The quick and light steps in the hall. The dripping IV. The monotonous and mute beeps of a machine. The soft and slow breathing of a dreamer whose soul was drifting far, far away from the immaculate and artificial hospital rooms, into unknown, colourful, mystic countries. The tired and slow breathing of a girl whose soul is very much present, here and now.
Those were the sounds of Azzo’s room.

“Hi, Azzo.”
The puppy-haired boy didn’t answer. The rhythm of his not quite silent breathing wasn’t disturbed in the slightest.
“I know, we don’t know each other all that well. Do you remember me? It’s Alessa”, said the brunette standing right beside Azzo’s bed, with a trembling voice. She’d been crying, visibly, but the boy couldn’t tell, as he was in a deep coma. “Maybe you forgot about me, after all, last time I saw you was here, only you were awake and it was Yvette’s dad – was it her dad? Nobody told me – it was Yvette’s dad who was in a coma… geez, and I don’t even remember when we met outside of the hospital.”
A silence.
“Maybe we didn’t. I seem to meet many people here.”
Not even a nurse yet, and fate kept pushing her towards the sick and hurt. Or maybe she instinctively went there because she had decided to be a simple and humble nurse since she was 7, and deciding of her job career was the only real control she had had on her life, but she wasn’t used to doing her own thing. Perhaps she only pretended it was fate, and that she never really had a choice in the matter.
And today, she made the choice to temporarily leave her mother to visit the first friend (a word with such a broad meaning in Alessa’s vocabulary) whose comatose state she’d heard of. It was a minimal change, really; her own mother was constantly dizzy and sleepy because of the sedatives she’d been given, schools were closed, and she didn’t want to worry her father further by going out more than a couple hours a day. It was a decision with anecdotic consequences, but it still was her decision.
“My mom is here as well. Huh, she’s not in a coma, actually. But the car driver who crashed into her store was", she calmly explained, her own dark eyes seemingly empty, or daydreaming. “I… I’m not sure how she’s going. They’re fighting to keep her leg. It’s… it’s bad, she is in a lot of pain and I’m not sure she will keep her leg.”
At least, at that moment, she was away from Maria David’s despair.

Her hands started shaking.
“I’ve not been a very good friend, have I? I didn’t see you much at school, it was kind of my fault too”, she apologized, her smiling lips trembling, betraying a growing emotional pressure.
She held her clenched fists in front of her chest. “Let’s fix that, okay? When you wake up, I’ll be the creepy girl who visits you in your hospital room again, and we’ll talk about puppets, because I remember you like puppets, even though I don’t know much about puppets…”
That was it. She couldn’t hold her smile anymore, she couldn’t hold the sobbing in anymore. A hiccup escaped her throat, as she spoke again. “Why, dammit? You were just out of that organ ring thing! You were saved! Why the ******** do they have to do that to you again? What did you do to deserve that?!”
A wreck, that’s what she thought she was being at that instant. Not a normal girl, not a friend, but a complete wreck. Fortunately, nobody could hear or see her. “You must live! You didn’t deserve to be a victim again! And and and if you did deserve it, then what hope do I have left here? I didn’t deserve to be left unharmed just so I can… just so I can watch everyone else suffer and I can’t do anything about it? I… I don’t want to be alone, Azzo! Please, wake up! I just want the whole goddamn city to go back to normal!” Another hiccup. “I want to do normal things again with my friends!”

She wiped her tears, her sobbing slowing down to fade into a deep breathing, very, very progressively. “I have friends here. They’re good and important friends. And now, all of them are in a coma, or they’re busy taking care of those who are in a coma. You… I don’t know what I’d do if they die. They have to get better. You have to get better.”
Alessa gulped, and picked a handkerchief to wipe her nose with, while still watching pathetically the sleeping dark-haired boy. “I like this place, I really do, because I have important friends. This is where I belong, now. This is where I belong, despite all the monsters, and superheroes, and strange things. You’re all important people. And you have to wake up so we can be proper friends. I’ll be very, very disappointed if you don’t wake up, because I know you’re stronger than that.”

There was a long, deep sigh, as the last tears ran down her cheeks. She contemplated the boy with sadness, before speaking again. “Damn, I’m creepy. If you remember that when you wake up, then it’s okay if you don’t want to see me because I’m being creepy, really.”
During some long minutes, she kept her mouth shut. She had bags under her eyes. Since the day Azzo fell into a deep sleep, Alessa had become insomniac. The huge stress kept her awake, and the horrid nightmares dissuaded her from sleeping too long at a time, and she’d suspected her father had had similar dreams, as he shared the same lovely dark shade around the eyes.
In the privacy of her mind, she envied Azzo’s situation. He was in a deep sleep, like everyone else. And he didn’t have to worry about anyone else.
Alessa turned, and walked out, wiping all the humidity from her pale face, concealing the last proof of her distress. “Anyway, you still have to wake up. I’m sure you have other important friends who want to see you again.”
And she left to go back to her mother’s room.