Lee woke from formless nightmares of eerily cheerful faces with a start so violent she pulled her arm free from the rubbery tubes attached to it.  The fabric next to her skin was coarse and unfamiliar, not the clothing she'd been in.  She was laying in a bed, but it was tiny compared to her own.  Overhead the lights emitted a faint buzz and a high-pitched whine at the edge of hearing.  There were soft voices nearby, and footsteps on laminate tile, an air conditioner's whispery roar and the chirp of some sort of electronics.  At first she had no idea where she was.  Her spatial perception was gently fuzzed, and her limbs felt heavy.  But the smell of sheets washed in an industrial machine combined with the sharp scent of disinfectant filled her with dread.

A hospital.  It had to be.  They scared her, ever since one of her good friends had killed himself after being taken to a psych ward in middle school.  The heartrate monitor was still on the finger, and she pulled it off with trembling hands, then gently detangled herself from the now-useless IV, wincing as the tape pulled at the fine hairs on her skin.  She started to search for a call button -- what had they given her, that her head felt like it was wrapped in a cloud?  She didn't like it.  If it was to keep her calm, it wasn't having the desired effect.  Had this been what it was like, for David?  Her responses were dulled, but they were no less sharp on the inside.  Why was she here, anyhow?  The last thing she remembered....

Lee froze, her heart in her throat.  A lovely dinner.  On her way home, crossing the street.  The beep of the crosswalk light, saying it was okay to cross.  The sound of a car coming, far too fast.  And then....

She shuddered, but the memory couldn't be right.  Ignoring the fever dream of the creature afterwards, she didn't hurt enough to have been hit.  There was a dull ache throughout her body, one without discernable cause, but nothing felt broken, or even properly painful.  All her limbs responded easily to her desires, and nothing seemed swollen.  What the hell was going on?!

She'd just started shaking for real when two sets of footsteps stopped just inside the gap of the doorway.  Her head jerked up, but she presented them not with her direct gaze but rather with her face turned at a slight angle, so her left ear was a bit more towards them.  She looked like she'd been in a bad crash, however she felt.  The splotchy bruising was impressive, but it looked like it had happened more than just a couple hours before, with some places turning the sickly green that occasionally crept into severe blunt trauma injuries.

Her visitors did not wear the scrubs of most hospital staff, nor proper street clothes.  There was something off about them, and the way they moved made her uneasy.  "Who are you?" she asked, coughing as the first words died in a hoarse squeak before trying again.  "What happened -- why am I here?"  She wanted to leave.  She needed to get away from the laminate tile and the whining of the lights that grated on her nerves.  She wanted to go home and curl up with Freddie and some nice music and a hot cup of tea.  "What's going on...?"