Tear Jerker / Awful Hospital

For a comic like this, there are a lot of moments that tug on the heart strings a tad bit too sharply, so don't question yourself when you start reaching for the tissues every now and then.

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

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• The untimely death of Nobody Nose, the very first being to show genuine care and support for Fern on her long, painful journey to find her kid.
  • The equally untimely demise of the Kidney Stone Mother. Right after Fern delivers the mortal blow to her, the two mothers are finally able to find common ground and sympathy for each other as the beast lays dying.
    • Not to mention all those poor orphaned kidney stone offspring.
• Fern's whole situation. Sad enough that her baby's suffering so badly from a mysterious illness, but here in The Hospital, so many roadblocks have been thrown up in her way, keeping her apart from her kid.
• The fact that the human doctors turned out to be no help at all. One shudders to imagine how it would be like in Fern's shoes as those doctors spouted out advice of no help in front of a horribly, horribly sick infant...
• Diptworth, from the moment of his inception.
• The Gasworm was a giant, hideous monstrosity. Visually and physically, it had all the makings of a good boss monster. You might expect Fern to react in fear or a warrior's grim stoicism when she stepped inside its lair. But because its gas was an exact replica of the one produced by her son, Fern's response is… heartbroken melancholy.
  Fern: ...I really don't want to be here right now...
  Staph: Then we don't need to be. Your emotional well-being is more important.
• The deaths of Staph and Maggie, by far the two sweetest characters in the comic up to that point. Even worse, Balmer put a sticky on their corpses reading "Ha!" just to spite Fern.
  • Even worse? Celia set up the entire group so that Balmer could get the Anomaly, indirectly causing Staph and Maggie's deaths. She was absolutely NOT expecting those two to die, and she briefly lets her Loveable Rogue mask slip away and shows absolute regret.
• This is NOT good. To explain: Fern has just discovered that her own son may have to essentially be euthanized in order to save the entire Perception Range from whatever illness he's causing. Even worse? She seems to be adjusting to the idea, to the point that she's losing all hopes for him to be saved, and just asks to stay with him in his final moments.
  Bloodstain: I hear tell they been chargin' the unexistalizer...if that's the case, some poor sucker's got somethin powerful nasty. Nasty enough to put their whole core concept down 'fore it spreads. Better them than us, I reckon...
  Fern: Yeah...I...I think...I think that might be for my son...
  Bloodstain: Ssssshhhhhhhhhhhortbread, me n' my big mouth...
  Fern: No, it's okay, if it's that bad...I mean...if he's suffering...if there's nothing else they can do... I still have to be there when they do it. He isn't even a year old. He can't die sick and scared in some other world without his mother...
• Jay. No, really. Fern was willing to help him. Many of the Commentators were willing to help him when they were in his mind. Many of the monsters would've been willing to help him. If only Jay could've found it in his heart to be even a slightly nicer person… it truly is tragic, in its own right.
• Judging from Tori's documents, she genuinely sees Cathy as an important friend and member of the hospital. And she's already starting to forget her, thanks to Jay's actions.
• The last page the commenters were in control of the Eyeslob. Not only Fern has to die again so that she can respawn and the Commenters can return into her head, the Eyeslob is the one who "kills" her, on Crash's suggestion, with no chance for the Commenters to try a less violent approach. Additionally, Eyeslob expresses doubt about whether he actually did a good thing, and fearful confusion as he "feels funny" while the Commenters exit his mind to return inside Fern's - something that Crash heavily implies will result into the Eyeslob losing his sentience.
  Eyeslob: ...I DONE... A HELP? FELE FUNII...
  • What makes this worse is that for the majority of the Commentators, they developed a paternal/maternal affection for the thing, trying to protect it from the influences of The Parliament. A couple of commentators even went so far to say that the Eyeslob to them is what Fern's baby is to her.
• Unstable and dangerous as he might have been, it's hard not to feel sorry for Crash during the entire final fight against him. He's terrified of the Parliament's Assimilation Plot and honestly has no other choice than making sure that he dies as himself. He further goes on to explain to Fern that, in addition to his immense boredom, he has spent essentially his entire existence being ignored and neglected. Apparently the Hospital did used to have a being on staff to keep Crash in working order, before this person was murdered by Jay. Most upsetting of all, though, is how Crash talks about what it's like having your only friend/loved one be not only gone, but only existing as a hole in your memory where a person is supposed to be, before he goes completely silent after his infection completely overtakes him.
  Crash: maybe...had.....maybe.........a... m o m.....t o o....?
  • Crash admits that one reason he allied with Jay was to learn about the places where the latter buried his victims; Crash hoped to find the corpse of his "technician" in one of them. He was wrong, and now Crash is having doubts over whether Jay was the one who killed the technician.
• After Crash finally dies, Willis tells Fern about his sadness over attempting to make friends with Crash, but failed because he was too afraid of his psychopathic urges. The worst part? Willis, who has been confirmed by Word of God to be roughly ten years old, says Crash is younger than he is. And what follows next is possibly one of the most heart-breaking monologues in this comic. It's sure to strike a chord with anyone who's been scared of someone's behavior but wanted to help them out, but couldn't due to their own fears overtaking them.
  Fern: .....No, Willis......you couldn't know what kind of help he needed, or even if anything could help at all. Some people can be mean, and it's true that sometimes it's because they've been hurt a lot and needed a friend, but you just never know that for sure. It's not your fault if you're afraid of them and don't know how to make them happy...it's most important that you be safe and take care of yourself too.
  • Crash is mentioned again here. Chip says that the Hospital's computer system was actually made to house several AI at once, but all of them were deleted by the Parliament, except for Crash. Chip reckons that Crash was left alive because the Parliament saw him as the easiest to manipulate, because he was the youngest of computoids.
    Fern: I'm getting REALLY sick of them [the Parliament] picking on kids.
  • According to Query, another of the computer personalities, Crash was only supposed to handle games. Small wonder the kid was so unhinged!
• The Reveal by "Miss" that Earth is gone. Not some illusion, not some alt-zone Earth, but the 100% real, original Earth Prime was destroyed, and possibly the rest of our universe too. It was taken over by the Parliament and ultimately deteriorated into complete discord over the course of a couple of years. Unless Fern somehow finds a way to undo it, (which is far from certain) our universe will be done for.
• Dr. Phage, recently realizing he's trapped under a box and isolated from most visual stimulation aside from his rubber duck, begins to think about when he was last "coherent". And then, we see that Phage is just as much a victim of the circumstances as anyone else in the Hospital, as the duck is actively derailing his train of thought any chance it gets. When he's gotten brief seconds to be lucid, his memory is perfect. Every single detail of a patient - weight, height, species, zone, ailment - all of it comes without much effort, and he's genuinely distressed by the idea of making Fern wait so long for treatment, and tries desperately to keep himself focused... but the duck, now clearly a device the Parliament forced on him, merely drives him even further off the deep end.
• After reading a stolen letter in the Library, the commenters discover Fleagood's backstory. He discovered the Parliament's super-sickness inside some dogs, but no matter how much he tried, he couldn't fix it; the best he could do is give them a Mercy Kill. And then the disease kept infecting others and becoming much, much worse. Realizing that this was a grave issue, he tried to warn the rest of the Hospital, but they didn't believe him, since the sickness cannot be perceived by them. This betrayal, combined with Fleagood's own sense of inferiority due how much the other doctors openly disliked him, was the final straw for him; so, in desperation, he tried looking somewhere else for help, and eventually he did find someone who believed him... the Parliament itself. And now Fleagood serves the Parliament, mistakenly believing that doing so will help him cure the disease, while in reality he's just making things worse and doesn't even realize it.