It’s now been five days since I last dreamdived. I slept quite a bit the first two days I was here—it was weird to go to bed at a normal hour and sleep without dreaming, but I’ll admit, it was actually kind of nice. To fall asleep slowly and then, in the blink of an eye, be awake and have it be the next day. With the help of the sleeping pills they’ve given me, my body has readjusted to a regular schedule. Now I’m just … a normal person again. They’re going to start letting me dive again soon, but for now, I’m just going from doctor’s appointment to therapy to doctor’s appointment to yoga to therapy to meals to yoga on a constant loop. It’s simultaneously kind of relaxing and completely mind-numbing.

So. I’ve started wandering around the facility.

It’s ENORMOUS. I didn’t realize how enormous until I started to explore it, finding it far twistier and more confusing to navigate than I would have expected from the big, open-air lobby.

It’s half a dozen stories, a big steel-and-glass monstrosity, with these strange little elements of old-school New England, like the stone floors and musty library smell. I wasn’t able to access large swaths of the building—private rooms and most of the medical wing—but as I wandered down a hallway on the sixth floor, I saw there were also a bunch of private offices and conference rooms, most unoccupied as the doctors and such went about their day. As I passed one open doorway, I heard a familiar voice.

“Rose!”

Mags, the cute receptionist, came bounding out of a room that, from looking over her shoulder, seemed to be some kind of employee lounge. She had that big, beautiful smile on her face, but she also looked deeply, deeply confused.

“What are you doing up here?” she asked.

“Just wandering around,” I said, shrugging. “I had some free time and nothing to do so…”

“So you’ve decided to go exploring where you shouldn’t?” She folded her arms across her chest and fixed me with a stare that reminded me of my mom. Which … seeing that face on a girl I think is cute? Full body shudder.

“No—what—I wasn’t—I’m not snooping or anything,” I rushed to explain and Mags laughed.

“I’m totally messing with you!” she said. “I mean, yeah, patients aren’t really supposed to be up here unless they’ve got an appointment, but it’s not like it’s forbidden or anything.”

“Really? Because it honestly feels like I’m Belle and a talking candelabra is going to pop out from around a corner and tell me to never go into the west wing.”

She laughed again.

“Yeah, that’s very fair.” She chuckled. “Come on, let’s keep walking.”