“Okay, now walk to me,” Rachel said with a smile, beckoning me across the room. It was hard, and we’d been at it for two days. My legs felt like lead even with the metal crutches lodged beneath my armpits. She’d said I wouldn’t need them forever; eventually I’d be able to support my own weight but for right now, I couldn’t even fathom standing up on my own. I looked to her weakly, forcing a smile, and putting one foot in front of the other. My hospital socks easily gripped the hard wood floor of my hospital room where she’d opted to do at least some of my physical therapy. Partway through my walk, I stumbled momentarily but managed to regain my footing before plummeting face first toward the floor. I looked straight ahead and moved toward her, finally reaching her and letting out a sigh of relief. “Good job, I think that’s enough for today.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, turning toward my bed on the other side of the room. I was exhausted; completely and utterly exhausted.

“Be careful,” She said to me as I turned and collapsed to the bed, my body slamming into the mattress, rubber crinkling beneath the cotton sheets. She helped me to scoot back toward the top; I rested my head on the pillow and closed my eyes for a moment. “I’m just going to get you vitals.”

I opened my eyes and shifted them from left to right, red hair billowing from my head on either side of the pillow. I smiled and giggled again at the sight.

“You’re really happy aren’t you?” Rachel laughed as she wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my arm. I winced a little as it tightened and emitted a beeping sound. I sighed with relief when it finished and she removed it.

“Yeah I am,” I admitted. I was shocked at how easy it was to talk to her. She was beautiful, absolutely gorgeous, and before, well, before I woke up, I wouldn’t have been able to work up the courage to so much as look at someone like her, let alone have a conversation with her. “I just…I woke up like this and I always wanted to be a-“

“Put this under your tongue,” She held a thermometer out to me. I stopped short, opened my mouth and allowed her to place the plastic tip beneath my tongue. I waited calmly until it beeped, and she removed it, nodding at the reading and making a note in my chart.

“-a girl and…now here I am. I don’t remember how I got here and I guess I’m really worried that I’m going to wake up any minute and…it’s going to be over.”

“Trust me,” Rachel said as she pored over the chart. “If this were a dream then I wouldn’t be nearly as tired as I am. Okay, I’m going to hook an IV up to your PICC line, don’t worry about it too much, alright? Oh, your friend Noir is here, she’s in the waiting room, do you want me to send her in?”

“Uh…yeah, I guess,” I nodded. I didn’t know Noir very well yet but I guess I did…back before, you know.

“Hey could you guys send Noir in? ” Rachel spoke into her phone as she fiddled with my IV line. “Okay, they’re sending Noir. Um, after that, Chastity will be in to take your labs, she’s our phlebotomist.”

“What’s a phlebotomist?”

“Oh,” Rachel smiled. “It’s just someone who specializes in blood draws. Chastity is a bio-chem student at Woodcrest, she just interns here, really nice girl, you’ll love her.”

Literally less than five minutes later, Noir came bounding through the door with a huge smile on her face. She was a short girl, much shorter than me Today she was dressed in a short black skirt, a pair of leggings, clogs, and a worn green army jacket pulled loosely over a low cut white t-shirt.

“Hey hot stuff,” She said cheerily as Rachel quietly exited the room. I heard the door click shut behind her. Beyond the threshold I could hear doctors and nurses chattering, and the sound of a baby crying somewhere further down the hall. Right, it was the children’s hospital. “Omega’s having an event next week, and we want you to pick the theme. We usually do scifi or fanasy or whatever so we have a list of suggestions for you. You can pick anything you want, even something not on the list but for the love of fuck, Kari, don’t give us a barbie theme or I’ll come back here, kill myself, and then you. In that order. Got it?”

“Am I even going to this even?” I shrugged myself up further into the bed and took a sheet of paper from her hands. “I mean, I’m…stuck…in here so…”

“The nurses told us that you should at least be ready to get out and party next week, I mean, they might want you to come back here for observation but you’ve been doing so well in your therapy stuff it’s like…I don’t know, maybe you’ll be getting out of here soon. They think it’ll be good for you to get out and do things with the people you know, you know?”

“I’d like that,” I smiled as I stared absently at the sheet of paper trying to make out what it said. It was just a form with a list of theme suggestions. Why were they leaving this up to me? I didn’t know anything about sororities or fraternities, or parties, or…anything really. The last thing I knew, I was just a high school kid with social anxiety and this shameful fantasy that involved becoming a girl. Part of me still couldn’t believe I was here.

“Okay,” Noir smiled. “I have to get back to the house, we’re cleaning today. Ugh, Willow assigned me bathroom duty. It’s so stupid, Chase was doing one of his stupid experiments in there and now there’s this green slime all over the way. They expect ME to clean it up instead of HIM just because I drew bathroom duty. Can you believe that crap?”

“Green slime?” I resisted the urge to laugh; my chest hurt when I laughed. “What is WRONG with Omega? I like it!”

“I figured you would,” Noir smiled. “You’re going to get to see it soon, I promise. It’s such an amazing house, we have a Pac-Man arcade cabinet in the living room and-“

“How do I fit in there?” I asked suddenly. “Like, I mean…”

“Kari,” She shook her head. “You’re being ridiculous. Yes, you’re a girl, everyone treats you like a girl. Fuck Kari, there are a few Pandas who don’t even know.”

“Pandas?”

“The Omegas call themselves Panda. The Panda is our um…it’s our mascot. We have a big stuffed panda on the porch, it’s really cool.”

Noir said a few more things, and then she was on her way, leaving me once again alone in the room. It wasn’t exactly a bleak, dreary hospital room, not by any means. It featured hardwood floors, wide open space around me, and a huge window overlooking the campus just beyond the IV unit. I could see a huge red ‘W’ emblazed upon a brick building in the distance, the symbol for Woodcrest I guessed. I laid my head back onto the pillow and closed my eyes briefly, or at least I thought it was briefly. Before I knew it I was dreaming; mostly the dreams were about my family, the school life I’d left behind, and assorted other things, but in between, fragments of a darker memory began to surface. A car. I was in a car, behind a wheel. I’d never driven before, well at least I thought I hadn’t but…

It was a rainy night, I could hear tires sloshing rudely through the puddles beneath my feet. It was bumpy, I was bouncing around behind the wheel, struggling to keep it straight, trying my best to keep it on the road.

“Slow down,” A voice beside me said.

“I’ve got it,” I heard myself say.

“No, slow down,” This time I felt a hand touch mine. I looked over to see who was speaking, but I could make out nothing but a void, a cloud, a disembodied voice cutting through the darkness.

“No I’ve got i-“