sleeping beauty - revisited

CHAPTER NINE

Arty had to blink twice to convince herself she wasn't hallucinating.

She laughed and cried at the same time. Of all the things she could have expected from that visit, that was the last. The words "nurse! nurse!" escaped from her lips in a hoarse desperate scream, and she almost didn't seem like the same girl from two minutes ago that was struggling to keep herself quiet because she wasn't supposed to be in there. But she didn't even care about it anymore. Aurora's breath was still failing, and Arty couldn't lose her like that. Never again.

It didn't take long for her screams to be heard. Soon the hospital bed was surrounded by a confusion of desperate doctor and nurses, checking the girl's vital signs, keeping her breath steady, doing what was possible to keep her out of comma.

Arty kept holding her hand until she could. She smiled at her, the relief tears still falling through her face while only one thought kept repeating in her head. Please stay with me. It seemed now like a lifetime since the day she had known about her friend's comma – almost a year ago. Probably the worst day of her life – a terrible day,  that had lasted almost a year of despair. But  now, hopefully, it was over.

When Arty was forced to let go of her hand so the doctors could make the necessary exams, the smile on her face didn't disappear at all. Aurora was safe.

She waited patiently on the hospital benches. Two, three hours passed and she felt the impatience eating her alive, but she waited. Arty had all the time in the world.

She felt the disdain looks from Aurora's family, but that didn't surprise or worried her. If it wasn't from anyone else, she'd think the reason would the disapproval of her rather uncommon appearance - black boots, leather jacket, dark messy black hair and especially ragged clothes after climbing nine floors of a hospital building. But she was very aware of what they thought of her - the fact that they had prohibited her of visiting Aurora at the hospital had already spoken by itself.

Of course that, as soon as they noticed Arty was there when she shouldn't be, they tried to expel her. Even security guards were called, but Arty wasn't willing to let anyone take her away from there.

"Can't you just not make a scene at least once? We're doing this for our Aurora. If you want her to be okay, you will understand", Aurora's father had said when she resisted the guards's orders.

Arty knew the old man from before. He was a short, very nervous man, and in that moment he was really nervous by Arty's stubbornness. But she didn't let herself get intimidated.

"Why don't you ask her, then?", she had replied, impassible. "If Aurora wants me to go, then I will."

"I must insist for you to get out."

"Then I must insist as well", she had said. "Ask. Her."

She had watched his expression carefully. Her brute look seemed almost to say "don't you dare twisting her words."

It seemed to be end of discussion. The man turned his back to her and walked back into the hospital room without saying anything.

And then Arty kept waiting.

The exhaustion consumed her. Her right shoulder was aching more than it should - maybe the effect of climbing nine floors of a hospital building. Even though she was in a hospital, she wouldn't risk and go for a doctor now. That could wait. She couldn't miss the chance of checking if Aurora was okay.

She was still afraid that all of that could be a dream from which she could wake up at any moment. It actually felt like a dream. She was still trying to process the fact that she had seen Aurora waking up right in front of her. After months and months of failed attempts to wake her up, the comma had decided to end right in the day where Arty had decided to say 'fuck it' to the rules made up by Aurora's father and made a plan to invade the hospital.