Wails and foreign words echoed through the hospital ward. At such a late hour, you'd have thought that someone would have come to silence the girl's cries. But no one played attention to the girl sat, her back pressed against the wall as she hid herself. Her head rested on the bench besides her, the brown hair stuck to her wet, tanned skin of her face as her tears failed to stop. She tried calming herself down, but as the image of her mother lying lifelessly on the hospital bed surfaced in her memory; she would burst into tears once more. Sometimes no tears would come, and she'd be left making ugly, high pitched noises as a way to sooth the pain within her heart.
Whenever a person walked passed, she would silence herself, trying her best to keep herself unknown to any passing person. She was sure someone had heard her. In fact, she had a theory that the whole hospital had caught wind of her cries, yet she still felt insecure enough to keep herself invisible. Would they have looked down on her if they knew it was someone her age crying so relentlessly over her mother passing out? She was old enough to have known it was nothing life threatening and any other seventeen year old wouldn't have worried as much as she had. But with everything playing out the way it had, she was left praying for her mother's life. Fear like none other had risen inside her. She wasn't worried about herself, but her family.
Now that she was alone, she was left with only emotions. Her thoughts were somehow blocked, overloaded by her tears and sorrow that diverted any sense getting through to her. Maybe this was why she was sat with her knees close, crying alone. Her tears weren't hidden; she didn't bother to wipe them away. As long as nobody could see her, they wouldn't notice her tear stricken face. That was the theory she had. They wouldn't notice her as they walked past if she kept quiet.

Upon hearing the sudden noise fill the hospital, the boy pulled himself from the plain sheets that cover the white beds. He cautiously looked over to the digital alarm clock that sat on his bedside table, he set it early ever morning, waking before the nurses came to give him the medicines he needed to take.
As he unhooked the life supports, which he thought were unnecessary as he managed to get through the day without them, he picked at his clothes rested neatly on the chair besides him. He listened to the sound of the cry, coming to the conclusion that it wasn’t too far from where his ward was. “Just by the operating theatre…” He muttered. Having being in the hospital for so long, he knew it like the back of his hand. He was certain he was a permanent patient; that was why he had been moved to the separate room. His illness must have been serious, contagious. That was why he had to be alone.
But he had long grown sick of this. It was the reason he had become resistant, defiant, exceeding the boundaries he had been set to keep him healthy. He was fine without them, wanting to be happy instead of healthy was his main goal now.
Slipping shoes on and casually checking over his appearance in the small mirror that hung opposite his bed, he nodded to himself. The sudden transformation from that of a hospitalised patient to an average mid 17 year old visiting family was quite unnerving. He looked nothing like he had 5minutes beforehand with his burgundy cap now resting low on his head; covering his deep green eyes and hiding most of his neatly cut brown hair.

Cries still filling the hallways, he descended quickly and quietly, careful to keep his converse from scraping across the recently mopped floors, resulting in high-pitched squeaks. They made him flinch, one of the many noises he was accustomed to that still somehow got to him. So he avoided it, lifting his feet that little bit more and placing them softly.
As he grew closer to the destination he had in mind, he noted how the sobs, although becoming clearer, would die down before starting up again. He slowed his pace when they stopped, knowing the something wasn’t right.
Just like the sobs, he stood still. Listening intently. It was impossible for a person to ‘disappear’. He knew it all too well, something he had tried to achieve as a child whenever the nurses came to check up on him. He’d sit in the cupboard, under the bed, behind the table. Anywhere. He thought that no one would find him, but he already knew there wasn’t any escaping it.
When a small, almost inaudible hiccup sounded, he smiled. Not from knowing that someone else was in pain, but from knowing he wasn’t alone. Someone was suffering, trying to hide themself like he once had.

Walking past a lone bench, he almost didn’t notice the girl sitting on the floor. She watched him walk, her eyes growing wide when he turned his attention towards her. Lowering her head, she tried averting her gaze somewhere else, but somehow she managed to find herself glancing at the young boy, almost scared of what he would think of someone her aged sitting with a tear stricken face and wailing helplessly to herself.
However, the boy instead crouched beside her, reaching his hand out and whipping away a tear that had rested on her cheek. He debated between telling her not to cry and assuring her that crying was fine. But somehow, he rested between the two, leaving the decision to the girl whose name he did not know.
“It’s okay, you’re not alone.”