Nothing. Darkness. Musky air that tasted of dust and silence. It wasn’t until you’ve been like this for a long time that you can really taste it. The quiet.
I sat in my corner, unmoving. I couldn’t inch a muscle. My dirt covered white dress hung torn on my porcelain legs. Delicate, like if I moved it would shrivel into a million pieces, leaving me colder than I already was. I often wondered what my face looked like. My expression. My eyes. My lips. All I could do was sit here, day after day, listening to the hush. Trying to remember how I got to this state in time. In this house with painted windows and walls. Light sometimes shined through the cracks, casting shadows across the room. Wooden floors. Stairs to my right. There wasn’t any furniture, only a tattered, crumpled piece or paper that had been left in the middle of the room. I used to daydream about what it said, if it said anything at all. Maybe how to get out of this prison.
I like to think there were other dolls in this house. That I wasn’t alone. That way it wasn’t so scary, the night creeping, drawling out. Shadows crawling in the corners of my peripheral vision. Smiling their wicked smiles, flaunting their claws. It scared me half to death, well, I didn’t know if I could die anyway. But my imagination played tricks on me, and many times it seemed that those games were the only ones I’d ever get to play.
The floors creaked. Not in here, outside. I listened. No breathing, just footsteps. Slow, cautious. Then the lights. They shined through the cracks in the walls, blinding me. They were brighter than ever before, my eyes unadjusted. I couldn’t close them, so I stared, a headache tearing through me. My muscles felt like they were tightening, being pulled in all and every direction. I continued to lay still, pain clawing at me, a scream climbing up my throat. I couldn’t move, couldn’t talk. The light blazed on, working its way into the room. I felt a burning sensation crawl up my leg. I crack. I could barely see it. It seized me, numbing my calf. Another on my arm, my neck. One slide up my back, onto my scalp. I wanted to cry. To call for someone to help me. My heart felt like it was going to explode out of my chest and shatter the rest of limbs. Blood pounding in my head. Was this death? What seemed like hundreds of years in this attic and this is how I would go? Fear. Adrenaline. Cracks up my arms and I-
The sound of glass filled my ears, breaking onto the floor. My sight went black. The rest of me numb, other than my thoughts.

My eyes bolted open. White light shone down on me through a lamp on the ceiling. White sheets covered me, clean and crisp. I moved my shoulders, my hips, wiggled my toes. What was happening? I turned my head. A tall man in a white lab coat stood beside me, scrawling something down on a clipboard. He faced monitors, beeping echoing through the unfurnished white room mixed with the tapping of his pen. His eyes flickered to me, then back to the monitor. They widened as he turned back towards me. His clipboard hit the ground, shock painting his face in shades of white.
“Oh my god.” He mouthed silently, rushing out of the room. My throat dry, I went to yell out to him, but only hot, dessert air left my mouth. I tilted my head, looking at the clipboard he had dropped. Squinting, I immediately felt panic. Above unreadable scribbles and numbers and dashes that I couldn’t make out, a word lay printed at the top of the paper in bold, black letters.
“COMA PATIENT"