Dear Numbuh Four,
There is a city around you. A tiny one, crowding around your bed, filled with many busy sounds. A city of machines. Machines that keep you alive, the doctor man says. Today while I stood by your bed, I looked at that tiny little city, looked at it long and hard. It is very thirsty, very loud and crying and hungry. It pierces your skin with its plastic tube tongues, and with electricity it pours liquid into your insides. This also keeps you alive, says the doctor man.
You are so cold, Numbuh Four. I touched your hand even though the doctor told me not to, and the winter in your skin sent my heart shrieking inside of me. Why are you so cold, Numbuh Four? Are you like a bear, curling up and dozing the cold of the autumn away? Maybe the coma has frozen toes, toes that prod you through your thin little hospital dress. The dress is thin like skin, and I know that if you saw it, you would shred it into dust with your fingers. The doctor man doesn't know you at all.
And so I brought you your pajamas. The fuzzy ones with the feet: the ones that you always wear when we have a sleepover. They are so bravely orange in your white cave of a hospital room. This hospital is a blizzard of whiteness and air conditioning and the stale lights that are stuck like blind eyes in the sad ceiling. It is all so very sad, Wallabee. Even your room is sick. Pale like dead things. I am almost glad that you can't see it, see it glaring all around you. But I will try my very best to fix it up pretty for you.
I stayed a very long time in your room, my pockets stuffed full of crayons: pieces of a shattered rainbow. I drew you the prettiest things that I could think of: flowers and birds and butterflies and the sun in a perfect sky. Splashes of life to color the blankness. I hope that you like them, Numbuh Four.
Your friend,
Numbuh Three