Ever since that one terrifying day, you had pushed everybody away. Your friends. Your family. Your best friend, Patrick. You'd switched halter tops for baggy tees, sparkling eyes to dull ones, long curly hair cascading down your shoulders to loose clipped up styles.

On thirteenth summer of your life, you had become hardly anything. Entering your self inflicted exile. But now, three years later, at age sixteen, you emerged. Your old best friend Patrick had gotten beaten up at the Come 'n Go. They hadn't found the culprit. Strung to the gas pump, bloody and unconscious, gas nozzle shoved down his throat. You'd seen it on the news, since no one kept you up to date. Even Patrick had stopped trying to talk to you, after a couple of months into your self imposed exile.

And so here you now sat, next to his hospital bed, silently begging him to wake up. You didn't care if he didn't want to see you when, if he awoke, even though it was least likely. You and him had been inseparable as children, and you didn't think he had ever fully given up on you, even after you shut everyone out. At least you hoped.

Over the course of a couple days, in which the nice nurse Kelly had told you only family was allowed (not that Patrick had any left), and today, when she had finally dubbed you worthy, since you had come everyday. And now you sat there, boyfriend Jason by your side, reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and wondering if Patrick would ever wake up...