Wake up

   He woke up with his arm around her neck. The warmth from her skin radiated trough his long-sleeved shirt, and he could feel her almost unnoticeable breaths against his neck. He must’ve fallen asleep like this last night.
   The room was bright, almost luminous. White, and calm. He heard someone talking in the room next to theirs. Quiet voices. Hospital voices. The people who worked here started to get used to him, and he to them. The hours he’d spent here the last couple of months were starting to get uncountable. But he didn’t care. Not one single bit. He could settle down, breath the air of any place on the entire planet for the rest of his life if it meant that he would be together with her. The girl with too many jeans. The owner of the blue mini bus that never started when you needed it. The unbelievably humble girl with the red boots and the crooked smile. He knew her by heart, and he would never forget her. It sounded extremely cheesy, that he’ll never forget her, and he knew how untrue it was.He will forget her, one day. Humans are not immortal, not forever, and we will all disappear. We will all, including her – even though it’s an uncomfortable thought – be forgotten. The oblivion of the entire mankind is unavoidable. But when you’re laying with your arm under the neck of the most precious girl in the universe, knowing that this may be one of the last times you do it – it doesn’t really matter if you say something cheesy, or believe in something that won’t happen. Nothing really matters. Except this girl. She is the only thing that matters. No compromises.
   He kissed her gently on her forehead, pulled out his arm from behind her and stood up. The sun shined in through the window, like the giant ball of constantly burning fire that it actually was. He squinted at it. He had thought a lot about the sun lately. One of the main sources of life, but in the position of deathly destruction. Don’t get too close. Don’t get too far away. The sun could blow up, and burn out the entire solar system. But, on the other hand, it could also fade out and join the darkness, leaving us to face a never ending ice age. He couldn’t help but being fascinated by the enormous proportions of it all. The planets, the solar system, the universe were things to worry about. Things that made sense if they exploded, or disappeared. Humans are nothing, literally nothing, compared to them, he used to think. But one human being could be compared to them, and it was her. This girl.
   Suddenly, his stomach made a familiar noise. He needed something to eat. It wouldn’t take long, just a couple of minutes. So he walked, fast and determined, out of the door, down the corridor and into the hospital cafeteria. It were hardly lunchtime, so the small dining spaces were almost empty, except for an old man who sat alone at a table. The man looked at him. He looked back, and nodded as a greeting. He couldn’t push away the thought of that this man – this lonely, quiet man – could be himself in fifty years. Sitting in the cafeteria of the hospital, waiting for his love to wake up. To come back to him. Was it all in vain? He didn’t knew.
   He ordered three sandwiches, two to eat now and one to save for later. He hadn’t eaten any proper meals for the past two days. He also grabbed a cup of black coffee. During his time at the hospital, he had figured out that the best way to pass through the days where by drinking coffee. Loads of coffee. Since he couldn’t sleep very well, he’d decided that it was better to be fully awake – the effect of drinking coffee – than to be sleepwalking through the day because of the lack of sleeping.
   He settled down at a table and began to eat his sandwiches. People were passing by. Parents with children crying. An old couple helping each other down the corridor. A woman rushing past his table, trying to put on lipstick and peek at her watch. A man with glasses on the tip of his nose and an information sheet in his hands, trying to find his way through the labyrinth of medical departments.
   He wondered why they were here. Why all these odd people where gathered at this chemically clean place at the same time. What they all had in common. The answer was of course easy. Illness. People with heart problems, stomach aches and kidney cancer. Ear infections, brain tumors and broken ribs. And all their conditions, coincidences and probably a couple of mistakes made them flow into this big, white building. All you had to do was talk to the great, wise doctor - and all your problems should be solved. Cancer can be cured. Tumors can be removed. A heart can be replaced. There is a medicine, an operation or a pill for everything you can imagine. But still, they couldn’t bring her back to him. We have built a society where illness is no longer a problem, all thanks to the holy hospitals. But he didn’t trust them for a second.
   According to the doctor’s first rapport, which he’d read almost every day for the last four months, she should’ve woken up by now. They said a month. A month. It’d past four months. One hundred and twenty seven days. He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to scream. He wanted to drown. He wanted to throw away all the bloody tubes and pumps and machines that they thought kept her alive. But she didn’t need them. She were strong. The machines only kept her sleeping, not able to move or even open her eyes. She had her whole life ahead of her, and the hospital were not the place to spend it on. They wanted her by themselves, and he knew it. To try and test and observe her. To put her in the line. The forever ongoing line of patients they just could not cure. Patients that had to wait. Wait for new medical research or methods that maybe, maybe could help them. Otherwise, wait for death.
   The doctors thought that he didn’t knew, but he did. He surely did. They didn’t want the information to get out. Another patient they could not cure. What a downfall. So they kept her in here. But she was his. His, and no one else’s.
   The distrust and the disappointment he felt turned into anger. Soon, it started to grow more determined in his brain. Something roared at the bottom of his heart. He clenched his teeth. The blood felt like highways in his veins and his eyes were strictly focused on his hands. The feeling ate him up from the inside. He wanted to rip it out and get rid of it, but instead he decided to take advantage of it. His heart trembled in heat and furious anger, but his hands were cold. As immovable as rocks. What gave them the right to keep her in here? Nothing. Nothing. He could free her. And he would.
   He left the last sandwich and the rest of his coffee on the table, and started to walk through the corridor. Back to her. If every human on the earth was aware about the feeling he had, it would’ve frightened them. Terrified them. It would’ve been known as the internal rage. Furious chaos, carefully organized into the shape of a man.
   He felt like incarnate power as he, step by step, walked towards the room. He pushed the door open and his feet marched straight to her bed. She were, as she always were, tied up to the machines. He started to breathe heavy through his nostrils. This was not something he could allow.
   He screamed. A scream of anger. Of power. Of panic. Someone came running into the room.
   “Sir…? Sir, is something…”
   He didn’t want to listen. He couldn’t listen. The tubes must be removed. He ripped them out of her nose, off her arms and threw them on the floor. The machines. She did not need them. They were awful. Awful, awful beeping machines. He hastily pulled out all the contacts from the wall, and threw them away.
   “Sir, stop! What are you doing!?”
   He knocked the machines over and kicked at them until they stopped beeping. Small sparks flew from the broken pieces of metal and plastics.
   He turned against her, carefully held his hand under her cheek. She was so soft. So calm. He sat down on his knees and pressed their foreheads together.
   “Everything will be alright,” he whispered. “You are free now.”
   But something were not right. The tickling he used to feel upon his skin, the tickling of her breath – it weren’t there anymore. Something were wrong. Something were missing. Something were… No. She didn’t breathe. She didn’t breathe. He putted his hands on her shoulders, shaking her carefully. No.
   “…open your eyes,” he begged.
   He heard voices, a lot of voices. Screams. Gasps. Hands on his shoulders. Hands dragging him way from her. No, he wouldn’t move. He desperately continued to hang onto her.
   The sudden realization of what he’d done struck him like a train running into a concrete wall. The power he’d felt only minutes ago were completely blown away. He felt so incredibly weak. Just like water, slipping through fingers. With his last powers, he screamed again. But this time, not a scream of anger. Nor of panic. This was a scream of pure and sheer pain.
   A loud crack echoed around the room as his heart broke.

When you walk on muddy, soft ground just after it had rained – you will leave footprints. The night will then fall, as it always does, and the cold will come with it. Maybe, you would have thought that your footprints have disappeared during the night. But they didn’t. Instead they have frozen, and you can’t make them undone.