"I'm tired of the people," I said.

Alec could only offer a nod in return. A part of me was glad he wasn’t like the others and that he hadn’t started yelling at me for how rude I was being. It was like he understood. And that was nice.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be,” I told him with a smile I truly meant this time.

He finally dared to meet my eyes. I think we were both tearing up a little. “Man,” he snickered, “it’s just been all apologies with us today, hasn’t it?”

I chuckled. “I guess so,” I said, “but it’s been fun nevertheless.”

The silence that ensued was a comfortable one. It’s hard to say how long we remained this way, simply grinning at each other, our exchange of gazes speaking more than we’d ever need to. I wanted to thank him, to tell him he had made me feel at ease, but I didn’t. I was a coward back then, fearing his reaction more than anything, especially the possibilities that our relationship could change in more ways than one.

Yet, little did I know, things were already changing whether I liked it or not.

“You know when you’ll be out?” Alec finally asked, breaking the silence, the muted world we had created for ourselves.

I shrugged. “I guess I’m still under surveillance for a couple of days, so normally it shouldn’t take too long. Unless, you know, complications.”

He gulped.

I rolled my eyes and groaned. “Alec, it’s fine. There won’t be any complications. I promise.”

He bit his lip. “Promise?”

“I promise,” I said. “Thanks. You’re sweet.”

His eyes went wide once my sentence died.

As Alec’s cheeks were suddenly sprinkled with a light shade of pink, I frantically waved my hands around, and blurted, “I— I mean, i-it’s sweet of you to worry. You know, you’re a sweet uh, friend. Yeah. A friend. A friend who is sweet. So—”

“Okay!” he held his sides and wiped a tear from his eye. His shoulders trembled as he laughed again. “I get it, I get it!” Alec said.

We both averted each other’s gazes and took a deep breath each, before turning back to face one another other once more, we parted our lips in unison.

“You know—”

“By the way—"

But a knock on the door interrupted us both.

A rather short lady with dark frizzy hair entered the room. “I don’t mean to interrupt,” she said, “but I’m afraid that visiting hours are over.”

My eyes darted from her figure, to Alec’s, to the outside world past my window. Indeed, the stars have risen, and the sun was long gone. Noises of my childhood friend’s frantic shuffling and struggle to grab his belongings filled the room.

As he excused himself towards the nurse, who assured him it was no worry, he took a quick glance over his shoulder and said, “It was nice to see you, Erika. I hope you feel better soon, and that we can do this again sometime, if you want of course.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I simply kept my silence and nodded. After a while, Alec stopped waiting for any kind of vocal queue to come out of my throat. “Good night,” he told me before walking out the half-opened door in the nurse’s company.

My answer came with a fifteen-minute delay as I stared up to the ceiling, alone in a now-dark room that didn’t belong to me, I whispered, “Good night, Alec.” I know it was late. But it was as if it took me a while to process that he was gone. Sometimes I still felt his presence near me, the effect of joy he had caused me to feel, and it never really hit that I was on my own until the fact proved to be irrevocably true.

I turned my body towards the window, my arm hurt from the bruises that developed after they’d stabbed me with yet another needle tonight. Light emanated from the faraway buildings. It was a funny thing to me, for light meant life, and there was so much of it coming from the array of small apartment complexes. And I wondered, were these people finishing a rough day at work? Were they in love, or making love? Had they just gotten married, divorced, or were they taking a week off to be with their families? Did they also have problems like me? Did they believe those problems were relevant? Or were they too ignorant to realise problems were but a way created by humans to keep ourselves busy?

For a while, I found solace in inventing stories, about the people in tall boxes. I thought about the statistics of suicide and recalled that every twelve minutes someone in the world had a go at it. Yes, I was persuaded that one of these people would try to take their life tonight, whilst another downstairs would be casually eating a pack of chips on his couch. He would have his TV at full volume, unable to hear the couple below him banging on his ceiling with their brooms, and complaining that tomorrow is a work day. Or, you know, perhaps that’s not that all, and it’s just a janitor cleaning out an office while listening to guilty pleasure pop music and secretly enjoying every minute of it. Yeah, I thought as I glanced back to my own ceiling, if we were more aware that everyone just wants to live their lives in peace and are trying their best, I’m persuaded vast amounts of misunderstandings would be resolved – if not every.

Which is when another thought crossed my mind, one concerning the man I’d spoken to the other night.

What kind of life is he living?

Are I these truly the types of thoughts I should be having before going to bed?

…

Probably not.

But, I suppose nobody will ever know, so it should be fine.

And, before I knew it, the flow of my mind had been gently interrupted — as the temporary death, we all know as sleep, pulled me under.