Introduction

It's evening. The sun has gone down, and the sky is rapidly turning darker every minute – pedestrians are in a hurry to return back to their homes. The road is busy with cars holding impatient drivers who've had a long day at work. Shops are closing, couples are sharing their last kiss before their promises to meet the next day, friends are parting. It is the usual, nothing out of the norm. Or it would have been, had not three close friends decided to meet at the very moment when everyone is getting ready to leave.

The brunette and boy arrives together in front of a colorful, and just closed, smoothie shop, amiably chatting to one another. They're obviously waiting for somebody – even through their conversation, they occasionally look over their shoulders as if trying to catch a glimpse of someone. And finally, the boy seems to have caught sight of the last member of their small group; he nudges the brunette, and they both wave enthusiastically at the blonde that appeared on the other side of the road, who is waving back nonchalantly.

With two earphones firmly plugged into her ears, a heavy metal song blasting away, she carelessly steps onto the street after briefly checking her right and left. The red light for the cars is on, after all. Her hands are casually slung in her hoodie pockets, fiddling with her PearPod. She would've made it to where her friends are at so easily, had not the device fallen out of her pockets.

She swears, bending down to pick it up from the zebra crossing. Her friends' calls of sudden uncertainty is drowned out by the solo guitar part she is particularly fond about while she places it back into her pocket easily. Five seconds left – the blonde knows she can cover the rest of the short distance easily between that time.

But nobody could've anticipated what was going to happen next.

A flash of yellow car lights blinding her eyes. A screech of tires. A scream. A crunch. The sound of her PearPod, destroyed. The thud as her body slams onto the bumpy road.

Blackness.

I can't move. I hurt all over. My arms hurt, my sides hurt, my legs hurt – and something is soaking me so slowly, yet so steadily. Something clings onto my hair, my skin, seeping and sticky all over. It's so familiar, but I can't place the word for it.

Why? Why can't I move?

Screams. Yells. The feeling of a crowd enclosing onto the motionless figure on the ground, all talking at once. An elderly man is talking rapidly in his phone for the ambulance.

In the midst of it all, a teenage boy and girl push their way to the crowd. The boy makes it first, being much taller than the brunette – his eyes widen in horror at the sight, before he falls down to the ground on his knees. His hands are trembling by his sides, as are his pale lips, all the color drained from his face like the blood that is pooling out of the fallen blonde.

Soon, another cry is heard – the brunette had finally made her way around. Her big eyes are even larger, and the crowd shifts slightly to give the two teenagers more room. Her screaming has stopped, instead being replaced by endless whimpers of "No. No, no, no, no, no." Despite the blonde's bloodied state, the brunette flings herself around the figure, her friend, sobbing. The boy is frozen in his state, mouth parted to form a terrified 'O'. Salty tears cascade down his ashen cheeks; he, too, refuses to admit that this is real.

That this is so, so real.

I – it hurts. My throat is on fire. My eyelids are heavy – why aren't they opening? I want to scream, to yell, to do anything about the sudden pressure on my chest, abdomen, the upper part of my legs, but I can't hear my voice. Everything is so muffled, like I'm stuck underwater. Everyone's voice is slurred and tied together, an endless string of garbage that even the queen of gibberish, my Aunt Lorelai, wouldn't be able to understand.

The only thing magnified is my pain. I don't ever remember hurting this much; the last time feeling like this was in fifth grade, when a bully named Doug pushed me down the stairs, efficiently breaking my ribs and God remembered what else. At least I'd got him back. At least I had been able to scream.

The silence only adds salt to the open wounds, which are bleeding, and bleeding, and bleeding. Blood – that was the word I was looking for. That red stuff I had scoffed yet during Biology 1 – scoffing at the very thing that made us live. I'm losing blood; what else could explain the exhaustion that wrecked my body hand-in-hand with excruciating pain?

I'm so cold.

The crowd finally parts again when they hear the sound of the ambulance. Men climb out of the ambulance van, with two other men pushing the ramp in front of them. The only people that have remained in their same positions are the boy, brunette, and the injured blonde. "Shit," one of the men lets out, watching one of his crew helping the numb boy off the ground – the brunette is harder to clear from the area. He takes it to his hands as he gently eases the brunette off the blonde's body. It is harder than he had thought it would be – the brunette's grip on the patient continues to be unwaveringly strong until he mutters, "This will only cause her to lose more blood, ma'am." It's true – and he's relieved she's let go and allows him to move her out of the way too, so that his men have a clear route from the injured girl to the ambulance.

The process of lifting her up gingerly from her fetal position on the ground to the ramp is quick, but he can see it in his fellow crew members' eyes that they are troubled by the amount of blood lost already. It goes without asking that the two teenagers – the boy and the hysterical brunette – follows onto the ambulance van too. They get on in a hurry, and the man closes the door once they've all climbed on, the siren above whirring loudly as they race towards the hospital.

And they all knew who they were racing against. An unseen figure that could only be felt; a figure the hospital has met face-to-face with countless of times. Time – and death.

Just like my wish, the pressure that had been suffocating me is lifted – but as soon as it's gone, I know that I need it again. Because the sudden feeling of unimaginable pain at the absent pressure makes the previous pain seem like nothing. I want to scream, to bash the idiots causing all this that it hurts like hell, anything – but then, I no longer feel the rough ground underneath me.

I'm flying. That must be it. I must be dead.

Then why can I still feel like I'm under torture? Death was supposed to be painless.

Something is poking through my skin – why? Don't these horrible dingbats realize I'm suffering? The irony of it all makes me want to laugh, even if I no longer am in control of my muscles; the sounds are still buzzing noisily in my ears, yet I can hear the sound of my skin tearing under the attack of the torturous tools they're using on me.

Why can't they just leave me alone?

I can feel myself flying again – the wind is flying through my blonde curls. And I can smell the place; Freddie's apartment? The clean smell that tingles my nose everytime I head over to his place is unmistakably what I'm smelling right now. The nub. Out of all the places he leaves me to die at, it's at his place…

The two teenagers trail desperately after the men who are pushing the ramp towards the emergancy ward, tired eyes zoomed into the limp blonde that they're carting away into the surgery room. They know they have to stay outside, but even so, they still try to push themselves past the firm man with a mask to join their best friend. They've never abandoned each other, never in a time of crises; they weren't going to start abandoning her now.

But after a minute of useless struggling, they give up, dejected and drained. The brunette is sobbing again, silently this time – the boy's face is weary now, the look of an old man as he silently puts an arm around her and lead them towards the chairs. Both of them sink into the chairs heavily; the brunette continues to let her body tremble with silent cries.

Doctors, patients, nurses, and families pass by, some eyes watching the two teenagers with pity, some averting their gazes somewhere else, knowing that privacy was a treasured, important thing. But nobody went out of their way to console them, to ask what the matter was – this was the hospital. Death was a regular occurrence, even if the best surgeons fought an intense battle with it every second of every day. People died. Death was inevitable.

Death lingered by them, lurking from behind the corridors, watching – waiting, like they were.

Drowsy. That's how I feel. Disoriented, like someone had spiked the punch bowl and I'd drunk ever drop of it.

Except this felt a hell lot worse. The pain was gone, that much I figured; the urge to yell at the top of my lungs had disappeared. Everything was clearing up, yet still just as foggy – my vision was no longer of red and black, but of white.

Pure, blinding, blank white.

"Carls? Freddork?" To my surprise, my own voice rung clearly, the end having a strange tinge of an echo – as if I was in a cage. Trapped. I rubbed my eyes as I sat up with a groan, the motion coming so naturally to me that I blinked at my hands in shock. Hadn't I been completely helpless before? I took my eyes off my hands to see if there was some damn switch I could find to flick off the white before it blinded me. There was nothing. Nothing but a huge, empty space of freaking white.

A new sense of desperation washed over me. I didn't like this. Didn't like this one bit.

"Spence? Lewbert? Mom? Crazy?" Had there been other people around, my uneasiness would have been clear – I had to call Frednerd's mother, for one. I was on my feet now, mildly relieved even in this situation to find that my clothes were unbloodied, my muscles and joints having the kind of stiffness I usually get from sleeping more than twelve hours. No cuts, no bruises, no scars. Just like before – before –

Before…

Before what?

"Shit." What had happened to me?

"My baby. My sweet, sweet baby."

Carly and Freddie simply look on with separate looks of anguish on their faces as another woman – Sam's mother – weeps over the fragile-looking blonde that lies still on the bed. The teens resist the urge to turn their heads away from the scene. Sam wasn't supposed to look fragile and weak; even in her sleep, Carly knew that Sam continued to restlessly beat everything in sight, a smirk lingering throughout her slumber. Freddie, being the number one punchbag the blonde has always turned to, has never seen her look vulnerable. Never. Not when other slags in the school had bitched about her to her face, not when she's over at Carly's again because her mother wasn't at home for the third time that week, and she didn't have the keys to let herself in.

Spencer is the only one trying to comfort the weepy woman, his face contorted in a mixture of sympathy and pain – this was one of his kiddos that had a good throwing arm and an equally accurate aim to boot. This was the kiddo he relied on as a human garbage disposal when nobody wanted to eat his new eccentric dish, not even himself. This was the kiddo…

The doctor stays by the foot of his patient's bed, checking recent datas of his patient and making sure her heart beat is stable. It will take a while, he had told them minutes before, trained to hold eyecontact with the people in the room despite the sadness that pushed down on them all – it all came with the job. While her body is stabilized, her mind has not. It may take weeks, months even; all I can suggest now is visitors often drop by to keep her updated on the current happenings, to see if we can bring her back. And by the looks of those four people in the room, including the young, young teenagers that had been misfortuned to have their innocence taken away by such a cruel act of fate, the doctor knows this patient would have a line waiting to visit her.

And he is pleased – or as pleased as one can get in such an unfortunate event. He would pray, with them and for this girl. A great pity; his children loved iCarly, and through them, he'd recognized the patient's name immediately. Such a lively girl with great energy, he mused to himself, letting out a long sigh before quietly leaving the room to give them all the privacy they needed. I can only hope she gets out of this well.

Nobody speaks for a moment after the doctor's exit; even Mrs. Puckett's sobs had quietened down. All eyes are trained onto Sam's body, each so desperately wishing, hoping, even expecting the blonde girl to pounce up and announce it was all a joke while demanding for some food.

That didn't happen. Out of all the times, Sam, Freddie thinks, burying his head into his hands like Carly has, you have to be serious about this. And he, along with everyone in the room, wishes that this was all a joke. But this was reality. This was real. They were slowly beginning to realize that, however reluctantly they may.

I can't remember what'd happened to me. Where am I? This place reminds me too much of where they'd locked my Uncle Joe in years ago. How did I get here? Why had I been so surprised that I'd been able to move before?

This place certainly wasn't Seattle.

After aimless wandering, I finally sat down again, one hand absently rummaging through the pocket of my hoodie to take out a packet of Fat Cake. Food. Mmm. Freddie and Carly could wait for me a little longer – even if they'd complain to me later, they would wait by the Groovie Smoothie until I'd arrive. It was just going to be a little brainstorming session of our next iCarly episode. Licking my lips, I tilted my head to the side, eyebrows knitted in concentration. I swear I could've heard a beeping noise.

No matter. Fat cakes are more important right now.

Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. They were all so exhausted. The only thing that broke the silence was the monotonous beeping of the heart monitor.

Disclaimer: I do not own iCarly. I only own this plot, and the random OOC characters and their characterizations.

A/N: Hey people! It's my first iCarly fiction, yayy! Anyway, this is the introduction of a plot that had been in my head for quite some time now – I hope you all liked it. The next chapter should be around… soon. Can't make any promises, but by the latest would be next month. The italicized words are the current happenings, while the normal, non-italicized words are in Sam's POV. It might be a little strange to you right now... It might become clearer in the next chapter, I hope - if it isn't, I'll explain it all in the next author's note.

I'd love to know your thoughts and feelings on this! Thanks!