As I drove down the icy pavement, winding around curves and passing cars, my favorite sonata ended, which is Beethoven’s No. 18 in E flat major, Op. 31, No. 3. Then I just drove, every now and then taking glimpses at the wintery scenery with the large conifer trees draped in blankets of snow. I saw a large car coming down the road that looked to be going very fast. When it was about to pass me it suddenly drifted into my lane. I saw the driver of the other car look at me with the expression of regret. Yelling and screaming, I saw his hands try to steer out of the way but it was too late. I hit the car head on. I could hear the crunch of the metal smashing and feel the adrenaline rush to my head. The seat belt dug into my flesh. Then all of a sudden the airbags exploded, and the back of my head hit the headrest at what feels like 300 miles per hour. My car spun in a circle four times before going down a small, but steep, hill. I tried hitting the brake, but instead I hit the gas pedal and propelled forward into a ponderosa pine tree. By the time I hit the tree the airbags already deflated, and my head smashed forward and hit the steering wheel. It felt like my body was ripped in half, and my skull broke into millions of pieces, leaving the oozing sludge of what was once my brain all over the dashboard. All I could think about was how to get out of the car before anything else happened to me, but I couldn’t move. I was stuck in between crushed aluminum and and a tree. The only thing I remember after the crash is seeing the world through my eyes, then being pulled backwards quickly through blackness—like going through a very long tunnel backwards, or backwards through a dimension of nothingness.

The next time I woke up, which was five days later, I was in a hospital room surrounded by flowers and medical equipment that was hooked up to numerous parts of my body. I could feel tubes down my throat,  IV’s in my arm, and something almost like a wrap on my head. I tried to move my hand, but I couldn’t even swallow. I tried screaming but nothing would come out. That’s when I saw my beautiful mother looking out the window with tears in her eyes. She walked over by my bed and sat in an old wooden hospital chair with the most uncomfortable looking cushion on it. She entwined my hand between hers, and it felt like the best feeling in the world, knowing that she was there for me. I tried to squeeze her hand, but my fingers wouldn’t move. I started to become frustrated and tried to find some way to communicate, but I failed. She stood up, wiped her eyes, kissed my bandaged forehead and walked out the door. My eyes drooped like they weighed twenty pounds, so I closed them and drifted off.
People came to visit me off and on for the next few months, nurses, friends, family, and people that I didn’t know. Everyone always left in tears. I tried to show them that I was still here, but no one would notice. I could tell what people were saying because I was now superior at reading lips. My mother would always tell them that I got into a horrendous car crash, and I had brain surgery to fix the hemorrhage that was causing my brain to swell. Unfortunately I had gotten to the hospital too late and too much damage was already done to my brain, so I fell into a coma which effects my voluntary movements and my muscles. A few weeks later I eventually started to breathe on my own and didn’t need life support anymore, which was a miracle on its own. That gave my family hope that I wouldn't be in a persistent vegetative state for the rest of my life
I started getting lonely, not being able to communicate in any way that anyone would understand. I thought about what was going on at school and wondering if my dog, Willow, missed me. I could hear whispers from the nurses gossiping about their husbands and other patients on a regular basis.  I saw my little four year old brother, Michael ask why I was sleeping for so long and that he wanted to listen to me play the piano again. He didn’t understand that I couldn’t move or communicate. The first time he came to visit me he didn’t even recognize me and he was frightened when he figured out that it was his sister’s bruised face.
One day in late May my best friend, Willa, came to visit me. She sat next to my bedside talked to me about school, her life, and our memories that we had together. She paused and wiped her eyes. I could see her tell me that she felt like she was talking to a dead body because I couldn’t move, laugh, or respond back to her. She said I looked like a lifeless statue in a hospital bed. One day, when she was about to leave, she brought back a memory of us playing in the yard when we were thirteen and noticed that my eye twitched. I could hear the chair she was sitting in suddenly move and her screaming for a doctor. When she got a doctor’s attention she told him that she saw my eye move. After a full day of tests the doctors told my family that I can see, think, and feel. I just can’t give a reaction. The doctor also told my mom, that there has been some cases where the patient has made a spontaneous full recovery in this type of coma, called a locked-in coma. My family asked the doctor if I could make a full recovery, and he said that I had a chance of making a recovery, but it was very rare to do so. Even though I couldn’t hear her, I knew she was crying tears of joy. She was trying to find her phone to call family and friends and tell them the good news, but the doctor warned her that there was a chance that I would never fully recover. She still called people to tell them that I could feel, see, and think. That was all she needed to smile once in awhile. I was overwhelmed with joy, knowing that people knew that I could see. That was all I needed to keep fighting.
One day in early June, after countless hours in therapy, I suddenly awoke from my coma. I was so afraid and excited that I quickly ripped six out of seven IV’s out of my arm and hands and pulled the blood pressure cuff off of my arm, which set off an alarm that brought in nurses who saw me bleeding profusely all over the old tile floor. Some of the nurses tried to restrain me while some other nurses went to find some type heavy sedative. At one point I think there were around four nurses lying down on each limb of my body to try and keep me from moving. I was trying to scream the whole time, but my mouth was as dry as the sahara desert, so nothing came out. I started crying, but I couldn’t tell if it was because of happiness or pain.  Eventually the nurse came back with the sedative and put it in my only IV that I didn’t pull out, and I fell back asleep. For 5 additional days I had to work through a slowly dissipating delirium state, during which I had limited motor coordination.The next time I woke up I looked around the room, afraid to move. I wanted to hold onto the feeling of being able to move again, if it was only a dream, but it wasn’t! I sat up in my bed, by myself, for the first time in three months, my body felt weak, but in my mind I felt like the strongest person on the planet. I was smiling from ear to ear, like a child on christmas morning.  I could now fully see what was in the room that I had spent the last three months of my life in.
When I looked behind my bed I noticed there was a tile wall that looked like it had been there since the 1980s. Suddenly, out of nowhere, each tile that I saw had a scene on it. Some tiles contained repeating snapshots of my life, some tiles contained visions of my future self and some tiles contained more direct messages that would only make sense to me. Everything was overwhelmingly fascinating and confusing, and I thought to myself that I must be on at least seven different drugs, but that was okay because I could move, see, feel, smell and breathe. There was just one thing missing. I couldn’t hear anything.
I pulled the string that called the nurses, and two of them rushed in with a crash cart, thinking that someone else had pulled it because I was dying. When the saw me they stopped dead in there tracks, seeing me alive, awake, and sitting up. They whispered to themselves that it was impossible and started slowly walking toward me, trying not to startle me. They said hello and one of them introduced themselves, while the other one went to get the doctor and to call my family. My family rushed in and broke into tears when they saw me, The doctor couldn’t believe it. The doctor did some tests to see why I was deaf, and he said that it was just temporary. It took longer “waking up” than than the rest of my body.
Three days later I left the hospital after some last minute tests, and I was good to go. I had a loving and supportive family that made me keep fighting. When I got home my friends threw a surprise welcome home party for me and gave me special treatments. I  felt like I was a Kardashian for the day, which felt amazing. After many long weeks of physical therapy I gained all of my muscle back in my body, and I was completely independent. I eventually got all of my hearing back, and I felt like a new person. I still remember almost everything from the car accident and everything from when I was in the coma, but to this day I still don’t know whether to keep it in my mind or hide it among the other memories I have.