• Close your eyes.
    What do you see?
    Nothing. Darkness.
    That darkness had become my world. My living hell.
    I can smell, feel, hear but I can't move, can't speak, trapped in this shell of a body.
    There had been an accident. That what I could hear the doctors telling my parents.
    "A truck T-boned her car. She should've been killed,"
    But no. I'm still alive. Still here.They know I'm not a vegetable. They know I'm still alive and listening.
    They don't know everything. They don't know how I'm trying to scream. How I'm pleading with them to kill me. To end my silence.
    My I-Pod is plugged in 24/7. All my 'favorite' songs over and over and over and over again.
    It's driving me insane. I want to smash the damn thing to pieces.
    My parents come in daily to watch, to wait for me to wake up.
    Sometimes they talk. My mother usually just cries.
    My friends don't visit. I don't care ,really. I wouldn't visit me either.
    For weeks my routine didn't change
    I was fed through a tube, did my business in a bed pan. Every day my parents would come for about 1 and a half cycles of my Ipod favorites play-list or about 9 hours give or take.
    Night time was horrible. It was rare that anyone would walk past my room. My music became constant background noise. I couldn't sleep, couldn't dream. Instead I created dreams and stories of my own. Stories of heaven, of fantasies, but my favorite stories of all were the ones about everything I would do if I wasn't trapped.
    I would've been a junior in high school by now, finally gotten the lead in the school musical, gotten a senior boyfriend who would sweep me off my feet. My stories kept me occupied most of the time, but it wasn't enough.
    One night, after months of torturous silence, something amazing happened. When I first heard his voice, I believed I had just slipped into another one of my fantasies.
    "Hello." His voice was soft, uncertain, but to me it was like a chorus of angels. I heard a chair slide across the floor and there was a soft thump as he sat down. "Hello. I'm Marcus." He laughed softly, "I don't know why I'm doing this."
    A chair scrapped against the floor and his shoes scuffed across the floor.
    NO! I wanted to scream, No! Don't leave me!
    There was a rapid beating sound and it took me a moment to realize it was my heart monitor reacting to my racing heart.
    "What the hell?" I heard him mutter as he shuffled closer. Good. He hadn't left me alone. I realized, as my heart began to slow down, that I needed him. That he would save me from the noiseless nights.
    "So you can hear me." I heard him say, "I thought it was just a stupid rumor. Some chick in a non responsive coma." He said and I felt fingertips brush my arm and left a trail of fire down my arm. "My ther- counselor said maybe I should talk to you. Said it might help." He explained. There was a silence and doubt began to creep into my thoughts. What if he's going to leave again? I heard him chuckle nervously,
    I've been here for awhile. I'm in physical therapy because of a car accident, like you, I suppose. I know you can't talk but do you mind if I just talk to you?"
    I didn't know how to reply. I mean on the inside I was soaring. A new voice, a new something to cling to. Someone who could fill my head with stories I couldn't create myself. But I wasn't able to tell him.
    "If you don't want me to talk, maybe you could get the monitor to freak out again." I heard him suggest. It took me a moment to get what he was saying but once I did, it seemed genius.
    For a few minutes or so there was silence. The doubt began to creep into my thoughts once again but I pushed it back, trying to keep my heartbeats slow and measured.
    "Okay. Well I hope you figured it out. If not I'm sorry that I'm about to bore you with my problems." He laughed, the sound was beautiful. I wanted to laugh with him. I wanted to tell him how he wouldn't-couldn't bore me. I would take anything new I could get.
    For weeks Marcus came. He spoke of his life, his hopes, his dreams, his fears. At first he just talked but then he began to ask.
    Do you like to swim?
    Nothing
    Have you ever flown in a plane before.
    Nothing
    Am I boring you? Should I leave?
    I forced my heart to race and heard the monitor race along with my heart. I could hear the smile in his voice as he began to talk again. I loved listening to him. He filled my head with stories. His gave me something to think about while I listened to me mother sob and my father try to comfort her.

    "I have to tell you something." Marcus said to me one night, "I'm leaving."
    With those two words, my heart began to beat hard and fast against my chest. I felt like crying, lie clinging to his arm, like screaming at him. He couldn't leave. he couldn't leave me to suffer all alone in loathsome silence.
    "Please don't be upset" He muttered and placed a hand on my shoulder, " I know, I don't want to leave. You actually have helped me a lot but that's just it. They've decided that I'm better. I don't need to stay here anymore."
    I forced my emotions away and my monitor returned to its short, evenly spaced beeps. Only silence ensued. I heard him chuckle to himself. He had more to say.
    "I'll miss talking to you." He said so softly I wasn't sure if I was supposed to hear it, "Tonight's my last night here. Do you want me to visit you tomorrow before I leave?" He asked and I began to think. Why have him torture me anymore then he has tonight? Why should I be forced to listen to his voice anymore knowing I could never hear him ever again? As I thought, I felt my heart began to race faster and faster as my anger grew and grew. The monitor began to beep faster and louder till it was just one long beep. I heard the chair scrape against the floor and a loud clatter as it tipped over.
    "I'm sorry." He called over the blaring machine and his footsteps faded away. There was a few minutes of just the heart monitor and its constant bleep then I began to hear footsteps rushing down the hall towards me. Suddenly I felt multiple hands pressing down on me and heard voices shouting orders. Mention of cardiac arrest, heart attacks, and seizures were tossed around but couldn't they see that I was okay. Physically I was healthy but mentally I was dying.
    Finally I grew tired of the jumble of voices and useless attempts to figure out what was wrong, so I forced myself to calm down.
    And so they left me along.
    I began to tune out everything. The music. My parents. Even my own thoughts. I took all of my emotions and locked them away. I forced myself to feel and hear nothing. In a sense, I became a vegetable. There would be brief periods of time when my emotions would burst forth and I would have a short episode like the first, but I always manged to get under control.
    The doctors began to worry. Many came to perform tests on me, in hopes that I would awaken. All failed. Then one day, the doctors agreed to try something. They called it DBS.
    "With surgery, we'll be able to add a brain pacemaker. With it, there is a slight chance she'll wake up." The doctors explained to my parents who agreed almost instantly. I felt a sliver of happiness and hope slither into my consciousness but I quickly destroyed it. I doubt they could actually help me. All their efforts so far hadn't worked. Days past, the surgery came and went, and I remained trapped. Then one night, I felt my emotions burst from the darkness and I prepared myself for the onslaught of voices that would inevitably come. Instead, my pain transformed into sobs that burst from my lips.I forced my eyes open as they began to water and let the tears run down my face.