After a few days, all of the teenagers who had been recovered from the woods that had once been Barren Pines campus had woken -- groggy, concussed, or weak, they had woken. Their families had come for them, friends, and even the occasional intrepid news reporter. They each stirred in their beds, eyelids lifting like windows that had been too long closed to the sunshine --

All but one.

The chart at the foot of her bed marked her as "Landscape Sutton," a Glasgow 7 patient. Accidental drowning. Hypoxia. She had been two beds over originally, right underneath the window. That was before she had gone missing from the ward, a few months ago. Now an older gentleman had that bed, and she was closer to the heating vent instead, but she was still rated Glasgow 7. The monitors blipped out her vital signs, and she went on in her strange, black sleep from which she was not expected to return.

Once or twice, one of the other teenagers would appear in the ward to see her for themselves. Different things drew them: Fear. Guilt. Confusion -- that they had all had their windows thrown open to let in the fresh air but hers remained shut and latched. Loneliness. Hope. Sympathy. One girl, dark-haired, returned time and again, even after she had been officially given a clean bill of health and discharged: that one produced a green marker she had had hidden away, crossed out "Landscape" on the chart and wrote "LANEY" in defiant letters instead. That one stayed to sit with the sleeping girl awhile, or brought her things to read, or -- every so often -- kissed her forehead.

Her eyelids still fluttered at the sound of a familiar voice, or occasionally she made soft sounds that might've been words -- and these filled the dark-haired girl with visions of Laney scrabbling at her own windowsill, filled her with so much false hope --

Still she slept on.

A nurse stood with her once, agonized at her painful insistence that Laney Sutton might still wake, struck by the faith and impossible, brave will of the dark-haired girl. "Glasgow Seven, what your friend has, is deep. It's not a three, nothing else but three is a three, but don't let these things mislead you." She took the little white sock off of the sleeping girl's foot, and reached down with her fingernails to rake along the sole, just tickling. The dark-haired girl watched as the tickled foot bent downward, toward the nurse's hand. "The normal response is up," she said. "You get this with severe brain damage."

The dark-haired girl didn't accept it. Or she said she didn't accept it, at least, and still visited -- but every time she did, she'd reach down and tickle that same foot to see which way the toes pointed.

Each time, down.

The weeks passed. The girl slept on in her hospital gown of white cotton and blue, screenprinted diamonds, in the little bower of a curtain drawn around her bed. The light and air could not get in: the window was shut. Her window was shut.

She slept on.