The room was no bigger than an average bathroom.
He placed the cylinder and backpack he had brought home by the wall which had an old wallpaper stuck on it.
The wallpaper had an image of little twinkle dots in a dark blue background. Stars.
Their mother was sound asleep on the second wall of the room which was directly opposite the door at which they're standing right now.
She inhaled deeply through her parted lips that looked a bit too thick for her hollow cheeks.
Her oversized clothes enveloped her emaciated being.
Axel and Diana walked towards the bed as they checked on their mother.
Axel squatted on the scrappy metal floors now covered with a faded black rug.
Taking her wrist into his hands, he shook his head in pain of watching her suffer.
" She looks thinner than she did this morning. What's wrong? "
He looked back at his sister who was about half an inch shorter than him. Diana looked pained and frustrated too.
"She's been throwing up every food I put in her system. She can't ingest anything except water and liquids.
I was able to make her drink some soup but she couldn't take much of that either because it irritated her throat. "
He nodded in understanding of what his sister was trying to explain. His mother's body was denying food.
" I got some left over beef soup from the bar in my bag. Maybe she will like it. " He sat on the bed by her side and held her frail hands in his which were of the same size as hers, except thicker.
He lifted her hands to his lips and placed a kiss on them while looking at his mother with the same loving eyes he had always given her.
After retracting his lips from her hand, he rested his forehead on the bed, next to her head.
" I hope so. Her health worries me. Especially the fact that she hasn't eaten anything tangible in the past 3 days." Ana sat on the foot end of the bed while watching the mother-son interaction, the only part missing was the health and consciousness of the mother.
She held her hands together on her lap as she thought deep of what had happened today.
"Is there any food left in the house?" Axel asked after getting his head off the mattress.
She nodded" Yes there is. Should I get you some? "
But he shook his head instead "No. I'm OK. Have you eaten? "The question came with a doubtful look.
She fiddled with her fingers. " I'm not hungry" She looked away.
Looking at her reaction, he knew she was saving the food for him.
" You don't need to save me some food. I work in a restaurant, I see food every hour of the day" He untied the laces to his shoes whose sole looked like they'd seen better days. Underneath his boots was inconveniently smooth from all the friction of walking and using the shoes nonstop.
"Seeing food every hour doesn't mean you get to eat it every hour." She smiled knowingly at him.
" I'm serious. You need to have some food." His eyes not losing the care he had for her in them.
She looked down at her fingers as she fiddled with her broken nails " I know.You've said that multiple times so you don't need to say it again. I just didn't feel like eating" She dropped her eyes to the floor feeling bad that she worried her brother.
"And why is that. Are you....unwell too?". He stated the last bit of the sentence with dread.
Watching his mother's ill condition was heartbreaking but the fact that they couldn't afford to pay for her treatment made him feel incompetent.
He had been working overtime to help his mother recover. His sister being sick too would just be a death sentence to the young boy but that didn't bother him as much as the probability of his sister being down and unwell.
He reached for her forehead but felt nothing unusual about her body temperature.
She pushed his slightly big hands compared to her's away from her head and shook her head.
" I'm not sick. I'll go get the food now." She stood up and headed for the door to get the food from the kitchen.
He smiled as she left him in the room. She was always considerate and putting people first over her needs, an attribute she learned from their mother.
He exhaled exasperatedly and spotted the supplies he had placed in the room then remembered that he had to fill the air tank. This room had the best air piping work in the entire building because he spent his time adjusting and fixing any damage done to the plumbing fixtures connected to the room.
His mother was ill and in dire need of food, drugs and air in large amounts but they could only afford so much.
Rubbing his hands over his face, from all the exhaustion the day had to offer him, he got to his feet which were covered with half torn socks.
He walked to the cylinder laying beside his backpack and took the scratched turquoise metal cylinder with him as he left the room.
After emerging from the room, he took a turn and entered the door leading to the passageway by the left.
The passage, like every other room in the house was lit by the soft orange glow of light coming from the bulbs installed in the yellowish white ceiling.
At the end of the passageway was a machine looking like a water dispenser, attached to the wall by multiple grey pipes. Air tank.
He dropped the cylinder in his hands by the tank and took a hold of a pipe which looked like an inlet for the machine.
The mouth of the pipe had a handle which he flipped after connecting the pipe to the cylinder and immediately a wush of air could be heared as it filled the machine and prepared to fill the house gradually.