Hannah’s life has been the definition of a tragedy, but things only seem to go downhill when she turns 24. This story begins with a flashback to a year after her mother’s accident. She visits her mother on weekends every week to check to see how she’s recovering. Hannah isn’t a very open person, so though her friends know about her family situation, they never hear her talk about her mother and her struggle to take care of her when she’s in such critical condition. Hannah would rather it be that way; she can’t have any of them worry about her. Hannah’s quite a dreamer, so she’d use that as an escape from her situation every now and then and pretend everything was better- that she had a functional household, her mother was healthy, her life was completely normal, and she was happier. In the years that follow,  Hannah finally becomes a clinical nurse. Her mother seems to be getting healthier and functions like a normal human again, to a degree. For once, everything seems normal. But then, when she’s 28, things start getting messy. Hannah’s mother’s health is on the decline again. With the stress of all that’s happening, Hannah lashes out at her boyfriend Blake and they get into an argument, and though she tries to fix things he stops responding to her messages and disappears out of her life completely.  To make things worse, her friend Marissa has a new boyfriend and won’t shut up about him, and at dinner one day, she announces that they are getting married, making Hannah, who is already jealous of her, feel left behind as she remembers what she lost with Blake. This is all bad enough to Hannah, but the universe decides she hasn’t suffered enough. In the year after, shortly after her birthday, Hannah receives word that her mother has had heart failure. The doctor tells her that she won’t make it for longer than a year. Hannah knows that her time left with her mother is limited. Around this time, she sees an ad on her computer about a place called DreamWorld. With nothing left to hold her back in the real world, she signs up to join.