Tonight, Alessa was a nurse. That’s what she’d always wanted to be, for as long as she could remember. The hospital halls she was walking in were full of other nurses, like her. Anonymous, common faces one couldn’t remember after a glimpse. All in dull shades of brown. Brown eyes, brown hair, brown glasses. Just like she used to picture herself. Common, boring. Normal.
The patient’s room she was supposed to go to was at the other end of the white, cold corridor. Hospitals are sanitized and blank things, disinfected, protected from all bacteria, spores, fungi, viruses, dirt, and this one was no exception. This place was unremarkably unlike the people it was supposed to help. It was completely silent, if it weren’t for the ghostly echoes of the footsteps on the floor, or the rhythmic and seemingly endless beeps coming from behind the smooth wall, bearing no door, nor paintings, nothing but the pale green wall.
There was no way to do it wrong, she simply knew the room she was supposed to reach was behind the only door of the whole building, at the other end of the hall.

Behind the door, there was an equally anonymous room, with no window. Alessa wasn’t creeped out by the hospital that seemed to be self-sufficient and independent of the external world. What shocked her, however, was the patient herself. Her bed was surrounded by metallic machines, distilling liquids and gasses, plugged into each other and the woman, displaying cold schematics that changed every time you blinked. On the bed was lying Sailor Polaris, in all the glory of her translucent fuku, fur boots, and numerous ivory braids. Her arms were crossed on her chest, and she looked like a Sleeping(?) Beauty, still and silent like that.
The nurse approached the senshi with genuine concern. Gently, she leaned above her seemingly lifeless body.
Suddenly, the machines screamed with sirens, beeps, clicks, alarms, uninterrupted sounds that were synonymous with death.
Alessa had to do something. She had to give her special pills. Now out of her pocket, she was furiously shaking the tube that was supposed to contain them. Several pills fell out, multicoloured, but she knew none of them were the right ones. She shook it again. More useless pills. Again. A stream of rainbow pills, small pills, big pills, triangular, round, rectangular, oval pills, flat, large pills. All useless, all falling on the ground, making the same sound as hail as they touched the floor. All rushing like water, like food out of the fabled cornucopia. Meanwhile, the machines were shaking, trembling, falling one by one as their alarms were shutting down.

The brunette couldn’t possibly be sorrier than she was right now. She looked up, seeing the last IV go silent and drop, as her last pills dropped with soft ticks at her feet. Why wasn’t there the right pill? Why wasn’t there the pill that could bring her back to life?
Out of nowhere, a group of nurses were already getting busy around Polaris’ bed. They were ready to move the now hopeless girl out of here. Expectantly, they all raised their heads to look at Alessa. Their face didn’t sport any feature, as smooth as the walls of the room.
“We need her name so we can bring her to her family. Give us her name”, a voice asked, a dull, monotonous, formal voice that came out of no lips.
Her hand still clutched unto the tube, Alessa opened her mouth. “I don’t know what her name is”, she replied, on the verge of tears.
The rest of the faceless nurses didn’t seem particularly affected at all. “Let’s get going.” Quickly, they moved the bed, its wheels rolling effortlessly on the immaculate ground, intending to leave with it.
“Wait!” protested very faintly Alessa, “I think I can still do something. Please, let me try something. Anything. Something has to work. Let me try another procedure. Just once.”
Too late. The nurses had already disappeared with the bed, with the dead senshi. And they had closed the door behind them. There was no way she could open it and chase them to get her patient back. She had arrived too late, and there was nothing more she could do to help.
A complete failure. So useless. She couldn’t even do her job right. She didn’t even know the name they needed so they could tell her family. Starting with her right hand, Alessa dissolved slowly.

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It had been a long time since Alessa David had been that sluggish upon waking up. She massaged her temples, still feeling that sense of dread and sorrow, getting however more vague and distant by the minute.