The alarm wasn’t supposed to go off yet. 


Lucy was not meant to be there. She had so many plans in the coming days, months and years, from travelling to far away lands, to marrying her soulmate, to birthing her children one day. She was leaving for university tomorrow, an adventure in itself that filled her with immense excitement. She was not supposed to be there. 


There was nothing to do but think, think, think in this place. Lucy could see nothing but darkness, hear nothing but silence. But somewhere in the distance, something was calling to her. She didn’t yet know what it was, but she could feel it tugging her, ever so slowly but surely towards it, bit by bit, as the seconds passed. 


How long had she been in this strange place? She did not know. Did time even exist here? She had no way of telling if it had been days, months or even years. But she remembered where she was supposed to be. She remembered her family, her friends, her boyfriend Ryan, her classmates at her sixth form college, her teachers. Her parents home, from which she would be leaving the next day, and the cozy little flat half way across the country where her and her boyfriend would share their first place together. 


Where was she? 

How had she got here? 

These were questions for which Lucy had no answers. 


Lucy cast her mind back to what she did know, her life. She had to get back there, somehow, even if she had no idea how she would do that right now. Someone must be worrying, her mum, her brother, Josh. Someone must be looking for her. 


What were you supposed to do when you were alone in a dark place, unable to hear, unable to see, unable to feel? Thinking was the only thing that she had left. Lucy tried to think of the last thing that had happened before she ended up in this hole, but she couldn’t remember a thing. What chance did she have of getting out of here in that case, if she couldn’t remember how she got in? 


Lucy tried to quieten her mind. She had no answers, so what was the use in all of these questions? She just allowed her brain to wander, maybe with that, she would gain some clarity. She could only hope. 


Her earliest memory was of going to nursery when was 3 years old. How she had clung to her mother with such strength for her small size, and sobbed and sobbed loudly until her mother returned later that day to save her. She had been a quiet child and had very few friends, preferring to play by herself. She had had one friend, a boy, but once they got to the age of 7 or 8,  the other children would gossip about them being boyfriend and girlfriend, so their friendship had come to a halt. Lucy had been embarrassed. She had been bullied throughout school, in fact, because she was shy and smart. She never felt that she quite fitted in with the other girls, and her mother had been quite strict and she hadn’t been allowed to go to any of the teenage parties, even the one after her year 11 prom. 


But, aside from school, she had many fond memories, of travelling abroad with her brother and mother and her maternal grandmother, mainly. She remembered so many summers playing with her brother and meeting Ryan at the park when she was 15 and him 17. She had spent the last 2 years coming out of her shell at a sixth form college and she had grown immensely in confidence. She was going to become a translator, having done exceptionally well in her French studies and falling in love with the country, the culture and the language. She had a small group of friends, who were all going to different universities, but who would all stay in touch and visit each other. 


Lucy had been through some hard times, just the same as anyone else, but she didn’t spend too much time dwelling on those moments now. She thought of her mother’s face, the sound of her brother’s voice, the sensation of her boyfriend’s embrace, the sound of her friend’s laughter. She thought of all of the things she had smelled and tasted and felt and seen and heard, sitting in this pit where you couldn’t feel or smell or taste or see or hear at all. Her memories played on a loop, around and around continuously for some length of time that she couldn’t tell. 

Unbeknownst to Lucy, there was a life growing inside her, too. Her boyfriend, who was a couple of years older than her, was planning to propose to her. But these were things that she would never know. 


The light was coming closer, whatever it was that was pulling her, was pulling her faster towards it now. She was going somewhere, but where? She did not know. It must be better than sitting here in the dark, though, she decided. And so, she allowed the force to take her, the light becoming brighter and brighter until it was blinding. 


Lucy’s mother jumped from her seat next to her daughter’s bed and ran into the corridor of the ICU of St John’s hospital, frantically searching for the nurse. The alarm wailed, piercing her ears and she dropped to the floor in anguish, realising what it meant. She would never be able to forget that sound for as long as she lived. She would never forget this day. Her daughter was not meant to be here. She had had her whole life ahead of her when she was hit by a drunk driver and put into a coma from which she would never wake. 


The alarm, that signalled that Lucy’s organs were shutting down and that her death was imminent, was not supposed to go off yet.