Beep. Beep.

The monitor beeps constantly, softly and gently. She glances at it, but doesn't see it. It says she's healthy, that her heart is pulsating normally, like it should. But she knows, the monitor's lying. Her heart isn't all right and she's not healthy. Machines aren't alive; can't they tell she isn't either?

The girl wearily turns her head to the side again, trying to look out the window. Cars pass by on the freeway outside the hospital, and people rushing, rushing, rushing. The sun is glaring overhead, and the sunny day seems all too perfect. But it's not. She tries to lift her arms, but they're too heavy. The bandages that bind her wrists lay limply at her side.

A nurse comes in this time, carrying a small tray of hospital food. Her bouncy brown hair frames her round porcelain face. She's perky for a nurse, happily feeding the patients who can't eat for themselves and soothing the weary hearts in the hospital. She's a doll, so pretty and perfect and dull that it sickens the girl with the bandages on her wrists.

"Do you think you can eat today, Sarah?"

The girl almost flinches at the use of her name, but nods, even though it's a lie.

"All right. Bon appetit!"

The nurse skips away, leaving the tray on the small table next to the sterile white bed. Sarah stares at it, blankly. She wonders what she's supposed to do with it. Food is a foreign thing to her, so remote and useless that she's sure it's just another decoration for the bland hospital room. She hasn't eaten in the few days she's been here. The nurses haven't noticed, though. Her uncle stumbles in her room sometimes, and 'eats' the foreign things that lie on her table.

Sarah turns back to the window, staring blankly at the glass.

Beep. Beep.

The monitor's at it again.