Alive

Chapter 24: Happy Birthday, Kid

The doors to the lift opened, and the antiseptic smell of the hospital bombarded into it. I walked past a clock on the wall displaying that it was 7:03 am.

The police officers were due now. I sensed that the female officer was keen on punctuality, so there'd probably already be a scene on the second floor. Officers angrily asking nurses how I'd escaped, nurses fumbling over their words, announcing their shock and uncertainty.

As I looked for the stairs to the roof, I passed a room with a little boy surrounded by what I assumed were his family. His mom and dad, his older sister, and a few other adults who were probably uncles and aunts. A big ballon floated next to his bed, in the shape of a number 5. A smile spread across his pale face as his mother handed him a present.

I paused outside the door, wanting to see his reaction as he ripped the paper off of the sealed gift. His mother looked around, her eyes meeting mine through the open door. I expected her to get up and close the door, to block out the curious spectator intruding on their family moment, but instead she smiled.

She looked at my hospital gown and the hand I was holding to my stomach, then back up to my eyes. We only held each other's gaze for a few seconds, but I felt a wave of unspoken "Get well soon"s and "I'm sorry you're in here"s radiating from her caring eyes. Then she turned around to look at her son again, who was marvelling at the big toy truck he'd just opened.

I wondered how long he'd been in this place. His father seemed surprisingly comfortable, slouched in the armchair beside his son's bed, with his hand resting on his shoulder, as if this scene was all too familiar. How many birthdays had that little boy spent in that room? How many more would be spent there?

In that moment, I felt an overwhelming sense of something. Love? Humanity? I wasn't sure what it was, it was unfamiliar. But if I could've swapped places with that little boy, if I could've spent the rest of my life in that bed, and given him the chance to live, out there in the real world, I would have.

There were so many things he might never get to do, things that he should have been able to, but wouldn't. Have his first kiss, learn to drive, get drunk with friends, get married. I didn't know this boy in the slightest, but I wanted him to have those things. Sure he might end up a little rough around the edges, he could even end up like me for all I knew, but he deserved to have that chance.

I turned to find a desk behind me, with a pot of pens and a stack of papers on it. The woman behind it was too preoccupied typing away on her computer to notice me. I ripped the corner off of one of the pages and grabbed a pen from the pot.

This feeling I had, the one I'd never felt before, had come at the strangest time. Maybe if I'd had this feeling before, I wouldn't have killed those people, I wouldn't have lived the life I had. Needing to express it somehow, I dragged the pen across the small piece of paper. It wasn't a lot, but it was something big to me.

I dropped it outside the little boy's room and carried on walking. When I was halfway down the long hall, I looked back and saw his mother standing outside the door, holding the paper to her chest and smiling. 'Happy Birthday, Kid.' Those three little words on that small scrap of paper. Proof that somewhere inside of me, amongst the dark desires and twisted views, I had the ability to feel compassion for another human being.