Six Months Later

Chapter One

Dream after dream flooded through Clary's mind.In one dream she was in the car with Noah and then he was gone in a swirl of broken glass and screams she couldn't make sense of.In another Noah was replaced with a swirling blackness and the sound of voices she hadn't heard in years.The voices of her sisters:Jessie and Lily.

Clary woke very abruptly.An eerie light filtered in through the frosted windows,casting shadows across the empty room.Confusion clouded her mind as she tried to make sense of her surroundings. Where were the nurses? The sounds of medical equipment? The familiar hum of life in a hospital? It was all gone, replaced by an unsettling emptiness that sent shivers down her spine.

Carefully she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed,looking around the room.She could see the curtains had started to fade and were torn in some places,the windows they had once concealed were cracked and broken.The medical equipment in the room had clearly been unused,their monitors black. Through the papers that littered the floor she could see cracks in the linoleum.The silence was deafening and it worried Clary.

Cautiously she stood up from the bed. An IV pole stood close to her bed,a silent sentinel in the abandoned room.The musty smell of neglect lingered in the air,adding to the eerie atmosphere.She hesitated at the idea of walking. Standing was working for her so far,but she was unsure of how long she had been in the hospital even before it had been abandoned.Cautiously,she took a step forward and paused.Walking felt..different.As though she hadn't walked for a long time.The dim lighting cast unsettling shadows, and the silence seemed to echo her every move.

She took another cautious step and felt as though she might collapse.She hadn't noticed it before but her legs felt stiff,her muscles weaker than she remembered. How long had she been in the hospital?And why? She made her way,slowly across the room to the door.It was closed and a flickering light could be seen at the bottom of the door.She reached out and placed her hand on the door knob.Opening the door,she peered out into the hallway.

Through the flickering lights,she could see papers littered the floor.The linoleum was almost completely destroyed.The wallpaper was peeling off the walls and she could see the light fixtures hanging from the ceiling,wires exposed,explaining why the lights were flickering.There were overturned hospital beds and wheelchairs up and down the hall,spilling into the waiting room around the empty nurses station.The musty smell was intensified and she stepped back into the room,shutting the door.The flickering lights hurt her eyes and made her feel as though she were developing a headache.The relief was instantaneous.

She made her way back over to the bed feeling the strength in her legs returning the more she used them.She started to sit back down on the bed when she noticed something she hadn't before.In the corner of the room was a chair.The arms were cracked,the padding in them pushing its way up through the cracks in their fabric covers. Sitting on the chair,however,was her favorite green and blue crochet bag. Before the big fallout with her two sisters,Jessie and Lily,Jessie had been teaching Lily how to crochet and it was the first thing Lily had made that hadn't been a complete failure.She had given it to Clary as a gift.Despite the fallout,Clary still treasured the bag.

Clary walked  over to the chair and opened her bag.To her relief there was a change of clothes in it and on the chair next to her bag were her favorite blue sneakers.She pulled the clothes out of the bag and made her way across the room to the bathroom.The door was ajar,blackness beyond it.Hesitantly Clary stepped inside and felt along the wall for the light switch.She flipped the switch. The light flickered once and stayed on.

Putting her free hand on the wall,to brace herself,she carried her bag over and sat it down on the edge of the sink.After a moments hesitation,she looked up,at her reflection in the mirror.What she saw nearly took her breath away.Her dark red curls were tangled and matted,a stark contrast to their once vibrant bounce.Faint scars crisscrossed her face and neck.She traced her finger tips over the remnants of the cuts on her cheeks,now scars.She felt a mix of emotions;fear for what had happened to her and to Noah,confusion at why she was in the hospital,an abandoned one at that, and worry.Worry about Noah,about her sisters.And a small bubble of anxiety about what she had missed while she lay unconscious.