One Shots

Potted Plants

The light is white, and pale, full of dust particles as it flickers in between the sterile, white rectangles of the blinds. Its yellow fingers brush over the leaves of the potted plant withering on the sill. The leaves are curling in towards themselves the little bits of dry, dead cells slowly tumbling to the crumbly dirt below.

I stand in the doorway. Not moving. Meg sits in a chair on the other side of the room, her dark, ebony curls tumbling over her back. She's shrouded in a thick grey sweater, and those old-fashioned yoga pants that everyone traded in for sweats, and leggings back in 2010. Her back is to me, hands in her lap as she stares at those slits of sun glowing through to the floor. I let out a long slow breath.

"Qué vas à entrar Bean? Allí de pie como un árbol no va a hacer usted o para mí ningún bien," she asks me to come in. Standing there like a tree isn't going to do you or me any good. No. She's wrong. I never do her any good, and she has bad habit of scaring the bejezus out of me.

I take a step forward my nails slowly releasing the wood of the doorframe. It's strange to hear her speak Spanish. She stopped speaking it when she transferred from GBA to Dallson, the public high school in our district, and since she got admitted to the hospital no one's called me Bean.

"Estoy en comign," I step closer then pause waiting for her response. I know she's changing, and she won't freak out and throw her hair dryer at me or anything like that, but I'm careful, old habits die hard. When she doesn't answer I speak again. "¿Estás bien? ¿No loco?" She still doesn't respond. "Estoy llegando ahora. No se asuste."

"Just shut up, and come in Bean. I'm not going to throw anything." She turns her head to look at me, eyes slowly scanning the room as her neck cranes over her shoulder. "There's nothing to throw."

The bottoms of my high tops scuff along the floor as I go closer to her. Mom and Dad visit her at least twice a week, the doctor says it's good for her, it shows her that she's still loved. This is the first time that I've come and done more than just stand by the door. I'm worried if I get too close I'll hit her or something. Yank at her hair, or scratch her face or...cry.

Slowly I walk around the chair she's sitting in until I'm standing right in front her. Meg looks at me. Her eyes are dark like mine, and our skin is the same brownish shade. Darker than tan, but light enough that sometimes people still mistake us for being really outdoorsy Caucasians.

We look at each other. Purple bags hug the bottoms of her eyes. Her mouth is pinched, the corners turning down slightly in an almost frown. Her sleeves are rolled up.

A mix of old, white scars, and fresh new scabs cross in a series of slish-slashes up her forearms. They glow on her skin. The white bandages around her wrists, new, and clinical make a lump form in my throat. She catches me staring and looks up, biting her lip. "They think it's good for me to look at them. Accept what I've done to myself. Realize that I'm all crap and noodles upstairs," a small devilish grin graces her face and I almost smile in return, but too soon it fades. I watch with a stuttering heart as the expression that I had come to relate so easily with my sister becomes sad in a heartbeat.

"You're not all crap and noodles upstairs," my voice comes out choked and scratchy. I cough. Meg looks down at her lap.

There's an echoing quiet that resounds in the room. I look down at my toes. The black of my shoes is a stark contrast to that of the white linoleum floor underneath them.

"Do you still have..?," her voice is tentative as she reaches slowly to the bottom of my sleeve pushing it up ever so slightly, I yank my hand away, my response to somebody's fingers near my wrists instantaneous, and angry. The neurons in my brain quiver, lashing out, in place.

"Meg, what the fuck. This is a hospital," I hiss, spit flying with my fear. Meg draws her hand back to her lap. I glare at her, heavily.

"But do you still," she pauses sending a nervous look sent towards the door. She drops her voice to a whisper. "You know, do you still..?"

It's funny, because after my sister nearly died. After I found her lying in the bathroom at my friend Emma's party. Pale, barely breathing. Blood pooling around her hands. Staining her fingers, and palms like cranberry sauce, or strawberry jam. You'd think after I saw her like that that I would be scared, terrified of the consequences that can come with letting yourself hit rock bottom. I was. Maybe. Sort of. Kind of. For a couple months. But when there are days where you feel like your insides are missing, like you're hollow, and empty all the way through, pain can become addicting. I don't want to die, but anything in moderation is okay for you, even pain.

I hug my arms around my waist. "I don't know what you're trying to get at Meg."

She gives me a look. "I'm not stupid," she hisses. I'm taken aback by the sudden fire in her eyes, for a second I lose my balance and stumble backwards. I watch her as she takes a deep breath in, and then a deep breath out. Closing her eyes, her hands gripping her knees. When she was diagnosed with depression, she was also diagnosed as being bipolar. It makes sense. Even now that she's on medication, and getting help, half of me is still ready to duck at a flying object, or sprint away. "I'm not stupid Bean," she says more calmly now. "I'm a veteran of self-deprecation. We shared a bathroom, I've seen your garbage. You don't get that much blood on a razor cutting yourself shaving. No one needs that many Kleenexes for a bloody nose." I shake my head at her but don't speak. I think she takes that as her own answer because she stops pushing. I inhale deeply, and shove my hair away from my face with one hand. My heart is hammering. I cast a sidelong glance at the door, still hanging open on its hinges, gaping out towards the hallway.

It's quiet again.

"You cut your hair Bean."

It's true. I cut it a couple weeks ago. My long brown waves now hang short just below my chin. I've taken to pushing back the bangs with a clip. Meg always liked having long hair, and she liked that I did too. We could share the annoyance that comes with tangles, and hair brushes, and straighteners. Short hair's easier though, everybody's been cutting their hair lately.

I look at the door again, and then the clock on the wall, and then back at Meg. It's only been five minutes but it feels like an hour. Slowly I move towards the door. "I've got to go Meg." I take in the room as I leave. There's the window, the dying plant, the white walls, and white floors, Meg's chair, and a bed. It's sad, a simple existence. A part of me wants to cry again.

She doesn't speak again 'til I'm at the door. "Lo que sé sobre el dolor," she says. I pause.

"No," I answer. "The only pain you know about is yours."

I hestitate. Waiting for the outburst, and indignation. Her shoulders tense, my breathing comes out slow, and steady like the ticking of a clock. "Fuck off Bean," she says, I can hear the spite in her voice.

"Vete al infierno," I fire back, heart racing.

It's quiet again I expect her to scream, or at least say something superbly nasty. Meg always gets the last word. Instead she chuckles. Soft, and miserable, almost as though she's chuckling to herself, and has forgotten I'm still here. Standing in the doorway like a shadow. "Hell?" Her voice is toneless, and hollow as she asks. "I'm already there."

I look around the room again, and my stomach sinks. She's dying in here. She's got everything. It's all here, medicine, and doctors, and a chart on the wall with little cartoon faces for each emotion, all aggregating together to keep her alive. But she's dying.

Like a potted plant, all her leaves are falling off.

I look at Meg again, and breathe out. From the depths of my diaphragm, whoosh.

But aren't we all.

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Might continue this, un-edited.