Blink.

My eyes are so dry. The edges of my eyelids stick together, the effort to pull them apart too much. When did my tongue get so big? It presses against my bottom row of teeth, choking me. I'm cold. So cold. Why are they freezing me? Why am I on a sheet of ice, in the dark? Someone needs to stop this.

Where am I?

Blink.

Mom is here, holding my hand. I smell her shampoo. That's how I know. I feel her touch but it's like she's a thousand miles away. There's a breeze in the room, followed by a wheezy sound. It's to my right. My chest rises and falls in a rhythm with it. Toes shouldn't be icicles.

What is in my mouth?

Blink.

"Lily? Lily?" Mom's crying, squeezing my hand from Jupiter. I can open my eyes a slit now, the light too much, too bright, like knives in my corneas. Why does the light want to hurt me? I shut it out. I close my eyes. Mom's hand starts to shake.

"Tom? Did you see that? Lily looked at me."

I want to open my eyes and see Dad. His voice will have to be enough, because I can't. All the energy in me goes to not choking.

"Honey, I'm sure you thought she did."

Blink.

"Hi, Lily! Rise and shine! Time to turn you over so you can get a better view." Nasal tones make my ears ache. This must be Holly. I remember her from yesterday. I saw the flowers. Big, white Oriental lilies. Those are funeral flowers. Not an arrangement, but the kind I always hate when I work at the shop. The kind we use for bereavement.

Who's dying?

"Lily," Holly whispers, her breath sweet, like sugar. Her red bangs are long and brush against the edges of her eyelashes. Her eyes are big, like marbles. She came in and looked right into my eyes as my eyelids twitched. I wasn't moving them. Not on purpose. But at the very end, I was able to slowly blink.

Like an owl.

She looked at me extra long that time, but shook her head like she was imagining it.

Blink.

My head hurts. It feels different. Hollow. Like it's not quite attached. I inhale and smell the sweet scent of lilies and lilacs. It must be April. That's when the lilacs bloom. These smell local. But how can it be April?

A nurse walks in, wearing a green scrubs shirt. As she turns, I see it has tiny orange pumpkins on it.

Wait a minute. When is it? Halloween? What's the date? How long have I been asleep? How long have I been here?

Mom walks in the door, looks at me, and sighs. Her eyes are streaked with mascara. A doctor in a lab coat walks up behind her.

She signs a form.

She sits next to my bed and takes my hand.

"Lily. Please. Baby, you have to show me you're in there. You have to. It's–it's getting complicated. Anything. Anything."

I squeeze her fingertips. She doesn't feel it.

Because I'm on Mars and she's on the Moon.

"Lily, I don't know what to do, baby. You have to show me you're there." She cries.

I'm here, I tell her. I'm here.

But her ears are on Venus.

Blink.

"Her heart rate has been changing in a way that is consistent with stimuli," a white lab coat says to a smartphone. They're talking above me. They sound like humans. They're very good at imitation.

"Impossible," says the white lab coat. "She's been in a coma for fourteen months. More than four hundred and twenty days. It's unbelievably rare to wake up from this and be responsive."

"Rare. Not impossible," Smartphone says.

Not impossible.

I let the words roll around inside me, like the medication they stick in the IV, like the water from the sponge bath, like the radio announcers describing the World Series games in the background.

Like the light I let in now when I open my eyes.

Blink.

"She squeezed my hand on command! She blinks once for no and twice for yes!" Mom insists. "I've been working with her on it. She's one hundred percent accurate."

"Mrs. Thornton, I know you want to believe. Correlation does not mean causation, though." The woman in the white coat seems annoyed.

"I asked her if she likes orchids and she blinked no! Lily hates them."

"That could be an electrical anomaly. The body responds in certain ways that make us want to find patterns. But volition? At this point? I'm sorry. I doubt Lily is–"

"Lily? Honey?"

I peel my eyes open and stare straight ahead. I can't turn and look at her. Even my eyeballs are tethered by thick ropes in the back of my head, ropes they can't see but that bind me.

"See?"

"Mrs. Thornton, I understand you want to think that Lily could–"

"This isn't about what I want, doctor. It's about what I see! What I know!"

The ropes inside my eyeballs pull the lids shut.

The world is nothing but weight, pulling me down.

Blink.

"The throat spasms are strong when we lighten her sedation, Mom and Dad."

"You've been working with Lily for six weeks. We've been here all along. We're Tom and Bee. Not your Mom and Dad." Mom's voice is sharp. I know that tone. I just have never heard her use it quite like this.

"I'm sorry," the doctor says in a voice that makes it clear he's not. "You're asking us to take her off the ventilator. You realize there are risks."

"Yes," Dad says. "And we realize that months ago, you were ready to remove it and we fought you. But this is different."

"We agree," the doctor says. I can see him in my peripheral vision and I want to tell him what I think. I want to tell him I'm here, I'm fine, and my ass has fallen asleep and burns with that horrible heavy feeling your skin gets when something's wrong. Also, the Christmas music that's been playing in the background nonstop since the day after Halloween is obscene. I mostly want to protest that.

Instead, I blink.

It's all I can do. Blinking is my bridge to personhood. Otherwise, I'm the human equivalent of a beige wall. A white carnation without meaning. Communicating makes me real to everyone else.

And the only way to survive is to be real.

When people think you're not real, they behave differently. I know this now. I didn't know it before.

If they stop thinking you're real, you might as well be dead.

Blink.

It's dark. Time passes in terms of dark and light. I know what an hour is. I remember that days are twenty—four hours. That's a lot of hours when you can't track them. That's a lot of time when you have no control. When everyone thinks you're not fully there.