The evening’s cool breeze no longer showed Azura any comfort, the air now seemed cold, and the wind felt like it cut through her. All prior thoughts had been swept away, the fondness of dinner had been erased, and all the calmness of the night had been killed. All that remained was one loud, persistent feeling that Azura could not rid herself of: sheer panic.

Bear was completely still, the only movement his body showed was Azura’s relentless shaking of his torso, trying anything to get his eyes to reopen, and his mouth to move, but she knew it would do nothing. She knew in the back of her head that at that moment her hand needed to reach to her watch and press the emergency call button, but the panic wouldn’t allow her. She kept shaking and screaming for seconds on end, wasting the little time she had to act. He still had a pulse. How long that would be the case for, was up to her. She had to stop the panic.

Her screaming stopped, and her breathing became as slow as she could make it, which at the time was just a few notches below hyperventilation. She activated the emergency call on her watch.

She counted the time the call took by the number of pulses she felt in his wrist… she counted four pulses… and that was nine seconds of waiting.

“911, do you need fire, ambulance or police?”

“I need an ambulance!” Azura used all her focus to clearly answer the caller’s questions.

“What is the location of the emergency?”

“It’s…” She collected herself. “It’s at Martin’s Melodies on 57th, it’s my current location.”

“Okay. An ambulance is on its way, please tell me exactly what happened.”

“We were at the store…” Azura cut herself off as more of the panic left her, and a realization struck her.

“You were at the store?”

Azura snapped back. “Send fire! We need fire, we’re on the roof of the building. My friend got ollie on his leg, he’s unconscious.”

“Ollie on his leg? Okay, just try to relax.”

She stayed on the line counting each beat while she waited seven terrible minutes for the emergency services to arrive. Red lights screamed at her as the service workers lifted Bear off the roof and stuffed him into the back of the ambulance, sparing not one second to error. The doors slammed, and the sirens cried as the metal box sped off to the hospital.

She could now only imagine each beat; she could have no idea if he would be in that box when he has his last pulse. The nearest hospital was about a five-minute drive from her, and she had to be there. She only had her legs then, so she used them. She sprinted through the black streets with just one objective on her mind, nothing else mattered, not the dryness of her mouth, not the soreness of her legs, not the side stitches that stabbed into her ribs.

She would make it to the hospital. She would not get the comfort she hoped it would bring her being there. All she could do was make the calls she needed to and wait in the lobby.

Eight hours passed.

Azura, and a handful of other people occupied the harshly cushioned chairs of the frigidly lit hospital waiting room. No one spoke a word. They were either distracting themselves with their handhelds, or resting their eyes, but it was clear nobody wanted to remain in that dead room for any longer.

Azura couldn’t take her eyes off the wall. It was lined with a grid of white square tiles all separated by small divots, and in the intersection of four of those divots something caught her attention. A small fly crawled around, following the path created by the lines between the tiles. It moved up, and down, left, and right, like it was walking down the street. How peculiar, she thought it was. She wondered how long it had been walking down the tiles’ streets.

Footsteps clicked along the ground from behind her, and they were followed by a voice she recognized.

“Azzie?” said Soteria.

She stepped in front of Azura, hoping to potentially get a response, but she heard none. She decided to sit next to her on the row of blue chairs that were arrayed across the left half of the room.

“I’m so sorry I came so late. You sent the message while I was asleep… I just got up, I came straight over here as soon as I saw it… why didn’t you send me an emergency alert?”

The fly walked along the wall.

“Listen Azzie… whatever’s happening in there… whatever happens, it’s gonna be alright. Kay? Things are going to be alright.”

Soteria looked around for a few seconds, and then returned her voice to Azura, whose gaze hadn’t left the wall.

“How long have you been sitting here for? Have you… eaten anything? I know they got… there’s a deli somewhere here. Sure you could use an energy boost.” Soteria waited. “You gonna talk?”

The fly changed its direction, now moving left towards the emergency room doors.

“That’s okay. You don’t need to talk right now… if… you don’t wanna. But really, you should eat. At least let me get you something from the deli… or y’know I could go across the street… get some junk food, if you want.”

Azura said nothing.

“Look, Azzie. I don’t know what happened… what went down after you two left, but what you said in the message… you were there with him. You have always been there with him. He didn’t call that ambulance himself. He wouldn’t have. And now those doctors, they are doing everything they can right now to make him better. You did that.”

The fly flew away, and Soteria leaned forward. “If it wasn’t for you, he wouldn’t be here now. Just remember that.”

Azura’s head turned slowly. “Yeah,” she whispered.

The doors to the intensive care unit opened, and Ren walked out appearing to be as torn down by the past eight grueling hours as Azura was. He looked to the two, with weak eyes.

“He looks... he looks good,” Soteria said to the room, as they all hovered around Bear’s unconscious body, who had tubes stuck in his nose and expensive machines plugged into his body, monitoring each beat of his heart. “yeah, that right there, that is that same strong Bear we all know. He is... he’s fighting this like a champion!”

Ren’s voice cracked. “Yeah... he’s quite a fighter.”

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“Damn right, Ren.”

Azura stood over him. Her face didn’t move. Her eyes didn’t water. She just stared.

“So what’s it lookin’ like?” Soteria asked Ren.

“...Well uh... well his heart rate has stabilized, and the doctors are saying it doesn’t look like the drops are going to do any permanent damage to his leg, so that’s really... that’s really good.” He sniffled. “Really they said they ran their tests, and he’s, he’s doing normal in, like his blood pressure and all the others... they said that this is one of the better cases of an ollie overdose.”

“Alright... that’s great. Great! So when we gettin’ our guy out of here, huh?” Soteria smiled at Ren, trying to give him any comfort she could.

His eyes watered. “I don’t know.”

Azura watched every tick on the EKG, up...up... and up, over and over.

“The doctors didn’t tell you?” Soteria asked him.

“They said he’s in a... they called it like a vegetative toxic coma, he has some brain activity but he doesn’t... he can’t understand what’s going on, they aren’t even sure if he’s thinking. Comas like these aren’t totally new, I-g, I guess... apparently it can take a few days for them to wake up... or sometimes a few months, or some... sometimes...”

His voice broke. “So I don’t—I don’t know. I don’t know when he’s coming home, Sotie.”

“Well whenever he’s up, we’re all gonna be here, alright?” Soteria assured him.

“Yeah, but that’s not even... that coma, that’s just the start. I mean, I’m fuzzy on it but, some doctors they said because of the way the oculix magic works... it’s still in him. And then when his brain activity comes back, the magic is gonna come back even harder, from the time it was sitting in there... like it’s making up for his brain not using it for so long. They said it isn’t pretty at all... I mean there are ways to treat it but god it’s expensive, it’s so much money...”

“Don’t even let that be a thought,” Soteria said to him, “anything he needs, we’ll help cover you. We have money to spare.”

The thought permeated the room, giving Azura incentive to look up from the hospital bed and refocus into the conversation, while Ren composed himself enough to give a word.

“No,” he responded.

“Ren, seriously come on, we’ll do it for Bear.”

“No no no, I cannot possibly allow that Sotie, I cannot bring you down with us because of this whole thing.”

“Ren, we’ll be alright, we’ll manage fine. This is about more than us. Maybe we eat out a bit less over the next few months, or however long, Bear’s worth it.”

“Thank you, really thank you, but I can’t just take your money,”

“What was dinner? That was our money we spent. You didn’t pay for that, did you?”

“That was different,”

“Different how, how was that different?”

Ren thought about his answer. “Because…”

“Because...? Because it was less? Ren, the principles the same. We help each other, that’s how we operate.”

“And I will always be grateful that you have that principle, but this is more than just a little help.”

Soteria’s tone became desperate. “It’s not like we’re paying the entire medical bill! It can just be a bit here and there, just to boost you when we can.”

“Not this time, okay?”

“Why not?”

“I’m his brother… I’m supposed to look out for him… I was supposed to keep him safe, and then this goes on for a year and a half, pouring however much, he must have put thousands into it. Anything spent on this damn poison is too much, and if someone is going to have to pay that price it’s going to be me. So thank you, but this one has to stay in the family.”

Soteria clearly wished to push it further, but the part of her that loved Bear also lived in the same room as the part of her that had to respect the wishes of his brother, her friend. With a look of acknowledgement, it was done.

She gave a slight glance to Azura, considering it appropriate at that point to consider her perspective in the matter, but she found clearly that there wasn’t a perspective to be found, only a face riddled with some sort of sickness, as if a wire in her head came out of place somehow, leaving her face only able to produce the same pale, nauseous expression.

“Azzie, you feelin’ alright?” Soteria asked, while knowing the answer.

“I’m going to get something to eat.” Azura left the room.

Azura wasn’t sure entirely if she had any real intentions of getting food when she had said that, but she understood that she had to get out of that room. Being out, however, it became clear that her options were to lie about the reasoning for her wanting to leave her best friend’s side on his bed in the ICU, go back into the room without getting what she said she was going to get, or to simply just get food. She chose to find the deli.

Though the deli was on a different side of the hospital than she had been the past several hours, it was the same building. It was devoid of joy. Not a soul wanted to be there. Anyone who sat with a plate of cold vegetables and slices of ham, sat too with a face showing longing for a meal out in the city with family, a meal that their circumstances denied them. So, people sat, with backs hunched weakly pressing their forks into their food, with exhausted bodies and minds.

She walked up to one of the large screens on the wall in left of the room. It was as tall as her, and upon her input, displayed a menu of meals that she could choose from. She picked the first option that popped onto the screen: tuna sandwich. A tiny nozzle near the top sprayed the screen and was promptly cleaned off by an automated wiper. Azura waited by the conveyer in the wall, and after about 30 seconds, she got her food.

An unoccupied table waited for her in the center of her room, where she made no attempt to make herself comfortable in. She merely placed herself in the chair and stared at her plate.

A tuna sandwich… she had never had tuna before in her life.

She grabbed it, and held it up to her mouth, gently inching it closer to her lips.

The only time she had even gotten close to tuna was when she went to a sushi restaurant a year back. She ordered a spicy crab roll, and Bear had tekka maki.

She still hadn’t taken a bite of her sandwich.

Bear had never had wasabi before and placed half the glob on one roll, stabbing it with a chopstick rather than grabbing it properly.

The sandwich sat in her hands.

He bit in, then had tears running down his cheeks in seconds.

She threw the sandwich down and ran to the trash can so she could vomit into it. The back of her throat burned with every violent cough she launched into the plastic wrap as she held onto the rim for balance. Every drop of her puke that fell to the bottom of her trash compelled her to expel even more from the disgust. She was able to stop herself after a third hurl and spit out whatever was left in her mouth while panting.

“Hey, you good?” someone asked from outside the can.

She pulled her head out to look at him, it was a hospital worker.

“I’m fine,” she answered with weak breath.

He grimaced. “Tuna sandwich, huh?”

She nodded.

“Yeah, rookie mistake there. Never go with tuna I mean seriously you can never go with tuna! It is gross like every time I’ve had it!”

She stood up and looked him in the eyes. “Yes, this is definitely going to go down as one of the worse experiences I’ve had with it.”

He laughed, “Yeah no doubt. Well, if you’re not feeling well, it’s a hospital, so… yeah.”

“I think I’m fine, thanks.”

“Maybe order something else? They do paninis! I could not believe they do paninis, but they do them!”

“I’ll be sure I try one,” Azura said to him, as she looked at his hair.

He gave a thumbs up, and began to walk away, but there was something about his golden locks Azura found familiar, familiar enough to where she didn’t want him to leave yet.

“Hey, have I seen you around somewhere?” she called out to him.

He turned around, and squinted his eyes at her, then his jaw unhinged. “No way.”

As he said it, things became clear to Azura, as she made out the dim glow of a tattoo on the right side of his neck. “You were getting chased yesterday.”

He awkwardly bobbed his head. “Yep… I was… you were with that guy.”

“I was.”

He blinked, and his face shifted from shock to a surprised glee.

“Oh my god! It’s good to see you! Thank you, for one. You and he really saved me there. I mean really things were not looking g―things were looking bleak, there, for a second.”

“Yeah, of course. It was nothing, I’m glad you’re doing good.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, what’s gotcha… or well, why are you in the hospital?”

She didn’t answer for a second, not wanting to crush his spirits, and not wanting to remind herself of it again.

“That guy yesterday, that helped you out. He… got really hurt. And he’s here now.”

His mouth dropped again, and his eyebrows slanted like hills above his eyes. “What?! Aw… no man I am so sorry to hear that. What happened?”

“Ollie.”

The word did something to him. He held the same expression, but another layer seemed to reveal itself, beyond just shock and pity.

“I’m really sorry…”

Azura sighed, “Yeah... He’s had an issue for a while. You never want it to end up in the hospital… yet every way you imagine it ending usually involves a hospital.”

“Well… you both saved my skin there. If you weren’t in that alley, I don’t even know… but I’ll say this: if you need something, or if there is something I can do to help out your buddy, I owe you. I’m there.”

He held his hand out. “I’m Frey, also.”

She grabbed it. “Azura."

“You know,” he added, “I did not expect your voice to sound like that.”