I worked at the hospital. I wasn't a doctor, I had barely just graduated, but I enjoyed spending my time helping out the therapists and such at the hospital with kids my age, my age being a high school senior or eighteen years old. It was the summer before I started at Boston University for my own degree in medicine.
It was my first full day of the summer, about an hour or so after lunch when my boss, Dr. Windslow, sent me to check on a patient while she headed off to a meeting.
"She's about your age, Jacob, and she could probably use the social interaction," she had said to me before walking off.
So I went, after talking to another kid, much younger than I was who was in for a bad case of pneumonia. As I walked towards the door of room 518 of the pediatric ward, I thought nothing about what would happen in a matter of moments, of course, I knew nothing of what /would/ happen and therefore wouldn't be thinking about it. It was only afterward I realized something had changed, but I wasn't sure what it was.
I knocked on the door of room 518 and was answered with a bored, "Come in."
When I walked in, I took note of the girl lying on the bed in front of me. She looked about my age, maybe older, it was hard to tell. She looked pale, like the life was slowly fading out of her, with lackluster blue eyes set in a heart-shaped face surrounded by limp waves of dark hair, brown, maybe black, in color. She was alone and looked like she had been for a while. The television was on in the corner, quietly playing Breakfast at Tiffany's in fuzzy pixels. This first impression of her stayed with me for a while.
"Are you my new case worker? 'Cause you look a little young to be dealing with me," she said.
I laughed. "No, I'm not your new case worker, but if you want, I can pretend to be him."
She cracked a strained smile. "So what did I do to deserve the newbie, probably here on rotation from med school?"
"I'm not in med school just yet, but I will be soon, I hope."
"Ah, so what are you then?" she said, cocking her head quizzically.
"Dr. Windslow sent me to check in on you, and I'm sorry, but she didn't tell me your name. I'm Jacob. Who are you?" I said, sitting down in the chair to the left of her bed.
"I am everyone and no one all at once, stranger-named-Jacob," she replied. "But if you're looking for a name, I prefer Aurora today."
"Today?" I asked her, confused. Did she not like her own name?
"Everyday is different for me, and today I felt like channeling dawn. Aurora is the name of the Roman goddess of the dawn. I felt like today would be the start of something beautiful."
And she was right, it was the start of something beautiful. After checking her monitors and making sure she was ok with her movie, I said goodbye and continued on with the rest of the things the staff asked me to do that day.
{/~-~\}
That night, I was eating dinner with my family. Mom and Dad sat across from each other and I faced my sisters with my brother to my left.
"How was work today, Jacob? Did anything interesting happen?" Mom asked me. At the time, meeting Aurora was interesting, but something I couldn't technically share.
"Good. Tiring, but good. I met a new patient, she was pretty nice," I responded vaguely. "You get your list yet? Or at least the number of students you'll have?"
Mom, at the time, was a teacher at the local elementary school. She shook her head no, and proceeded to ask my sister how her day was.
"Lori? How was your first day at Kristman's?"
"It was great, Mom. I liked it," Lori replied. Lori is my twin sister, younger by eight minutes. I rubbed it in her face as kids, but it doesn't matter much nowadays. "How'd it go here?"
"Oh, well Bobby and Kristina played with their friends outside in the pool for a while and then they came inside to watch a movie. It was a quiet day," Mom said happily. With four kids, she probably was happy not much noise was made.
"How was work for you, Daddy?" Kristina piped up. Dad was the head engineer on the new building they were putting up right down the street from the hospital. It was going to become part of the hospital's research wing.
"It was good, sweetheart. What movie did you and Bobby watch?" he answered, avoiding details, they were confidential, as he liked to tell us.
"We watched a really old movie with this pretty lady who lives in New York City and liked to stand in front of this fancy store called, um, called.... What was it called, Krissy?" Bobby said.
"Tiffany's? I don't really remember. I liked it, though, didn't you Bobby?" Kristina replied.
"Yeah, I guess, it was ok," he said quietly
{/~-~\}
After dinner, Lori and I took care of the dishes and she told me about some of the people who had come into Kristman's Beauty Center. Lori, short for Lorietta, is setting up to study cosmetology at Aveda Institute after she does her required studies at Columbia University that Mom and Dad made her promise to do.
"So, who's the new girl you met, Jake?" Lori asked me as she put away the plate she had been drying.
"Sorry, Lor, I can't tell you," I replied with a smile.
"You can't tell me what she's in for, but you can tell me her name," she retorted smugly.
I chuckled at her games. She loved finding loopholes, especially when it came to Mom and Dad's rules. "She said her name was Aurora, 'for today.' Can't girls just say what they mean?"
"For today? She said that? Really?" Lori said inquisitively.
"Yeah, she said 'for today,' like it would be something entirely different tomorrow," I responded. "Isn't that strange? I told Dr. Windslow, but she said it was nothing out of the ordinary."
"Huh, well that is weird. Though, I suppose it would be cool if I could have a different name every day. Like I could be Loretta today and Georgie tomorrow."
"Jacob Andrews today, Antonio Salvatore tomorrow!" I shouted, splashing Lori with water from the sink. She laughed and whacked me with the dish rag she held in her hands.
We proceeded to have a splash fight, both of our shirts soaked by the end of it and our faces hurting from laughing so much. It was a good night, truly the dawn of a new era, even if it would last such a short amount of time.
YOU ARE READING
The 100 Names of Audra Kacey Farryn
RomanceThere was a girl, she was sick and she didn't want to live sick. There was a boy, he wanted to help the sick and he didn't want to see someone like her sick. Jacob is a fresh-out-of-high-school worker at the hospital in his home town of Boston, asp...