Dear Wally,
Today I asked him for real. I asked the doctor a very real question. My eyes were streaming rivers. My hands were as stiff as yours, your tiny frozen fingers sleeping soft in mine.
"When will he wake up, doctor?
Wally?
When will he wake up?"
The doctor looked at me. I looked back at him. The air conditioning vents wheezed with mildew. The ceiling sagged. The floors shone as though they were glazed with the clearest ice. And still he didn't answer.
"Listen now," he said. "Listen to me. You will not like what you hear, but I must tell you anyway.
Some people: they wake from a coma just fine. They slide out of bed and go back about their business. It's like nothing ever happened.
Some people...Some people do not. The eyes of these people will never open again. They will never again see the sunlight. They are trapped forever in sleep."
His eyes flickered towards you and it was suddenly as if everything on the earth was watching. I held your hand very tightly in mine.
No, came my little shivery whisper.
No.
"The boy's family cannot afford to keep him plugged in for much longer. In a few days the machines will be switched off."
My eyes were empty.
Terrible pictures flooded into my mind: your lonely hospital room, your room swept as clean as a paper's blank face…a bleached cave of horrible dead space. The bed vacant. The air heavy with the slumber of the machines, the machines that once kept you alive.
Do you know what the scariest thing was?
The quiet.
There was no more beeping. Your heart, it was silent. Your heart that you delivered to me with bleeding ink.
I couldn't think of it anymore. My tears crashed to the ground and my breath rung in the air.
I can't just say goodbye.
Kuki