She was gone.
Nobody bothered explaining it to Marshall, all were too busy filing reports and rushing around towards patients they still considered relevant. One male nurse asked Lee if he had anyone else to stay with, perhaps a father or distant relative, but he received no verbal response. And he certainly wasn't going to stick around for the nonverbal one.
Marshall had somehow managed to keep from relapsing into another attack, and instead did the exact opposite, standing in the center of the hospital room, completely still. Time was as unreal as everything else in his life, so he couldn't tell you how many seconds or minutes or hours he spent there even if he tried.
Marshall was not sure how it had happened or why, but he remembered seeing the monitor, he remembered the blips going silent. This was right before he crashed. This was right before he went silent.
"Hey," Marshall had shouted, "Hey!"
"My mother's heart's not beating!"
The emergency switch meant to notify the nurses was connected to the hospital bed, and Marshall switched it back and forth, back and forth, on and then back off again. It was another self made rhythm, but no audience rejoiced at the sound. He thought that he might puke, all over his dead mother. Puke all over his dead mother. It'd make for the best present he'd ever given her.
"Are you even supposed to be here?" Was immediately followed by: "I am so sorry.", and the machines were all unplugged and the world was put on mute. That's when everything stopped. And stayed stopped, for a while. Out of respect for Marshall's loss, the world went on vacation. When people asked where he was when the world ended, a statue would be erected in his honor, to stand just like he intended to, trapped on top of tile for the rest of forever.
After he finally could lift his stone feet, Marshall exited the room. The secretary with tacky hair wasn't there anymore, meaning Marshall wouldn't have to ignore any offerings of a ride home or candy or whatever else there is to be given out in times such as these. Bubba and Fiona were both gone from the waiting room. It would have been preposterous to him, just before the silence, to assume that Fiona would ever treat him like this. But as far as Bubba went, Marshall wasn't surprised in the slightest.
Not that Marshall wanted to see Bubba, not after what he had done. Maybe if she had lived, they would have been alright. But now the prince was a murderer. The prince was a cold-blooded killer, and Marshall was his lust-crazed partner in crime.
Marshall wouldn't go to school tomorrow.
He debated killing himself, just to get it all over with. But he just couldn't settle on method. He debated running away, but there wasn't anywhere to run to. The now-clean house that was meant to be a gift from his best friend now was just an insensitive reminder that there would be no one to litter the floors ever again.
Marshall flipped on the old television, which surprisingly still worked, and stared blankly at the spasmodic screen. Some kid's cartoon was on, it looked a bit like Sponge bob but it was awfully hard to tell due to those obnoxious tears that snagged onto his eyelashes every time he felt a blink coming on.
Frankly, it was surprising to Marshall that he could even blink and function at all after what had happened, but he couldn't think on it so much, because the blinking and crying was so draining that it required all aspects of his energy. No energy left for thinking. And that was probably for the best.
Marshall Lee didn't sleep that night, he couldn't have even if he had wanted to. He lay on the couch eyes open, still standing in that hospital room.