She floated on the stark white expanse of mattress, hospital gown, and sheets.  Her eyes shuddered, flickered, overloaded on images that trembled through her body, at once forgotten and familiar; a cluttered collection of blurs.  

Spots of red pain punctured her pale skin.  Swarms of white overtook her, closing her eyes.  She descended slowly into the liquid numb which seeped through her veins, weighing her down.  Pooling, her body faded into the narrow heartbeat between the dreaming part of her head and the staircase dripping of rainbows that was her imagination.

And she was floating, on a raft.  And she was falling overboard, and sinking down, into the sea.  Gently, her body rocked against the sand on the bottom of the ocean; she settled into the shell of a crab, tucked the wispy ends of her white dress in, thrummed with seaweed and whispered to the eel that curled its tail around her shell.  

Winding all the way around the shell, the eel's tail suddenly danced before her again.  She watched it in a hypnotized gaze--when suddenly, it stretched forward and stung her on the arm.  

She opened her mouth to cry out, but bubbles erupted from her mouth, an explosion of escaping air that about ripped her chest apart, her body shooting like a popped balloon towards the surface.

Her mouth opened to the sky as she breathed in, water evaporating on all sides.  She gasped from the pain.  

“I’m sorry, Rosalie.  We almost lost you again.”  The confusion of circles must’ve been Dr. Forester’s glasses.  All people were a confusion for her, except for voices.  His was always tripping on the edge of sympathy into pity, but what all his medicine couldn’t give her was true compassion.  Luckily he never made excuses.  His apologies, at least, meant something.  

“Honey?” said a soft voice.  Mom.  

She could only manage a soft groan in response.  

And then liquid white filled her again.