A loud beep in her ear woke Sarah up. It beeped again, and she flinched against the noise. As the beeping continued, Sarah was able to redirect her focus, realizing that the beep was in time with her heartbeat. Other little beeps clamored for her attention, both from inside her room and beyond, and she started to reach for her ears, only to realize that her arms were covered with cords, limiting her movement. Sarah could feel more cords taped down on her chest. With all the noise, Sarah deliberately kept her eyes closed. She knew what she'd probably see anyways. She was in a hospital, and she still remembered what it was like.

"Oh thank God, honey, you're awake," her mother's voice was immediate, cutting through everything else.

"Mom, I don't want to be here," she whispered.

"I know honey, but you were unconscious for hours, the ambulance couldn't wake you up," her mom said.

Sarah opened her eyes, not noticing the bright white glow that filled the small room. She immediately took off the soft clamp attached to a finger on her left hand and then started working on the tape holding her IV in when her mother took her hands. A loud continuous alert went off on the machine next to her, drowning out whatever her mother was saying.

"I want to go home," cried Sarah. "This doesn't help!"

A pair of nurses bustled into the room, one re-attaching the device that had been on her finger. Even though the long tone of the alert stopped, Sarah kept pulling against her mother's grip, reaching for the pads on her chest. The rhythmic beeps got faster, Sarah's eyes twitching at each repetition.

One of the nurses shouted something, and Sarah saw the second nurse turn away and reach into a drawer. Sarah just thrashed harder, trying to get away from the hands holding her down.

"Please, I just want..." she whispered, as the room suddenly turned yellow. This time she didn't stop struggling, even as her eyes and ears started to burn. She didn't even feel the pinch of a needle in her shoulder as she lost control of her arms, twitching in the bed as her mother watched the two nurses work.

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This time, when Sarah woke up, the room was nearly silent. She could hear some footsteps outside, along with a repetitive sloshing noise. It was someone mopping the hall, probably. There was beeping coming through the door from outside too. She could hear someone breathing in her room. That was almost certainly her mom unless they'd kicked her out for some reason. She could hear a few machines whirring, but they were steady and fairly quiet.

Sarah concentrated on keeping her breathing steady, she tried to listen to the sound of the air moving through her nose. She rubbed her hands on the rough cloth of her hospital blanket. She could feel pressure from the blanket as well, someone had tucked it in on either side so that it pressed against her legs. She could smell the antiseptic cleaners that always filled spaces like this, and just a hint of the floral lotion her mom used on her hands. Her mouth tasted disgusting, filmy.

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As soon as she noticed it, Sarah found it difficult to think about anything else with that stale taste filling her mouth. She opened her eyes, pleasantly surprised that the overhead lights in her room were off, but between all the monitors and the white glow, she could easily make out everything around her. Her mom was asleep in a little chair, head cocked to the side at what must have been a terribly uncomfortable angle.

She had expected there to be a little white cup and straw with ice water on the table next to her, but it was empty. Sarah ran her tongue over her teeth, swallowing down the saliva collecting in her mouth. There was a little bathroom in the room, and there would be a sink in there, that would be even better. She could rinse and spit instead of swallowing whatever was making her mouth taste so bad. She started to roll onto her side to get out but was caught short. Both arms were held down with strips of gauze. Not tightly, but enough that she couldn't reach one arm with the other.

Sarah laid back, she really needed to rinse out her mouth. "Mom," she finally said, her voice croaking just a bit as she tried to whisper.

No reaction. "Mom," she said again, this time at a more normal volume. Sarah was a bit surprised at how normal her voice sounded.

Her mom started awake and looked at Sarah with a blank expression. "Mom," said Sarah, "could I have some water? My mouth tastes really bad."

"Of course," she said, reaching down to the ground. She pulled a big steel water bottle out of her purse and carried it to Sarah.

Sarah could see her mom biting her cheeks as the bottle was lifted up to Sarah's mouth, but the feel of the crisp water washing out her mouth overwhelmed her. Sarah tried to drink greedily, but her mom pulled the bottle away.

"I'm sorry baby, but I don't know if it's ok to give you more. The doctors didn't say..." her mother trailed off, and she wiped her face. "How do you feel?"

Sarah paused. She wasn't comfortable, and she really wanted to go home, but otherwise, she felt fine. Nothing was sore, nothing felt wrong at all. Even though her eyes had felt like fire before, now they felt fine. Maybe a bit gritty, but fine. If anything she felt better. Normally the little LEDs in a dim room like this would make her eyes ache, but they weren't bothering her at all. Maybe the hospital did something special with them, they could have put some sort of filter on them. It seemed like she was in some kind of quiet room, after all.

"I feel fine, Mom," said Sarah. "When can we go home?"

"Let me just get the doctor," said Sarah's mom.

Within seconds of her mom opening the door to the bright hallway outside, an older man in suit pants, dress shirt, and sneakers was in the room. He asked her questions but seemed much more interested in the papers at the foot of her bed and the information on the screens around the room. It wasn't as though Sarah was going to tell him about the white fog turning yellow, and Sarah didn't want to tell him about the burning eyes and skin either.

Finally, he began talking to her mom, "We don't know yet exactly what is causing her events. As lucky as we were that she was on an EEG last night, that only ruled out seizures. Fortunately, most other causes aren't terribly serious. Given her light and sound sensitivity, I suspect she's only suffering from migraines. Those can do some crazy stuff sometimes."

"Our real worry is the possibility that this was a transient ischemic attack, especially with the way her blood pressure spiked right before her event. It sounds scarier than it is, but those are sort of like a mini-stroke. With her age, it's really unlikely, but we really need to do some tests to rule it out, just in case. I'm going to schedule an MRI for later today, and we'll keep monitoring her EKG too. If that is the problem, there are lots of treatments, it'll only be a problem if it goes untreated."

"For now, I'll have the nurses bring her some breakfast, and she can have visitors too," he finished saying before he swept back out of the room.