The airbag shot out as I covered my hands over my face. This was the last thing I remembered. Then, blackness...nothing.

As I opened my eyes and looked around, I felt groggy and confused. "Where am I?" I thought to myself. I tried to sit up, but was unable to move. Freaking out, I tried to scream but there was a tube in my throat so the sound was muffled. No one heard. I was trapped.

"Is this hell?" I wondered, praying that it wasn't. All I could do was lie there and cry. After several attempts I gave up trying to move and had exhausted myself by trying to scream. I was completely helpless.

Am I dead? I was really beginning to think so. I tried to imagine I was somewhere else, but the reality was just too intense to escape. All I could see was a white ceiling above me, so there were no clues to help me figure out where I was.

I did hear a beeping sound. Once I finally lied still in defeat, my mind slowed down and it dawned on me that the noise was probably coming from a life monitor. "So I am alive!" I thought, sighing to myself in relief. At least I hoped so.

Each minute felt like eternity though. As I lied there waiting for someone, anyone, to appear my doubts started to return. I found out later that I was only left alone for thirty minutes at a time, but lying there, it felt like hours.

I was going crazy and somehow convinced myself that I was in purgatory or hell. "The beeping must be something else; just an annoying sound to amplify the torture, the punishment," I convinced myself.

My thoughts began going really wild then. I started thinking back to all the "bad" things I had done in my life and tried to figure out what could have been horrible enough for me to deserve this. Of course this was just additional torture, but was self inflicted.

All the emotion was draining, so I finally dozed off. The next time I awoke, there was a woman standing next to me. She was fiddling with something in her hand. I tried to scream again. She looked up at me with a startled expression and ran off. "No, don't leave me, don't leave me!' I screamed with all the might in my body. But she was gone.

The tears were poring down my face, leaving a salty taste in my mouth. Then through the blur of my crying I saw the woman return. This time she was with a man. When I noticed his stethoscope I felt a sense of joy and relief I didn't know was possible. "He's a doctor! Oh thank you God, he's a doctor!"

He poked and prodded at me for a bit, looking

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