[After this.]

She comes to in an ambulance, screaming.

She can see the mouths of the EMTs moving, vaguely knows that that means they must be speaking to her, but she can't hear them, can't hear anything over the roar of voices in her head.

She can barely hear her own thoughts in the din, but she thinks she manages to say, "Make them stop."

After that, she doesn't come to again for a while.





When she wakes up again, she's in a hospital, with an IV in her arm, and all she can hear is the beep beep beep of the machine next to her.

The room is very, very bright.

Her mother is in the chair next to the bed, apparently asleep.

Anna swallows twice and then tries her voice out, carefully. "Mom?"

Amy Milton wakes with a start. "Anna?"

"Mom, what's going on?" she asks, feeling about five years old.

"Oh, thank God," Amy says, standing and moving over to stand by her daughter. She smoothes Anna's hair back.

"Mom?"

"It'll be okay," her mother says. "You collapsed in class two days ago. They're not sure why, but I'll call the doctors and they can . . . "

Anna blinks. She can still hear her mother's voice, she just can't make out the words over the others suddenly in her head. It's like trying to talk to someone and listen to the radio and watch a movie all at once.

Amy's expression changes from one of relief to concern. Anna focuses very hard on her mother. "Anna?"

The other voices die away.

"Anna, are you all right?"

"I can hear them," Anna says. "In my head. I can hear them."

"Hear who, honey?"

"I don't know."

"What are they saying?"

Anna tries to remember, but the voices have all overlapped, like listening to every conversation at a party all at once. The only thing she thinks she heard clearly was --

"Dean Winchester is Saved."

"Anna," her mother says. "Anna, who is Dean Winchester?"

"I don't know."

"Saved from what?"

"I don't know," Anna says, again, starting to panic. "Mom, what's happening to me?"

Amy Milton puts her arms around her daughter. "It'll be okay, Anna. I'll call the doctor, and it'll be okay."

Anna nods.

Even as the rest of her mother's reassurances are lost among all the conversation in her head.