Finding Mitty.

Chapter 6: Stay Alive...

It was getting dark, heavy rain came pouring down and as I sat on the edge of my balcony drinking my coffee, the streetlights came on, signalling the official start of New York's nightlife, or one could call it it's actual life. The sound of all the cars on the road could be heard spitting itself into the nearby restaurants, cafes, and other shops I never bothered to look at. The sound could sometimes become overbearing, so I just concentrated my focus past all the pollution and lights and the skyline, even past the shore on the bleakly orange yet cold horizon of the city. How very dramatic, and how very meager.

Since my mom had been diagnosed, I hadn't any sleep at all, not that I slept much before that. Working the same routine everyday for as long as I can remember, I'd become a slave of societal robotism. I'd go to work everyday, come home, that's it. When I was at home, with lots of free time, I did nothing useful, not because I didn't want to, but because it all just didn't seem pertinent to me. I'd stopped playing baseball a long time ago, and I hadn't completed any of the cartoons I'd started. There was just nothing to inspire me, motivate me, make me aspire to become the man I'd always wanted to be, a real useful human being, who actually contributed to changing the world, not just playing along with it. But I wasn't that man, and instead I was stuck here in this job so I could barely keep my head above the water, survive. And it stabbed the back of my head everyday. I was at the mercy of my own Nietzschean Ubermensh. I felt as if though a Tyler Durden might just pop up from behind and push me from the edge of the balcony. This was my life. Safe, confined survival. And daydreaming was my temporary escape from it. Escape to a more basic primal place, where I could, at least in my mind, live again, even if for a moment. But then I thought back to why I was doing this. I had to do this, my mom and my sister depended on me, and since my Dad died and I had to take care of my family. That had been the most basic and utmost priority in my mind for a long time now. And that's what kept me going. I went back inside and saw the time. It was time to go to the hospital.

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I sprinted up the stairs of the hospital as I didn't have enough patience to wait for the 'next one' and partly because I liked taking the stairs, because most of the time, they were empty. I got to the 3rd floor and made my way to the cancer ward, the stench of disinfectant firing up my olfactory sensors. I didn't like the whole aroma of hospitals. I got to room 4 and stepped inside. My mom resting on the bed and Odessa was sitting on a stool beside her, sleeping with her hands and her head on the bed. I went to the bed and awoke her by slowly shaking her.

"Hey, you're here, what time is it?" she asked rubbing her eyes.

"Its almost 9. How's everything?" I asked sitting sitting on the couch.

"Doc said she's doing better right now, her coughing isn't getting any worse. But it isn't getting any better either. And I'm not doing very good either." She replied in her getting-sadder-by-the-day tone.

I got up and hugged her assuring her that it'll be okay, and she hugged me back, almost breaking up into a puddle of tears, but she controlled. My sister was quite tough for a kid, well she was 22, but still a kid to me. She pulled away and wiping the corners of her eyes said, "So I'll go get dinner now."

"Okay. Get me a pudding too." I replied and sat on the stool previously occupied by her.

A while after she left, I heard my mom talk in a very feeble voice, "She's become very responsible hasn't she?"

"Yeah. She has." But she still didn't have any regards for authority.

"I often told her that she should be more responsible like you but she never listened. So I guess one good thing came out of my cancer." She said trying to laugh but ended up coughing.