Zach

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

I woke up in the hospital for the fifth time this week.

When I awakened, father was still sleeping. I decided I would walk to the cafeteria, food was mandatory. In the hospital's cafeteria, there's a lot of people. Lunch ladies, sick people, the ones visiting, and others.

I grabbed a bag of chips and an already made sandwich wrapped in plastic and put it on the counter. The woman behind the counter had a black nametag that read 'Bertha' in tiny gold letters. Her face was pinched as if there's a gross smell in the area and she has grey hair up in a messy bun with strands of hair falling onto her face, her eyes look grey too. She asked for $7.65, but I had no money to give her, "I don't have any money, my mother just asked me to come get her food."

That was a lie of course.

"Oh, okay honey, you know what, it's yours. Go give it to your mother, and take this for yourself, too."

She smiled and handed me my food along with an abnormally large raisin cookie.

I left the cafeteria and headed down a hallway that looks like the one I came from, but they're all white with the same amount of windows. Maybe it is the same one.

I made my way into a near empty waiting room and ate the food I was given. The only other people in here was a bony woman with ratty old grey hair wearing a purple sweater that has cat hair all over and skinny jeans with scratch marks showing bleeding flesh. Her head kept twitching and I don't know what she could be here for, maybe the scratches, probably not.

There's also a man, he has a brown mustache and broad shoulders, he keeps coughing into his giant hand. He's balding and his ears are small. He seems to be reading a small brown book.

Then there's the desk lady, she keeps looking around the room and has pink pinched glasses. Her hair is tall, curly, and blonde. She had a turquoise blouse and has made two calls on the black cord phone next to her, she seems to be talking to doctors or nurses.

I finished my food and set off to go back to the room I haven't left since yesterday afternoon. Father was reading a magazine when I entered the room.

"Where have you been?" He snarled.

"I went to get food, I was hungry."

"You know I cannot afford the food here."

But you can afford going to the bar every night.

"I'm sorry father."

The rest of the day we did not eat. Then at night, when I was lying down, father snuck out of the room. Bound to that bar across the street.

While he was away, mother's machine started beeping rapidly. The doctor and a few nurses came running into the room. One of the nurses started pushing me out of the room saying I cannot be in there right now.

Eventually the beeping stopped and the doctor came out to talk with father, who was not there.

"Hey little bud. Where's your dad?"

"Father went to the bar across the street."

A look of shock and sympathy spread across his wrinkly face. He crouched down to be my height while I sat on the white chair outside mothers room.

"Oh, uh, I don't-I don't think he's there. He's probably just gone to the, to the," the doctor trailed off. He couldn't think of any place father might have gone other than what I had already said.

"To the store." His eyebrows popped up as in asking me if I could please believe that so he doesn't have to talk to me anymore.

"Okay."