The phone call came at four in the morning. When his cellphone jarred him out of his peaceful dream of a blonde girl and a field of daisies, he looked once at the caller I.D. and picked up immediately. The woman's voice on the other end was shaking and small, and worst of all, terrified. Alex didn't hesitate to throw himself out of bed and push his legs into the jeans he'd worn the day before.

Grabbing the keys from his bedside table he shoved his already socked feet into his boots, forgoing his laces altogether. Pulling a tee-shirt over his head as he ran towards the door of their shared apartment, Alex cursed under his breath the entire way there. Almost as an after-thought, he grabbed his guitar before slamming the door to the now-empty set of rooms.

Driving well over the speed limit, Alex could give the driver of the ambulance on another highway a run for his money. He flew off an exit and onto a smaller road, screaming curses at the traffic light when it turned red. As soon as it was green again, he tore off through the small town, speeding through every yellow light that dared to cross his path. He pulled into the parking lot of the hospital with the sound of squealing tires and threw his truck into park, completely ignoring the parking brake. He ran into the building with his guitar in one hand, begging the exhausted receptionist behind the front desk to tell him where she was. Once he was given the plastic Visitor's badge, he shoved the small rectangle of plastic into his pocket and sprinted down the hall until he found the room number the receptionist had told him to go to.

She was laying in the bed, hooked up to monitors and drips. The only color about her came from the shock of fluffy blonde hair and her freckles, which stood stark against her pale skin. Dark semi-circles sunk under her eyes, and when Alex grabbed her hand, her fingertips were cold.

"Lily?"

She didn't respond to the sound of his voice nor the touch of his hand, and for two days, Alex sat by her bedside, staring at her face for any sign of life. Picking up his guitar on the third day of his vigil, he began to pluck and strum the nylon strings half-heartedly. He wrote a song in his mind, asking a nurse for paper so he could write it down. When the song was finished and he had nothing left to write, and all the hollow parts of his letters had been bubbled in with pen ink, Alex turned over a new sheet of paper and began writing letters to the girl in the bed beside him.