I can’t believe this happened.

Jane isn’t the type to get black out drunk. Sure, she likes to go out and have a good time. But she knows her limits.

Now she’s lying in a hospital bed, unresponsive, out to the world.

I’m sitting next to her in an uncomfortable hospital chair, completely frazzled.

The nurses gave me some strange looks when I came in. I obviously looked like I’d just had sex, with my hair completely disarranged and my clothes hastily put back on. Whatever, I could care less what they think about me right now. I just care about Jane.

“Is she going to be OK?” I frantically asked the nurses, but they just ignored me, walking by me and doing what they had to do to make sure that Jane was OK. That’s fine with me. I just want Jane to be OK.

My mind is somewhat in a messy turmoil from the experience I had with Shane. It was the hottest sex… or whatever it was… that I’ve ever had. My mind and body are still completely reeling from what he was doing to me, from the way he was making me feel.

I fall asleep some time late into the early morning. Jane is still passed out when I fall asleep.

My dreams are something strange, something that I only sort of remember. I’m running down a corridor holding something in my hands. It’s something precious, something that I’m clutching to my breasts like it’s the most important thing in the world to me. I’m running away from something, running and running until my legs want to give out from fatigue. But I can’t stop. I know I can’t stop because the thing is going to get me, whatever it is. I don’t even know who’s coming after me, but what I do know is that they want to do something bad to me. The end of the corridor is approaching but I never seem to make it all the way there, no matter how fast I go. My legs are tiring and the light is at the end of the tunnel but I know I’ll never reach it. I look down finally to see what it is I’m clutching so preciously against my chest. Somehow it’s the top of a grandfather clock, an old one, hundreds of years old. And it’s ticking away and suddenly I see that there’s a huge bundle of red cartoon-like dynamite attached to it by some frayed wires.

I wake up with a start. I look around the room, trying to figure out where I am.

Then I remember what happened the night before.

“Jane?” I say, getting up sleepily out of my chair. I’m dead tired and my legs feel like I was running all night… The dream haunts me, hanging at the edges of my waking consciousness. But I shake it off. It’s just a dream after all.

“Hey,” says Jane, groggily, looking up at me.

“Wow,” I say. “You look terrible.”

Her eyes are sunken and there are dark circles under her eyes. It looks like she’s aged years in a single night.

Jane laughs. “Same old, Lia,” she says.

“How are you feeling?” I say.

“Terrible,” she says. “But I’m more concerned with how I look now that you…”

“You’re probably just dehydrated or something,” I say. “You’ll look as good as new with a couple of glasses of water in you and a good breakfast.”

“I don’t know what happened,” says Jane. “I was drinking at one of the frats…”

“I didn’t even know you were going out tonight,” I say.

“Yeah,” says Jane. “Some guy invited me out.”

“Pretty romantic night,” I say. “A night out at the frats.”

“Well, beggars can’t be choosers.”

“You’re definitely no beggar.”

“Maybe I am now,” says Jane. “I don’t even want to look in a mirror.”

“You look fine,” I say. “I’m sure you look better than 99% of the people that wake up after a night like that. So they said you had your stomach pumped. Did you drink too much? That doesn’t sound like you, Jane.”

“That’s not me,” says Jane. “I only had one beer. Maybe a sip of another drink that someone handed me…”

I groan. “Jane!” I say, in an admonishing tone. “Are you serious? You took a drink out of some cup that you didn’t even know…”

“It was a bottle,” says Jane.

“You realize that you were roofied, right?”

“That makes the most sense,” says Jane.

A nurse pokes her head into the room.

“Knock, knock,” she says, without actually knocking on anything.

She comes in without waiting for a reply.

“How you feeling, honey?” she says to Jane.

Jane barely has her mouth open before the nurse starts talking again, not waiting for a response.

“The lab results are back,” she says. “Looks like you got drugged. GHB showed up in your system in high quantities. Unless you take that stuff recreationally…”

She waits for Jane to shake her head, negating that option, before continuing.

“You should be fine. Make sure to stay hydrated throughout the day, and eat a lot. Protein foods are good. You’ll be fine.”

“What about… is there any long term damage?” says Jane, her voice somewhat tired and faint.

“No, probably not,” says the nurse.

The nurse briefly explains the check out procedure before leaving.

I help Jane go through all the paperwork, which is difficult for her, because she’s incredibly exhausted and more than a little shaken about what happened the night before.

I call a taxi to take us back to our dorm room on campus.

“So tell me about the big date,” says Jane.

“Oh, you don’t want to hear about that now,” I say. “Not after the night you had.”

“I definitely do,” says Jane. “And I know you want to tell me. I can hear it in your voice.”

“You know me way too well,” I say.

I tell her basically everything, except some of the most intimate details. I also leave out the part about having to go to the hospital to see Jane.

But she sees right through it.

“So he was still hard but you didn’t actually have sex?”

In the driver’s seat, I see the driver cocked his ear in interest, but I ignore him.

“Uh, yeah,” I say, not wanting to tell her that it’s kind of her fault. Not that I blame her.

“I’m sorry,” says Jane. “I guess it’s my fault. You probably got the call about me right when…”

“Yeah,” I admit. “But it’s not your fault, Jane.”

“I didn’t have anyone else to list as my emergency contact,” says Jane.

“Just shows that you really do like me,” I say, trying to turn it into a joke.

“That’s what you think,” says Jane.

I laugh.

My phone beeps at me from inside my purse.

“I bet that’s your new man,” says Jane, laughing.

I fish the phone out of my purse.

Sure enough, there’s a text message from Shane.

“Why aren’t you over here yet?” he says.

“You’re not going to ask about my friend?” I write back.

“I hope she’s fine. But I care more about you and your…”

The rest of the text message is so dirty and explicit that I blush and turn off the screen of the phone by pushing the button on the side. I don’t want Jane to see it. I slip the phone back into my pure.

“I’m going to guess that you have a hot date for tonight,” says Jane.

I nod my head. “Actually, it’s for… right now…”

Jane laughs. “You know he doesn’t normally do that, right? It’s like a one shot deal with him. Either you make it or you don’t see him again.”

“I guess he likes me or something,” I say, still blushing furiously. “But I’m going to stay with you today, Jane. You need someone to feed you soup and watch silly movies with.”

“Come on,” says Jane. “You know perfectly well I can take care of myself. You go see him. It’s been too long for you.”

“Shhh,” I say, noticing that the cab driver is paying so much attention that he’s barely keeping his eyes on the road.

“It’s fine,” says Jane. “We’ll just drop you off right there.”

“There? But I haven’t changed or anything…”

“Do you think he cares about that? He wants to be deep inside you and he wants to make you all sweaty… He doesn’t care what you’re wearing.”

Without waiting for me to say anything, or to give a yes or no, she tells the cab driver a new set of directions.

“Sure, thing, honey,” says the cab driver. And I swear he looks at me and gives me this huge, gross, disgusting wink through the rear view mirror.

Gross, I think to myself.

But I’m too excited about another encounter with Shane to actually be seriously grossed out about anything, let alone upset about anything right now.

The cab pulls up to a jolting stop, the driver applying the brakes in a very last minute way.

The dorm looms up in front of us, students of all sizes and types streaming in and out of the entrance.

“I’ll never get used to how many people there are on this campus,” says Jane.

“I know,” says the driver, deciding to include himself in the conversation.

“You sure you don’t need me?” I say to Jane.

“Go get him,” says Jane, giving her best laugh, given the circumstances.

“Hope you feel better,” I say.

“I think you’re going to feel a lot better yourself,” says Jane.

I get out of the cab, and Jane and the taxi driver both give me winks. The taxi driver’s creeps me out.

I walk through the throngs of people and go into the building.

My heart is pounding in my chest as I knock on Shane’s door.