Sean and Mórag discuss why he abandoned his promising career as a violinist. The school nurse worries about Morgan’s anxiety, while Sean battles insomnia before his audition with the Daughters of Danaan. And Kelly seems to exert a profound influence on those around her, even from a coma…

Sean turned once again to look at Kelly lying in her hospital bed, his back toward Mórag.

“Mórag, that was a year ago,” he told her. “But when I didn’t get into Curtis, I put my violin away and haven’t played since.”

“But why?”

“I had learned all I could from my teachers. I needed to go to Curtis, but your friend won the last available seat in the class.”

“Then why not go to another school? I know that both the candidates you placed ahead of won scholarships at Juilliard and the New England Conservatory of Music.”

“I don’t wanna go elsewhere. Philly is my home. It’s where I belong. Those other schools aren’t where I wanna be. I like it here, near my family, friends, the people who love me.”

“But why stop playing?”

“I already answered that, Mórag.”

“No, I don’t think you did. Not the whole story anyway.”

Sean just looked down at the floor a moment, then over at Kelly, then looked Mórag right in her crystal blue eyes.

“My heart’s just not in it anymore. When I didn’t get into Curtis, ’twas devastatin’. There wasn’t anywhere left for me to go here. So I put my instrument away.”

“And that’s it?”

“Yeah, that’s it!”

“Y’ know, Sean, we could use a fiddler in our band, especially one of your caliber.”

“No, I didn’t play fiddle; I played violin.”

“So what’s the difference?”

“Style, technique, répertoire. Even minor differences in the instrument sometimes. The bridge might be cut flatter for a fiddle than for a violin. Fiddle players often prefer steel core strings to other kinds. But now it’s really more the style and tradition than any specific differences between the instruments.”

“I would’ve thought being Irish, you’d have learned some fiddling.”

“No. For me, the violin was always about serious music. My trainin’ was all classical,” Sean explained. “I did my folk music all on the tin whistle. Me dad’s brother was the fiddler for the family band.”

“We’re serious about our music, too,” asserted Mórag, taking slight umbrage at Sean’s remarks.

“What I mean is that since I studied the violin seriously,” clarified Sean, “whenever I played folk, it was for fun. Just for family get-togethers. Picnics, holidays, birthdays. That sort o’ thing.”

“Then for you folk music was for kicking back, relaxing, just a good time?” Mórag smiled, reflecting a moment on her own enjoyment of the music. Sean, indeed, was a kindred soul, perhaps beyond being Irish and a musician.

“Yeah. That’s about right. Ne’er thought about it that way at the time, though.”

“Please, Sean, come and play with us now. We could really use you.”

“Only until Kelly is able to perform with you again, and only on piano or tin whistle. Or on clarinet if you need one.”

“Violin?” asked Mórag.

“No violin,” confirmed Sean. “I’ve put away my violin—for good.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, her face solemn. “You’re letting all that study, such talent—such a gift—go to waste?”

“Sorry, but I just can’t play anymore. Please accept that. I made my decision a year ago. And please, don’t go openin’ an old wound again.”

Sean walked across the room and at his cousin’s bedside again. He held her hand. Mórag took a seat on the other side of the bed. She could see tears in his eyes.

* * * * * * * * *

Morgan walked down the stairs to the school’s basement. The School Nurse’s Office was on that level, between the Health Sciences classroom and the Infirmary. The sign on the door read:

School Nurse
Ingrid Carlson, MSN, Ed.D.

The door was ajar, but still Morgan knocked on it.

“Hello, Nurse Carlson? she queried. “Are you there?”

“Come in please!” answered a voice, pleasantly songlike but perkier than what Morgan felt like hearing at the moment. “I’ll be with you anon!”

Anon? Then Morgan remembered that Nurse Carlson frequently enjoyed acting in Shakespearean theater. Ingrid was deliberately eccentric in selected ways, especially when showing off as a woman. Indeed, she hated wearing “scrubs” so most often wore a short, traditional white dress and nurse’s cap, which Morgan could just glimpse while she waited at the door.

“Is that you, Morgan?” she asked. “Why are you here?”

“Monsieur LaMonte sent me down.” Morgan offered her hall pass to the nurse as she continued, “I think I’m just tired. Haven’t slept much for two nights.”

Nurse Carlson noticed that her patient’s eyes seemed especially tired. “You do look like it’s something more serious than staying up late to study for a test,” she observed, opening the door fully. “Come in, Morgan. Let’s take a look.”

Ingrid asked Morgan to sit upon the examination table and then put a thermometer under her tongue. She then felt for the girl’s pulse and recorded 110 bpm on Morgan’s chart, also writing “Tachycardia“ under Notes. Next, she wrapped the cuff for her sphygmomanometer around Morgan’s upper left arm and began pumping its rubber bulb, listening with a stethoscope. She completed pumping up the cuff and released the valve. When she didn’t like the measurement, Ingrid repeated the ritual, but the result was the same, 168/112 mmHg. She noted “Hypertension, Stage-2” on the chart.

“Girl, your blood pressure is through the roof!” Nurse Carlson said. “Especially for a teenager. Your pulse is racing. I don’t like this—not at all!”

The nurse took and read the thermometer, 98.4° Fahrenheit—no real fever, anyway. Ingrid glanced at the girls hands and saw that they were trembling slightly.

“Headache?”

“No,” answered Morgan, quietly.

“Feeling dizzy? Light-headed?”

“Yes.”

“Which?”

“Light-headed, now. But I felt dizzy coming downstairs.”

Ingrid jotted more notes on the chart. “Miss O’Donnelly, I don’t like this. Together with the insomnia, these symptons suggest, at the very least, that you’re coming off a panic attack. Something going on I should know about?”

“My cousin was hurt in an accident Monday morning. She’s still unconscious. We and our brothers are, like, very close,” replied Morgan. “I haven’t slept much since it happened. None of us have.”

“What’s her name?” inquired the nurse. “I’m guessing that she went to school here?”

“Uh-huh. Her name’s Kelly. Long, curly auburn hair? She and my brother Sean look like twins?”

“So Sean is your brother, Morgan?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“Well, I never connected you with him before,” the nurse confessed. “You and Sean don’t look at all alike.”

“I know,” conceded Morgan. “But Kelly’s older brother Mike and me look more alike than Sean and me do. We’re all really worried about her.”

“Well, I’m concerned as well,” Ingrid said, smiling in sympathy, “but for you. I’m sending you to an urgent care clinic. I don’t want your family to need worry over yet another young lady.”

Nurse Carlson had printed out a set of forms: an academic continuity request and a medical referral order. Protocol in this case required that she immediately refer Morgan to a qualified medical facility for treatment and that the school provide transportation directly there. The academic continuity form listed her classes and requested that each of Morgan’s teachers send her assignments to the school’s main office where they would then be available for pick-up or delivery.

“I’m sending you to urgent care at County General,” Ingrid told her patient.

“Could you send me to Saint Bonnies, instead?”

“But County General is closer,” the nurse observed. “Why Saint Bonaventure’s?”

“County General may be closer to the school, but Saint Bonnie’s is closer to home,” explained Morgan. “That’s where Kelly is and it will be easier for Mom and everyone to meet me there.”

Ingrid smiled at that and changed data in her computer, which then printed out a new medical referral form for Morgan. The nurse signed it, then tore a blank form off a pad of hall passes.

“Can you call anyone to take you there now?” she asked as she ticked appropriate boxes, dated and signed the hall pass, and gave it to Morgan.

“No,” the schoolgirl answered. “Mom’s at work and my brother’s prob’ly at Saint Bonnie’s already.”

Ingrid tore yet another form from a small pad and filled it out. “This is a request for a transportation voucher. Because this is a medical urgency, the school will pay for your ride. Since you shouldn’t wait for a bus, I can call the taxi while you go to your locker.”

“Then call Lemon-Lime Taxi and ask them to send taxi Number Twelve,” suggested Morgan.

“Why them?”

“Because their cab Number Twelve’s driver is my Sunday school teacher.”

* * * * * * * * *

Sean smiled back at Debbie who was busy cleaning up the two big electric soup kettles from lunchtime. The patrons had gone quickly through it today. Sandra had thought about starting another pot of the lentil soup, but was not certain whether the demand would finish out a third pot. She would usually wait until the customers came in before the evening shift to ask Sean to start the soups for dinner.

“You doin’ okay, sugar?” Debbie asked her coworker in her Georgian drawl, coyly batting her eyes at Sean.

“Yeah, Deb, although I’m not sleepin’ so well as I should be, not wi’ Kelly in the hospital.” Sean stepped in the backroom to get ready for his shift. The barista donned his own apron and hat from their accustomed pegs once again. He had usually worked the same shift with Debbie, but now that he had taken Kelly’s shift, he was actually taking over from Debbie as she ended her shift. But he would need to wear neither Kelly’s cap nor apron today. Nor her girlie blue jeans with the flowery topstitching and the pretty teal lining.

“Well, it was nice of you to switch your shift with hers,” Debbie thanked him. “It made everything easier for both me and Sandra.”

“I’m glad to help out,” he smiled back at his coworker.

Debbie finished rinsing out the soup kettles, usually the last duty to conclude her shift each day. Sandra then addressed him. “Kat’s still out on her lunch break, Sean. Ready to go?”

“Ready,” Sean confirmed tying his apron behind him. “Got a question for you, boss.”

“What?”

“D’you know any of the girls in the band Kelly plays in?”

“Just as customers, mostly,” Sandra answered him, “although I’ve had a couple of classes with Molly. Why?”

“They’ve been askin’ me to sub for ’er while Kelly’s out. I don’t mind helpin’ out for her sake, but their bandleader’s bein’ a real bitch about it, quite frankly.”

“Would that be Fiona?”

“Yeah. They’re supposed to be a ladies’ band and because I look like Kelly, Fiona’s got this idea of dressin’ me up like a girl an’ pretendin’ to be her.”

“Is that why you wore her jeans yesterday?”

“No,” answered Sean. “That was me jus’ not payin’ attention when gettin’ dressed in the mornin’. Unless I was jus’ stressed out from that bandleader not lettin’ up on it.”

Sandra studied Sean’s face seriously for a moment.

“You really do look like her, Sean. I can certainly understand someone thinking she could try to get you dressed up. And I can also understand you not wanting to do it.”

“Ew!” Debbie cringed from eavesdropping on her coworkers’ conversation. “She wanted you to dress like a girl? That’s just—just wrong! Ew!”

“No, it’s not somethin’ I wanna do either, Deb, but it seems to upset you more than it does me.”

“Well, it’s a sin,” she declared.

“Oh?” Sandra uttered in disbelief, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s in the Bible,” confirmed Debbie. “Deuteronomy, chapter twenty-two, verse five. Look it up.”

“Then why did the nuns where I went to school punish boys by making them dress like girls?” challenged Sandra.

Debbie seemed shocked at the very idea. “You guys are Catholic and I’m not,” she said. “I won’t—I can’t explain a nun’s thinkin’ on anything like that. To me it’s just weird.”

“You’re from Georgia,” Sean interjected. “You’ve never had powder-puff football with boys dressed up as cheerleaders?”

Debbie just stood there blushing, looking first at Sean, with a look of disappointment, then at Sandra. “Don’t forget, I’ve switched shifts for tomorrow, so Shelly will be here in the morning.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” replied Sandra, still unsure why Debbie had become upset so quickly. “We’ll see you Friday morning, then.”

“G’bye, Sandra, Sean! See ya Friday!” said Debbie, quickly trying to put her smile back on as she retreated through the back door.

“G’bye, Deb!” Sean returned the salutation as she left. But he still knew that somehow the exchange had left her feeling hurt. Maybe he could talk to her about it again.

After Debbie had gone, Sean reprised his conversation with Sandra.

“So you went to a Catholic school, too?” he asked.

“Only through the eighth grade,” answered Sandra. “But the tuition for the ninth grade was more expensive than we could afford, so I had to go to a public high school instead.”

“That happened to Morgan an’ me, too. After Dad got called up for Iraq—the Persian Gulf, really—his Navy pay wasn’t even close to what he made in business, so we had to go to public schools, too. Same thing for Kelly an’ Mike, too, ’cause ’eir dad got called up the same day for Afghanistan.”

Sandra smiled at me. “That’s too bad, Sean. I would like to have graduated from the parish high school.”

“So would we,” Sean answered rather wistfully. “And y’ know, I’d forgotten all about it, but what you said to Deb happened to me a couple times?”

“What?”

“I got petticoated—by the nuns at school.”

“So they made you wear a dress?” inquired Sandra, staring amazed at Sean.

“Yes. Twice. Well, it wasn’t actually a dress, but a blouse with a skirt or a jumper,” recalled Sean. “Huh?—strange, though, that I’d forgotten about it?”

“What did you do to deserve such punishment?”

“Hmm? Can’t quite remember why? But the first time it was for three days. The next was for two or three weeks, I think.”

“I would guess it was for something serious.”

“I may need to ask Mom,” mused Sean, staring out somewhat distantly into space. “Kelly would know, too. And I’m sure she’d have tried to make it more pleasant for me. Morgan might know, too, since it would have been obvious if I’d been made to dress up for so long.”

“Y’ know, Sean, I think you’d ’ve made a pretty girl, especially with yours hair and eyes,” opined Sandra. “Was your hair as long then as it is now?”

Sean blushed at her remark. “No. But ’twas longer than what many of the girls wore.”

“Anyway, you have dressed up like a girl before?”

“Yeah. Just for the fun of it, though, except maybe for those times at school,” Sean recollected. “We all went out as cheerleaders for Hallowe’en—Kelly, me, my sister, her brother Mike. And me and Mike both were cheerleaders for our powder-puff football tournaments in high school.”

“I’d like to have seen you dressed like that,” smiled Sandra.

“Not likely!” chuckled Sean. “But I did win the Prettiest Cheerleader trophy both years I participated. But I’ve left that sort o’ thing behind.”

“So you don’t really wanna dress up for Fiona’s band, do you?”

“No. Not at all! Did promise to audition for them but they’d hafta lemme perform as myself.”

“Sounds fair enough to me,” agreed Sandra. “Well, I see Kat coming up the street, so we can get ready for the mid-afternoon customers now.”

* * * * * * * * *

Dr. Belknap rushed into the room where Kelly FitzPatrick still slept the sleep of the deeply unconscious. Reading the digital monitors displayed around her, he puzzled once again, knowing that something wasn’t quite as it should be, yet able neither to identify nor to prove what continued calling to his intuition. The monitor for the electroencephalograph was indicating not only increased theta-wave activity, but also near waking levels of beta-waves, even though she remained unconscious.

Suddenly, the neurologist heard clanking and clattering of the bed in the room. He turned to see the girl still sleeping yet attempting stereotyped movement, even though one arm was in a sling. She tried to display arms akimbo, a fist punching overhead into the air, and a salute across her breasts. He guessed that she would clap her hands if both were free. Then her legs began bending and kicking in what he could swear were rehearsed steps. He stepped to the door of the room.

“I need help in here!” he yelled.

The duty nurse engaged eye contact with a floor nurse who then rushed to the FitzPatrick girl’s room and saw the spectacle that Dr. Belknap was observing.

“Quick!” ordered the doctor. “Restrain her before she pulls everything loose!”

The nurse deftly restrained Kelly’s free arm, quickly and almost effortlessly, while Dr. Belknap fought to pin her legs. “What’s she doing?”

“She’s cheerleading, Doctor!” the nurse informed him as she smoothly and gently secured first one foot, and then the other. “Her movements are cheer routines. As much as she can manage in her condition, anyway.”

The neurologist nodded to the nurse. A young woman of that age, so trim, so fit, so athletic with nearly perfect muscle tone… and her family and friends, even her coworkers and classmates seeming to have a stronger bond with her than he’d expected… Of course this girl was a cheerleader!

“Thanks, Heather,” he said. “How’d you know?”

“I was a cheerleader as well as a candy-striper. That’s how I restrained her. I knew the cheer routine and did it with her in my mind. I could feel how and where she’d move next. It was easy to fasten a restraint at the end of each move.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding!”

Dr. Belknap smiled wryly, mentally upbraiding himself for having dismissed cheerleading as silly, even to his own daughters. They’d been pestering him—pleading with him, really, to go to a cheerleading camp in the summer. But now he understood that this activity which he had so often and so readily disparaged, may have helped condition his patient’s mind and body to survive her current ordeal.

“Her unconscious mind was recalling the choreography then,” Dr. Belknap concluded. “I’ve read about this occurring with dancers, gymnasts, cheerleaders, but I’ve never actually seen it happen before now. I think she may be fighting her way out of the coma.”

“Then I should also mention that I saw her lips trying to recite the cheer as well.”

“Thank you, Heather!” he beamed, grabbing a clipboard and then, jotting her observation down, quickly adding two exclamation points, which he then underscored and circled.

Heather had noticed the neurologist relax a moment. He’d really been under stress, not only with Kelly, but also with a couple of other comatose patients who had been completely unresponsive so far. At least now he’d have hopeful news for Kelly’s family.

Just then, Dr. Belknap decided to change his mind about a personal and family matter. He’d send his daughters to cheer camp after all. So it’s silly! Maybe it’s silly in a healthy way, maybe healthier than he had hitherto believed. Silliness and health? Why not? But the doctor could not believe what was in his mind to do next.

In something that seemed wholly out of character for him, the physician came up beside Kelly’s bed and took her leather-cuffed hand in his own, leaned over her and chanted:

Out from darkness into light,
Chasing sunshine, leaving night,
All your courage, all your might,
Forward, Kelly! Fight, fight, fight!

Heather heard him recite it twice more more before squeezing his patient’s hand, taking his clipboard, and leaving the room. The nurse held her hand over her mouth to hide her smile and hold back her giggles, but a moistening in the corner of her eye betrayed yet another feeling, anyway.

* * * * * * * * *

It was not like Sean to skip class. Then again, he had not exactly skipped it. He had gone to class and signed in, but could not maintain his focus during the first session of the lecture. So at break, he had told his professor that he wasn’t feeling well and signed out.

That night a cold, light rain fell on the streets, driven by a strong, persistent breeze. Walking home, Sean felt his senses, his awareness heightened. He pulled his windbreaker tighter, seeming to warm himself more. The sensations felt familiar, yet somehow wrong, as if belonging to another day, another time, deeper somewhere in memory.

Autumn maybe? This cold, wet, spring evening, walking in the streets shared sensations with such a night in October or November.

* * * * * * * * *

Arriving home, he tried to read some more in his Nordic mythography, but still couldn’t concentrate for more than a few minutes.

He had not eaten since lunch and his stomach growled. So, Sean put on a teakettle and, while waiting for it to boil, poured himself a glass of skim milk and opened the package of a small chocolate-covered meal-replacement bar. He washed the bar down with the milk while he waited for the water to reach boiling.

He felt fatigued, indeed very tired, feeling as if he should doze off. Yet he could not rest due to the anxious thoughts about Kelly and what was happening around her.

The teapot whistled and Sean lifted it from the burner and set it down on a formica pad. He dropped an herbal teabag in a ceramic mug decorated with his high school colors and logo. As the tea began to steep, he remembered that he had an audition with the Daughters of Danaan the next day.

Knowing he needed to be fully rested when he woke up in the morning, he decided that he’d take that sleep aid his physician had prescribed him. It was strong stuff, though. He avoided taking it, but he just didn’t think he could get to sleep on his own tonight.

Sean went to the medicine cabinet and retrieved the bottle of—what was it? Zolpidem tartrate? He returned to the kitchen and sat down to the effusion of herbal tea, which was now ready. He took a ten-milligram tablet with his tea, and then relaxed as the herbal frangrance permeated the apartment.

* * * * * * * * *

As the Sleeper’s consciousness vascillated between delta-waves and theta, images again formed in the interface between the conscious and unconscious minds…

The four cheerleaders held their jackets tighter in the rain and wind as they all laughed and giggled together. One of the squad seemed to be, in fact, a teenaged boy dressed in a girl’s cheer uniform, as indeed he was. Although two of the others appeared to be beautiful twin sisters whose vibrant auburn locks were adorned in cascading curls, on closer inspection, one of them also proved to be a boy attired as a girl. He was met by another girl wearing a short black dress, black high-heeled boots, and a broad-brimmed conical hat allowing her platinum blond hair cut in semi-pageboy style to peek out from beneath. She carried a broom whose bristles had been cut, gathered, and bound by her own hand. And a cat whose fur glistened as black velvet followed and danced about her of its own accord.

The boy costumed as the cheerleading twin sister embraced and kissed the platinum-haired witch surrounded by the huddle of their friends, which a princess with gossamer wings and wand had joined along with an angel and a ballerina. Cheers and giggles went up from the huddle as they all hugged together.

The Sleeper was tired and needed rest, so was unable to sustain the theta-waves. The Sleeper’s mind retreated into delta, deeper into sleep…

* * * * * * * * *

Sean rolled over and looked at his clock, displaying “3:47“ with the icon of Miss Moon winking back at him. Yet he was quite unaware that he had read the time, although subconsciously Sean did know it. Then he got out of bed to begin his daily ablutions a few hours early, although he was unaware that when he stepped into the shower, he was wearing his pyjamas.

Zolpidem tartrate had been known to do that on occasion.

Indeed, Sean managed his entire morning ritual while he was essentially still asleep. He even dried his hair in this half-waking, half-sleeping state. Wrapping himself in a large bath towel, he wandered from bathroom across bedroom to walk-in closet to pick his atttire for the day.

* * * * * * * * *

Sandra pulled up in her tiny Korean-made compact car behind the coffeshop, ready to open up Café Tír na n-Óg for the day. No sooner than she had shut the engine down, the soft, cold pre-dawn drizzle had left a stream cascading down her car’s windshield. She grabbed her purse, got out, locked her car, and went to enter through the back door of the building.

Kat and Shelly would be joining her for the morning shift soon, so Sandra immediately set about opening up the shop, first by turning on the lighting and heat. Next, she booted up the cash registers and computer. Then Sandra began grinding the coffee beans afresh before loading the filters and tanks for the row of drip coffeemakers, which she then started up. The drip-coffee underway, she powered the shop’s two espresso machines up and adjusted their valves to prime them for the morning’s business.

She opened the pastry case and carefully inspected the remaining croissants, scones, streudel, and sweetrolls from Wednesday to be sure that it was all still edible. These were sold half-price until the fresh pastries for the day would be delivered, about an hour later. Sandra then took a slightly stale cinnamon bun for her own breakfast before pouring herself the first coffee of the day, adding just a little cream. Cheer in a mug! she thought to herself, smiling.

All that up and running, she was ready to open the door and welcome the morning customers.

* * * * * * * * *

Sean tugged the windbreaker he wore, not his own, to close more tightly about him as he began to awaken ever so slowly. His eyes opened and saw the sign Café Tír na n-Óg in the storefront window, reflecting the glow of a low-intensity sodium streetlamp. He saw, yet did not notice, the lights inside the coffeeshop suddenly begin to glare before closing his eyes again.

He drew his bare legs up tighter beneath himself as they were touched smoothly by the mist that also was caressing his face. As he shivered against the chill and drizzle, Sean felt the occasional droplets of rain striking his cheek and legs. He was in both a real and a metaphorical fog; firstly, the cold, wet, and misty fog of an early morning drizzle; and the fog of a semi-conscious mind, whose awareness of the outer world was still shared with the inner world of dreams. And for some reason, he found this wet chill quietly exhilarating.

So indeed, Sean saw himself wearing the bold, patriotic colors that had been the familiar, happy motif of his high school days. He looked at the red, white, and blue box pleats of the short cheer skirt he wore barely hiding the tight red bloomers underneath, and inside of the matching windbreaker, bearing the device of a megaphone on the left breast inscribed with the name “Kelly,” his eye caught the blue shell trimmed in red and white overtop the warm, white turtleneck bodyliner that he wore.

Although this wonderful collection of sights, sounds, and sensations had been transmitted to him, his mind had not processed the data for his waking state, but instead integrated the images into his dreamworld. So, Sean did not consciously notice that he had curled up on a bench wearing his cousin’s cheerleading uniform, in a cold spring rain, in front of his workplace. Nor would he be aware of where he was and how he was dressed for yet a few minutes.

* * * * * * * * *

Sandra had unlocked the front door when she noticed someone curled up on one of the benches around the patio, partially protected from the rain by the large umbrellas over the outdoor tables. Going over to investigate, she saw a girl, half-asleep, wearing a red, white, and blue cheerleading uniform. She knew that she had seen the uniform before, but having grown up elsewhere, she could not identify the school. Then she caught sight of the distinctively flaming auburn hair, worn in a ponytail with red, white, and blue ribbons, secured by a matching scrunchie. She had recognized the cheerleader.

“Omigosh! Is that you, Kelly?” Sandra cried, dodging benches as she rushed to her friend and knelt next to her. “Are you okay?”

The cheerleader turned toward Sandra. “Huh? Where am I?”

“What?—Sean?”