
     Her eyes widen, like it is a question she wasn’t expecting, but she begins to explain.
     “They say you killed a girl. A college student from Wisconsin. She was walking across campus at night and you jumped out behind her, stole her bag, and strangled her. The campus police came and you refused to put your hands up. You just kept running. They fired, and you fell.”
     I don’t say anything. No response seems appropriate at this moment, even though I know she’s expecting one. When she realizes I won’t talk, she keeps going.
     “When you were in the coma, I liked to imagine you as a million different people, all who had some justifiable reason for doing something so horrible, but I just never could,” she says, her voice drowning out slowly.
     “I’m sorry,” I say, knowing that it is the only acceptable response.
     “Did you do it?” she asks suddenly. I can tell she’s shocked by her own confidence, as she seems to take a million steps backwards and disappear back into herself as she anticipates my response.
     I wish I could tell her no. I wish I could say the two letters out loud and her eyes wouldn’t look so disappointed anymore. But I remember the dream I had, the fall to the ground, the screams.
     “I don’t know,” I reply flatly, averting her eyes when I say the words.
     For a second I look down at myself, still stuck in the same position I have been for hours, but I see someone completely different. Before I realize it, I hear the squeaking of her sneakers as she slowly exits the room. When she’s at the door, she hesitates for a second. I almost think she’s about to turn back to me and tell me that everything will be alright. The squeaking gets louder as she continues walking. She’s gone, and I know I won’t see her again.
     Out of the corner of my eye I see a mouse. It darts out from the crack in the ceiling near the stems of the daisies. It scurries down the windows and across the floor. It runs around in a circle for a moment before coming up the side of the wooden bedside table to my left, and then settling right next to the lamp. Without a second thought, I lift the lamp with my free arm and crush the mouse. It squirms for a second, before falling completely still. I inspect its now destroyed body, more gruesome than I thought it would be for such a small animal. I expect to feel an ounce of remorse, but I feel nothing.