[ WP ] Flowers grew where she walked , only to be burned away in the footsteps of him who followed .

The fifth floor was quiet, only the soft rustle of sleeping breaths and the rythmic ticking of the large clock on the wall pierced the silent veil. 
 
 Three AM. 
 
 She tip-toed through the hallway, her white uniform stood out like a ghost in the darkness of night. A red light shone over one of the last doors, someone needed her. 
 
 `` Can I help you, Mrs Collins?'' 
 
 Her voice was not much more than a delicate whisper, soft and warm as a summer's sunset. There was no response, only a change in the rythm of the rattling breathing coming from the room. 
 
 She stepped inside. 
 
 She was met with an alert gaze from the whithered form that occupied the bed. The old woman's face showed her age, little more. Thin silver strands of hair hung over the pillow like spider silk. 
 
 `` Agatha, dear.'' 
 
 Her voice was dusty and cracked, worn out, spent. But those eyes, her piercing blue eyes had never lost their shine. 
 
 `` Am I going to die?'' 
 
 An inevitable question, as inevitable as the subject it inquired. Still, it sent chills down her spine. The fifth floor, the final stop. 
 
 She did not reply. 
 
 Something that may once have been laughter escaped her tired old lips. A chortle, nothing more. She knew the answer. Her quivering breath gathered for a request. 
 
 `` Will you... sing for me, Agatha? One last time?'' 
 
 And she sang, she hummed of far away lands and whispered of the sun's warmth above the puffy clouds. The old woman was bewitched, as she had been so many times. Her clear eyes became cloudy as her mind drifted to those colourful fields of flowers. 
 
 Her breathing slowed, and as the nurse's song ended on a final note her dreamy smile remained as her eyes fell closed, never to open again.
