The girl's vision is fuzzy at first. She squeezes her eyes shut to keep out the dim light until it decides to cooperate. A beeping noise begins to sound somewhere to her right.

When she finally opens her eyes, the girl is extremely confused. The last thing she remembers is her struggle to continue walking as her legs began to grow numb. She wiggles her toes. They are certainly functional. Her heart begins to race as thoughts swirl around in her cloudy head. Just as she is beginning to panic, the door opens, and the light brightens.

She is staring back at a young man, perhaps in his late teens, who seems to be very excited. She is about to ask him where she is, but he interrupts:

"How are you? Are you feeling better? Why aren't you registered?"

The last question soothes a fraction of the girl's fears; this certainly isn't someone from her childhood trying to recover her and bring her back to the lab. She is still dazed, however, and shakes her head before trying to open her mouth. Her teeth are caked in dry saliva, now a gluey texture. She coughs, trying to bring some moisture to her mouth, and is painfully made aware of the bruises spattered across her thin body. She tries to answer, but succeeds only in gasping feebly. The boy realizes what is the matter and fills her a paper cup of water from the sink. She inhales it, and holds the cup out for more. He grins, and obliges her.

After three more little cups of water, the girl's mouth still tastes like death, but like comparatively merciful death. The boy pounces on her again.
"How are you feeling?" His eyes light up with something just short of mania.
"Who... are y-you?" the girl responds, her voice cracking both with lack of use and with fear. The boy looks irritated, surprised, perhaps. He shakes his head. "I asked first."
"Sore. And confused. Who are you?"
The boy winces, then shrugs. "That's not important right now. Can you feel your legs?"
The girl nods.
"Arms?"
Another nod.
"Do you think you can walk?"
The girl creases her eyebrows. She isn't sure if her legs will support her, and is about to express this, but the boy seems to have read her face.
"I have a wheelchair. Do you need help sitting up?"
"I'm not sure," the girl begins, removing the bedcovers. "I think I can man-" She is cut off by a sudden dizzy spell, and slumps sideways, nearly off the edge of the bed. The boy sighs, then hoists her up and positions her in the wheelchair across the room. She smiles weakly.
"Thanks."
"No problem."

The boy wheels her a ways down a spotless white hallway, stopping at a pair of frosted glass doors. He waves a hand at the wall, and the doors open as if on command. As they pass through the doors, an instant wave of steamy heat hits the girl's face. They are facing a vast, tiled room, with baths of various shapes and sizes built into the floors and walls. There are shower spouts protruding from every wall, and many walls have inset niches with curved benches that are lined with still more spouts. The boy wheels the girl up to a shallow, raised tub, and flips up a built-in seat back. The girl becomes uneasy. Is he going to bathe in front of her? What prompted this? Has she been taken captive by someone who is mentally unstable?
Her fears are neither confirmed nor consoled as the boy turns towards her. He blushes, clearly uncomfortable with the situation, then gestures at his torso.
"What?" the girl squeaks, confused.
"Do you- um, can you..." The boy gives up and leans forward to begin gently untying her robe. The girl panics.
"What are you doing?!" She tries to kick him, but fails to move her leg very far. The boy apologizes profusely, but does not stop. He spreads the robe and tries to push it down her shoulders. The girl begins to cry.
"I don't want- please don't- please!" She begins to shake.
"Damn, I don't mean-" the boy pauses and cups a hand behind her cheek. "I'm not gonna hurt you." The girl sniffles.
"What are you doing?"
He sighs. "You need a bath. I don't want to have to do this, but you'll just get sick again if I leave you like this." She looks up at him, trying to read his eyes. Can she trust him? Can she trust her own mind? She relents, and the boy seems to relax a bit as he wraps one arm under both of hers and behind her back, and the other under the backs of her knees. He carefully places her into the water, and she shivers as her body grows warm.  She relaxes back into the seat, and the boy smiles.
"'Atta girl." He wastes no time in retrieving several bottles and a washcloth. One bottle contains shampoo, another, conditioner, and the third, body wash. He begins by applying an ample amount of body wash to the cloth, then scrubs her shoulders, arms, feet, legs, and thighs. He hesitates when he reaches her groin, but decides to tough it out. Following one more apology, he washes her breasts, abdomen, and between her legs. She is too content with the hot water and the attention to object, and simply allows the boy to clean her. When this area is finished, he helps her roll over, then scrubs her back and buttocks.
At this point, the water is gray and soupy. The boy picks up the girl, sets her on a towel, and refills the tub with clean, steamy water. When he turns back to the girl, she reaches up her arms and wraps them around his neck and shoulders as he lifts her up again and places her in the tub. He smiles and pours a large amount of flowery-scented shampoo into his hand. The girl sighs as he scrubs her hair vigorously, loosening years of dirt and oil from her scalp. The boy shampoos her hair three times, rinsing her off each time with an extendable shower head from near the spigot. Clumps of hair begin to detach from the dark, tangled nest that cascades down the girl's shoulders. Some pieces of hair left her scalp many days ago, but remained in the tangle. Others are continuing to break apart, brittle as they are. The boy does his best to catch the hair and set it aside so as not to clog the drain. When the flow of broken hairs seems to subside, he moves on to conditioner.
The boy had expected to condition the girl's hair, then have it comb out easily. This does not occur, to his dismay. The girl's hair remains stubbornly ratty and knotted, despite its noticeable decrease in volume. He tries to work out a few knots, but soon gives up. The hair will have to go.
"D'you mind if I cut your hair?" he asks, aware of the inquiry's bizarreness. "It's too tangled." The girl frowns for a moment, as if thinking.
"In the bathtub?"
"I'll neaten it up later. I just want to get the crumbly, solid mass off." The boy blushes a little. "Not that your hair is bad or anything. I like your hair. It's pretty." The girl smiles.
"Okay, yeah, you can cut my hair. It is pretty awful." At this, the boy scurries over to the same cabinet from which he produced the shampoo. He rummages around in several drawers, then, victorious, pulls out a pair of shiny, barbershop scissors. Taking extra care so as not to cut off more than he has to, he trims the girl's hair to a little above shoulder-length. There are still tangles, but they should be easier to remove. He picks up the clumps of hair and puts them into a hole in the wall, that is, a built-in garbage can. He looks down at his hands. They are covered with bits of dark brown filaments.
After rinsing his hands off, the boy walks back over to the girl and picks her up again, but this time, he carries her further into the baths and places her on a shelf-like chair, which is essentially a bench, but with the path of a recliner. She watches sleepily as he pulls another extendable shower head from the wall and flicks it on. He rinses her slowly, heart fluttering as she settles onto the bench and smiles at him. Her pale face, now clean, is gaunt, her cheeks hollow. He can not only see her ribs, but feels as if they burn painfully into his consciousness. Everything about her body is awkward and angular. He will see to that. He will fix her.
Finished twice over with the rinse, the boy reluctantly returns the shower head to its hook. He retrieves a fluffy, white towel, and bundles the now-sleeping girl up as he lifts her dozing form and places her in the wheelchair. She slumps to the side and murmurs as he wheels her out of the steamy room and down the hallway, back to the hospital bed.
The boy checks to make sure that the girl is still asleep. She is. Good. He quickly strips the bed, wads up the dirty bedsheets, and tosses them down the laundry chute on the far wall. From a cabinet over the bed he pulls a new set of sheets, starched white, like the old. He makes the bed clumsily, and lifts the girl onto the sheets. She is still wearing only the towel.
The boy rushes out of the room and soon returns with a set of clothes for the girl. He places a few different sizes of brassieres over her chest, then chooses one that seems to fit, and pulls her limp arms through the straps. He'll fasten it later.
He does the same thing with several pairs of plain, white, brief underpants. These are more difficult to put on the girl, and she shifts in her sleep as the boy eases the waistband up and over her bony hips. Next comes a long, tunic-like shirt, with three-quarters length, cap-style sleeves in green t-shirt fabric. The body of the shirt is white, and has a green-printed peace sign. The shirt, despite being long, is narrow, and the boy makes full use of the fabric's stretchiness in order to slip it onto the girl, stopping halfway through to fasten her brassiere. Finally, he inserts her legs into a thin pair of black leggings, and envelopes her feet in a pair of fuzzy green slipper-socks. He steps back to admire his work. She shivers in the comparably cold air, and he is jerked back into reality. He digs around in the cabinet and produces a thick comforter. He then tucks her in, reattaches the IV cuff to her arm, and hesitantly brushes a strand of hair behind her ear. The lights click out. He is gone.