The Red Eye [Open Novella Contest 2023]

Chapter 4

Donna knew that eventually, she needed to leave that damn hospital. It was getting late. And procrastinating wasn't going to make anything better. At least when she finally worked up the nerve to walk to her car, turn on the engine and her navigation system on her phone, it would just be an anxious fifteen minutes and then she would be home and then she could relax. By putting it off, she was just stressing herself out more. Yet, she couldn't make herself get up from that hospital waiting room chair. The boy was still there, sitting next to her, and she wanted to ask him why. But since she had accidentally admitted her anxiety, he had gone quiet. Donna twisted her fingers and felt some of the joints pop. Donna looked at the other kids who seemed to have mostly preoccupied themselves with other things. But every once in a while, one would glance over with a conspiratory grin. They weren't even trying to hide the fact that they were looking. For a long, awful moment, she felt something close to anger. She didn't like being stared at.

"Does it help to have someone with you?" the boy asked. Donna jumped at the voice. Really, why the hell was he still there? Donna had a sneaking suspicion that the kids on the other side of the atrium had somehow put this strange boy up to this as a dare. Donna tasted venom on her tongue at the thought. They were critically ill patients, and they were sending one of their own to mock a less-ill patient.

Then the words he said sank in the way water sinks into a towel.

"What?"

"If you had someone in the car with you, would you feel less anxious?"

Donna felt dumbstruck. She made her lips form the shape of words. "Well, sure, yeah," she said. "Why?"

The boy shrugged. "I could go with you. I assume you have other stuff to do than sit here in this hospital."

Donna really didn't have other things to do other than work in the morning, but that was besides the point. Plus, she was hungry and tired. "Are you allowed to do that?"

"What, leave? Sure, as long as we come back." He chewed on his bottom lip. "And as long as nobody catches us."

That didn't exactly sound like a rousing approval, but now Donna was too curious to not ask more. "Do all people with cystic fibrosis live in the hospital?" she asked. She couldn't lie, she didn't know shit about the disease. People usually don't know shit about diseases that don't actively impact them.

The boy shook his head. "Nah. Just those of us in the end stage. And we don't really live in the hospital most of the time, either."

"End stage?" she said.

"Meaning we need lung transplants."

Donna was suddenly acutely aware of her own breathing: the sound of the air entering and leaving, the feeling of her chest rising and falling, the slight soreness in her throat with each inhale. When she finally got home, she should probably make some tea.

"Do you like green tea?" she asked.

He blinked, and Donna knew he thought she was crazy. He'd be right. Relatively speaking, of course. Maybe. Therapists like Dr. Viola didn't use the word crazy. Dr. Viola didn't even really say "depressed" or "anxiety" all that often.

"Sure," he said.

"Then if you're caught, you just went out for tea, like real people do." she said and tried to give a reassuring smile.

The boy grinned. "I'm not a real person?" he asked.

Donna shrugged. "Sometimes when I'm at the doctor's office, I feel like I'm just a doll or something that some kid is controlling. Or a Sim or something, I don't know. I don't feel like a real person."