Maybe it's the odd statue on her bedside table - some kind of canine, sitting at attention, painted in blue and black and red, the texture weirdly... Flat, almost. Like it's been drawn with pen and marker over a photograph of the world. 

Maybe it's the way the odd statue is watching her. 

This is probably the painkillers again, isn't it.

There's something... compelling about the statue, though. It draws the attention. Taylor wants to see its other side. Does the texture look... flat... while being turned round and round?

Exploring the consciousness-altering states achievable via IV in a hospital setting wasn't on her bucket list, but one learns to look for the silver lining.

She turns the statue around - it does indeed look like that from every angle -

And when she turns it back to greet her, it's grinning broadly.

She grins back. Nervously. It's an odd impulse but being left alone also seems to have left her very disinhibited.

And it's better to deal with a grinning statue than - no, not going there. Statue it is.

It was grinning all along, wasn't it. Must have been. She puts it carefully back on the nightstand. She has a feeling the statue won't appreciate being discarded carelessly on its side.

"Are you a dog," she wonders. But her mouth is dry and it comes out as a cough. "Are you a woof, whoof?" Very funny, Taylor.

Her father left a bottle of water on the table. She has to stand up to reach it, careful not to tug the IV tubes. It feels like whenever she moves her body, she has to remember to stop or she'll go flying off into the distance.

When she turns back to where the statue was, it -

- Has been replaced by a life-sized version, a living version, standing at her bedside, grinning face much too close to her.

That is rather *more* than she expected from hospital drugs!

It must be safe, if they left her alone... with a statue... that is now moving... Taylor abruptly decides she wants off this ride.

If she closes her eyes and lies back it will go away, right? Or at least she won't see it.

...The things she sees with her eyes closed are less pleasant than that. She does not want to be alone with her thoughts.

"Distract me", she says to the statue. Maybe this will be the fun kind of hallucination. Those exist, right?

"Certainly!" says the definitely-not-a-statue. "I will tell you my favorite stories!"

Taylor will listen to the hallucinated notastatue!

Stories aren't borderline scary the way visual illusions can be. And a good story can be very distracting. 

These stories all seem to be about talking coyotes doing fantastical things! Like being tasked with putting stars in the sky and then getting bored and scattering them everywhere, or stealing the moon, or inventing weapons so people could hunt animals, or inventing language so people would be divided and fight each other, or tricking and defeating great famine monsters in order to rescue grateful villages, or tricking people into helping the coyote steal their own horses...

Taylor is successfully distracted!

She thinks she's read stories like this before. A book chosen in the library at random, on a slow summer day, the year before her mother died. Back when life seemed to work. Traditional stories from... somewhere? She can't recall where.

She thinks gratefully into the memories. 

This lasts until her father comes back. He looks defeated. She's lying in the bed again and he doesn't look at her closely as he sits down, in the middle of a story about a coyote who wanted to keep humans warm in winter. He brought them fire, but they did not know how to keep it, and burned down their house. He brought them firewood, but they used it up to rebuild their house, and had nothing left for the fire. So he brought them stars from the moon-river, which would keep them always warm; but the stars did not spread like fire, so the humans fought over them and killed each other until only two were left.

Taylor wants to hear the end of the story, but her father talks over it, like he can't hear the coyote speaking. The school had offered a settlement. They'd pay her medical bills if they didn't bring any charges. He's talking to himself, not to her, working himself up into a righteous fury. Angry at himself for accepting. Angry at the world for giving him no choice. What good is his anger to her? 

"Stop it", she whispers. "I'd rather be in a story than here."

Coyote laughs, a harsh, jarring sound. "Do you want be in one of my stories then, Scarab Girl?"

"My life sucks and I don't want to go on living it", she says plainly.

Her father breaks off his tirade. He'll probably recover in a moment.

But a moment is all Taylor needs to take Coyote (who is not a statue at all anymore) into her arms and press him against her chest with all her strength. She presses her face into the top of his head for good measure.

The Coyote grins wide enough to split its face.

"Wish granted," it says, and the world - 

Lurches - 

And then Taylor's in her bedroom, sitting on her bed. The IV line and bag fall onto her covers with a 'thump.'

That is rather more literal than she expected from a bunch of steroids and painkillers!

Taylor looks warily around. It's hard to be scared, alone in her own bedroom in her favorite Miss Militia pajamas, except that she shouldn't be there.

Neither should the IV bag. Does she need to... hold it up over her head? Is she going to leak out into the bag if she doesn't? Did she imagine the bag falling into her lap? Where did it fall from?

She realizes the IV is not quite living up to its name at the moment: it has come free of her arm. On pure reflex, she scrambles to get it (and her arm) off the bed before she drips any fluids onto the sheets.

There's no mark on her arm where it was attached. In fact, all the wounds and abrasions from... yesterday seem to be gone. She feels fine, physically and - surprisingly - mentally as well. Centered, lucid, and even more or less calm. (This is a worrying observation that should perhaps make her less calm than she is.)

She looks around, feeling increasingly bizarre. It's clearly her bedroom, but some of the details are - not as she remembers them. There's a book she's never read on the bookshelf. It's one she wanted to read but never got around to; a perfectly normal book you would expect to find in a Taylor's bedroom, dog-eared with use. Anyone but her would probably be fooled.

She opens the book warily. It contains exactly what the cover promises, a fun romp through Arthurian legend with a side of Socialist commentary.

She's not sure what she expected. Blank pages? A subtly different text (that she wouldn't notice because she hasn't actually read this book)? The stained pages seem to mock her. She can be a messy reader, and hates that about herself - her mother taught her to love books - and it's unfair that she now has to blame herself for messing up a book she didn't even get to read.

She turns back to her bed - and jumps. The coyote hallucination is back. It's lounging in her bed, and grinning.

Taylor holds out the IV bag, as if to ward off an evil spirit. The coyote keeps looking at her. Eventually Taylor feels awkward enough (and her arms are tired enough) to put it down on the floor and pretend this was her intention all along.

"Am I really hallucinating this", she wonders out loud.

Coyote laughs. "No, Scarab Girl! You see things as they are - now."

"Are they going to stay this way? This is better than the hospital but if I'm hallucinating or dreaming or whatever this is, I don't want things to keep changing." Talking to a hallucination isn't crazy if you know it's a hallucination, right? Even if it disagrees.

"They will! Your wishes are permanent - and each may only be granted once."

This is starting to really scare her. She feels completely normal, like this is really happening! Did she get brain damage in there, with the insects - 

If she can't trust her own mind, what can she trust?

Her dad. Hah. No, actually, that's a valid idea. Danny Hebert might not be a good solution to school bullying, but she can rely on him to tell her if she's going crazy, or if... What? That's the only possible explanation, right?

Maybe they told him something at the hospital about this. She'd have just forgotten it, like she forgot the discharge itself.

Taylor opens the door and calls for her father. Loudly, before she can lose her nerve.

"Taylor?" he calls up the stairs, sounding like he's stepping out of the kitchen. "What is it?"

"Hi dad! I think I might have gone crazy after being stuffed in a locker with horrible rotting stuff. You don't see a coyote on my bed, do you? Well, I do, and it keeps TALKING TO ME" -

- is what Taylor doesn't say. It feels, suddenly, like speaking will make it real. She doesn't want to acknowledge it. 

If the coyote was real, her dad would have seen it. Back in the hospital room. On the ride home. She remembers now, how he talked and she couldn't hear him over the coyote making a joke. Is this going to be her life now, seeing things, hearing things, being too scared to admit it -

Stop. Breathe. She's better off than she was yesterday. She's up a coyote and down a hospital and isn't that a good trade, really?

"Taylor?" her dad asks, coming into view. "Did you want something?"

"Do you remember when I got that book?" It's the only thing she can think to ask, right now. 

" - Last week, unless I've gotten my dates mixed up. The afternoon of your first day back to school." He wrinkles his forehead like he's trying to do math about the exact date. 

Her first day back to school was also her last day back at school. Did she read this book when she was in the hospital? And forget all about it, like she has the trip home?

"I think I've forgotten some things", she says. Honesty is a process, not a destination, right? "I'm not sure what I've been doing since... the start of the school year. Can you sit down with me and tell me about the last week?"

Hopefully she won't have to mention anything embarrassing that didn't actually happen. Deal with shitty reality, before dealing with hallucinations on top of it. It's a plan, at least!

- Small frown. "Are you okay?" he asks with concern.