Until she was 18, her life was as good as it is to any teenagers. She had dreams, she had a boyfriend and she had a loving family. She was not the most famous girl in school, but she was not unknown either. She had a couple of close friends and people she talked to.
At 18 she graduated from high-school. She hated that high school. Some of her teachers had probably ended up there because they had nowhere else to go. But she still managed to get sufficient grades. She had even managed to pass the exam and to get admitted to a nursing program that she started 3 months after her 18th birthday. The first months were tough but she managed, and she even made some great friends.
She had met her boyfriend in high school. She and Jonathan had been dating for almost a year. Everybody said they made such a cute couple. Her life was not perfect. But she loved it. Until that day. Until December 24th, until Christmas eve of that year.

She was driving home, with presents for her parents and siblings in the trunk. It was a small road, and the radio was full of happy songs and Christmas carols that she sang along with. She was in a great mood; it had been a while since the all family had been reunited. With studies and life it's always hard to have 3 grown up children at home at the same time. She was 5 kilometers away from home. 5kms away when a car drove in front of her at full speed. Five tiny kms left, but the other car was on the wrong side of the road. She was almost home when she tried to avoid it. The abrupt movement on her wheel sent her towards a patch of black ice. Panicked, she tried to brake, sending the car spinning. It hit a tree on the side of the road with the painful sound of broken glass and crushed metal.
The other car? The driver had attained a level of alcohol that would make any cop scream. He thought that a deer had crossed the road, or maybe it was only a hallucination. He went on his way laboriously, but made it home in one piece, meeting no one on the deserted road. He left an 18 year old Celia behind him, crushed in a vehicle that had turned into a trap. The car was upside down, instinctively she had protected her face with her arms. She was surrounded by splinters and colorful and shiny packages that she had carefully wrapped that very morning. Her clothes were stained by her own blood.

She had lost a lot of blood before a car driving by and going home like she had stopped. She was losing blood when the man came running toward her and called an ambulance. She was laying there, unconscious as the sound of the ambulance followed by a helicopter could be heard in the quiet countryside. The firefighters were quick but they had to cut through the layers of iron to get to the young girl. She was in a precarious state, a pool of blood staining the grass, the forgotten Christmas packages, and the hands of the emergency team. But she was still alive when they reached the hospital, barely but still alive. She was hanging on the edge between life and death.
Was it because it was Christmas Eve? Or was it because her parents prayed with all their heart in the waiting room for the life of their daughter? Was it a sign of God or just a twist of life? What it was doesn't really matter. What matters is that she was still alive when the doctors went to talk to her parents after a long wait.

She woke up to a new year. The doctors had put her in a forced coma to lower the effects of the shock and give some time to the body to recover from the long hours of surgery she had undergone.
Her throat felt dry, she had a tube in her nose, and a machine was making sure she breathed right. Every time the air filled her lungs she felt like a punching bag facing Mohamed Ali. Pain. Her body was only pain. She tried to open her eyes; it was like they had been glued shut with sand. She managed it only for a second, the light dazzling her, then her vision blurred and she fainted. The pain was too strong.
When she woke up again, nurses and doctors were hovering over her. At first she could only hear some kind of quashed sound, and she saw a blur of colors as her eyes opened. The pain wasn't as strong. A new perfusion of morphine had been put by the nurse. As her body slowly came back to life, so did her senses, and the faces were not as blurry. She tried to speak but almost choked as her mouth was covered with an oxygen mask, helping her to breathe.

"Don't move, don't move." Said a voice she didn't recognize. "You are in the hospital, just stay calm." Calm? She sure did as she fell asleep again, exhausted by the simple act of opening her eyes and listening to all that noise.
It took a couple more days for her to be able to keep her eyes open and for the sounds around her to start making sense. She recognized her parents, her older sister and brother and her beloved Jonathan by the side of her bed several times. But it was too brief for her to react. When she fully regained consciousness she was on her own and started panicking as she saw her body surrounded by transparent plastic tubes, intravenous devices, something that looked like a breathing machine, a little plastic element was tied to her finger to check her pulse and was linked to another machine with an annoying beeping. She could see the rate of her own heart rising on it and soon the steps of someone else could be heard, and the voice of a nurse followed it, calling the doctor. The nurse added some drugs in her IV and Celia calmed down right away.
"We are going to take out the mask and see how you deal without it. You are going to have to breathe by yourself again. Let's see if you can do it." A gentle hand took the plastic devices away from her. The skin was sore and sensitive. But Celia didn't groan. It was hard at first to breathe again. After all, her body had been breathing through a machine for the past few days. But she managed.

"Don't try to speak yet. It will only hurt. You need to drink." The same voice said using some sort of dropper to let fresh liquid soothe her dry mouth and throat.

Celia tried to speak. But her voice was hoarse and it hurt. She did manage to let out of few words though.
"What happened?"

The nurse gave her a sad look before she answered. "You were in a car accident. You're at Althea's hospital now."
"Do you remember who you are?" She tried to nod, but her neck seemed stuck and hurt, so she just answered in a croaky voice.

"My name is Celia Malory, I'm 18 and studying to be a nurse, I have two siblings and-"

"That's good, that's good. I don't need any more." She said with a smile. "I'll go tell Dr Douglas that you are fully awake and able to talk. Do not try to move though. The accident was pretty rough and your body needs rest."

"What do I have?"

"Only the doctor can tell you." I'll go get him.
She waited for only a couple of minutes, but it seemed like an eternity until a man in his late 50's entered the room. He had white hair and grey eyes, with a thin mouth, giving him a severe look. He looked at the documents he had in his hand before walking towards her.

"Hello young lady, we're glad you're awake." He said with a smile. "I guess you are curious to know about your condition, your parents already know about it by the way." She was about to open her mouth but the doctor continued with a voice that he didn't quite manage to make cheerful.
"When you arrived here you were in a pretty bad condition and had to undergo serious surgery. You had suffered severe blood loss so we gave you a blood transfusion. You were cut and bruised because of the glass splinters and the pressure of the broken car on your body, but those shouldn't show much now, luckily you protected your face with your arms, so there is no damage there, you wont need esthetic surgery. You had a lot of contusions too." Then he paused. "We did radios and an MRI after we stopped the bleeding. You have three broken ribs, therefore you might experience some pain in your breathing, you are under morphine to help it though, so don't hesitate to let the nurses know if the pain becomes too great. The scanner showed no brain damaged and with what the nurse told me, I'm not too worried about your mental state. In a way you are doing much better than most people after such a car accident." He stayed silent for a couple of minutes again.

Doing better? Is he kidding me? What should I be? Dead? Ok, where does it get bad? Celia thought, feeling that the doctor was avoiding something.

"What we are worried about is your spinal cord..." At those words, she felt like her heart was stopping. She wanted to cover her ears, she didn't want to hear what was coming. She could see the look of pity he had, she could hear his tone of voice. She somehow knew what was coming, although her brain tried to push the idea far far back.

"The broken ribs in the area of your lumbar vertebraes created a severe hematoma, a swelling. It's pressuring the spinal cord. It is quite possible that you might have lost the use of your legs." The words sank deep in her heart and brain, just like a ice cold wave.

"Possible you say?" She asked, clinging to the slightest hope she was given.

"Well with those kinds of injury it takes at least 3 months before you can make a more definitive diagnostic. You could have lost everything, or lost the use and not the feeling in your legs. You could also be lucky enough to recover everything as the hematoma gets absorbed, but I have to be honest, there is only a very slight chance to that. I'm sorry."

She was used to the medical talks. His fake concern made her want to throw up. She felt anger exploding in her. For god's sake! She was the one who might never walk again. Not him. She hated that face.

"Why do you care?" she snapped at him. "You don't even know what it is to learn such a thing. You're walking on your fucking two legs for what I see. So don't be all kind and nice to me because you have no idea what I'm going through. Now get out of my room. Get out." She said, her voice breaking, fighting back her tears. She would not let them see her cry. But they didn't give her a chance to. A nurse came in to give her an injection and she drifted into sleep. Her world was falling to pieces around her. And no one could stop her destruction.