Wheelchairs are evil.

Seriously, have you ever noticed how often wheelchairs show up when something not quite "right" is about to happen? Wheelchairs are probably secretly planning the demise of us all. I won't be surprised if this is true, even if they are inanimate objects.

I should clarify a little, I guess. Maybe they fit some symbolic niche within the collective unconscious human mind. Helplessness? Maybe, though I know at least some people confined to wheelchairs would protest that. Probably pretty vehemently.

Anyway, Tia woke up.  Almost amusingly, that's when things went to hell. There was a shift to the air as the colors started to fade. What day was it? What day is it? The last time I checked the calendar, it was the ninth or tenth, I think. The days have been running together here, even with everything.

Right, back on topic. It's always disturbing to me when the colors go. I don't think most people quite get what I mean by that, not really. Imagine that you spend your life at least partially in a vivid swirl of things, shifting in the back of your mind, in the back of your eyes. No, that's not right. I... Have a hard time describing it with just words. These times, though... Everything is just gray. Maybe not literally, but that's how it seems to me. I think it's hard for people to grasp how much that shakes me.

Things are thrown into such stark relief. The scratches on the baseboard. Patterns incomprehensible. Hello there, writing on the wall. No, I don't want to impart your words of wisdom to the dear readers, what there are of them. I will anyway.

It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.

Someone has a sick sense of humor. No pun intended.

But Tia's awake. That counts for something, right? I sound so... hollow. For once, in this, we're together. Kailin's still at the bedside, something having snapped zer out of a doze in the chair. Pity, really, zie hasn't been sleeping much at all. Those dark eyes are locked on the door, though. Tia's awake, but god, she looks so pale.

There's a squeaking sound from the hall, and that's what triggered the thoughts on wheelchairs. The hospital didn't have any squeaky-rusty ones that I know of, though. But then, that assumes that this is anything normal. Even the squeaking is gray.

I don't want to go look. But you know me... I ran toward the screams, not away. Sometimes you have to.