The IV drips slowly, his life wasting away at the hospital bed. I fidget in my seat, my nerves crackling in my mind, the cigarettes ready to be smoked but no, I couldn't do that, the people here were dying more and more everyday, I couldn't speed up the process. I tell him of the things we accomplished.
"Yeah? I remember them all, Shad."
Saving the Earth from the collision, fighting my brother, and there was him. There was him that always coached me into defeating my brother when he was so hardset on making the Earth suffer for my father's crimes. And here I see you, the same hero, the same vulnerable hero, dying…
"We're not going to use that term, Shadow."
But you are.
He coughed, placidly, as the IV continues to count the seconds that he would die. My world about to die and rot away.
I see the flowers curling up, no longer blooming with vivacity. They were dying too.
I was dying too.
I didn't want to leave him.
The nurses thought I had to leave, because it was no longer visiting hours. I told them I was a significant other. They didn't listen and coaxed me to the dark, starless outside.
I could smell the pungent stench of urine outside the hospital. Where a whole bunch of old geezers came to die.
And he was an old geezer now, rotting in his own piss-smelling casket.
They ushered in the curtains, the hospital's lights dim, and I see how dark it was inside, the nurses being ordered to take a bunch of these geriatrics out to breakfast and lunch and supper if they were alive enough, God willing. Most of them were inside a casket already, swallowing a tube full of paste chicken and mashed potatoes. Sonic may get to that point. I wasn't sure. His appearance looked dreadful enough. A shadow of himself.
The hospital soon became pitch black. I smoked a cigarette outside. I cupped my hands to feel the warmth on this cold, wintry city. I see the homeless making fires to cook their rats in. I see the drug dealers shivering in their fur coats, as if they couldn't clutch onto more warmth in their body. Money and security weren't enough. The one thing that truly made them warm, they didn't have.
I had it, and it was extinguishing, quick.
The doctor told us he didn't had much longer to live.
I asked the nurses to take me back to his room. He could die tomorrow. But visitation hours were over. Visitation hours were over. They crowed over that like mechanical devices.
Their little bird feet continued to hop towards me, their plumage of their fur coats expecting me to be swayed by their looks. But Sonic wasn't there. Sonic wasn't there, they mimicked. Their eyes looked pale, blue, colors of the gray moon. They kept telling me that I couldn't visit Sonic any more at this hour. Squawk. Squawk. The bunch of loons they were. I had to shove them aside, hear the rustling of dresses and their little petite birdy feet march on towards me, and I had to see him, it was the only way I could be alright. I wasn't okay on the inside. I was broken apart in many pieces. They took out a scalpel and cut across my body and fur and made me bleed a long thick viscous river where I could see my misery, my pain, the little trinklets of my life drawn out for me, but I see Sonic, and he's dying, very slowly, yet I feel it's cautiously, as he wants me to be there with him before he dies.
I rolled the curtains away, Sonic's lids drawn open to my appearance. He sees the nurses plucking at me with their needle beaks, but I tell them not right here, not right here, can't you see that he's dying?
The flowers are dripping slowly, to a brown, dingy color. The nurses haven't changed the flowers in so long. They only ate the seeds.
I wanted a moment, I said. And they quietly sulked and chirped away.
The IV dripped much more, the seconds draining away his life. Time stole life away the minute we were born.
I knew he loved me. That was a ridiculous question to ask.
But I asked it again.
And he said yes, as he held my hand.
I could still smell the fetid piss from all the other old patients. But Sonic was…different. He lied there, quietly, his lids closed, his heart beating gently against my hand. I asked him if there was anything more I could do for him.
And he said no, that was enough. I could just sit here with him, and count how many stars are out there at the window.
I told him there wasn't any.
But then he told me that I could count them anyways, because with me, the skies were always bright.
The hospital's colors were only a dingy baby blue and yellow. Yet, they felt right. I couldn't explain it. As if I was tucking Sonic to bed when he was only a little boy. A strange feeling, my hands had a tremor to them, but I counted the stars. I counted how many there were.
There were two, burning bright alongside the moon. And they were beautiful, and couldn't be seen by many eyes. They were often overshadowed by the expanding night in the city we were in. It expanded, constantly, because space was a growing, breathing thing.
I told him that now, there would be one star.
There would be one.
And it would burn brightly forever.
Drip. Drip.
The flowers soon lost all their petals. They looked naked, underneath the hospital light.
Life never seemed to be so dark, so beautiful, at a time like this.
The petals were plucked by the cranes, and I saw the outside blaze up with so many dawn-trickled stars.