cigarette daydreams

/18

Saturday meant Lydi.

It snowed Friday night. When Karden woke up the next morning, his mother wanted him to shovel out the driveway. He pulled on his jacket, stuffed his feet into his boots, and stared at the shovel for a long time before he walked off.

Snow didn't compare to Lydi. Not like it used to.

Karden hadn't thought since he left school yesterday. He hadn't pondered the strange feeling that had been pooling in his stomach ever since he'd met his revelation in the middle of the hall.

 But that feeling drove him out into the dawn cold. The hospital would be open, right? He'd just wait.

Karden thought he might just wait forever for Lydi, if that was what it took.

The front desk wasn't busy. Karden couldn't remember how he got there. He guessed it didn't really matter. He was there. That was what mattered.

"I'm here for a girl," he said.

The woman at the desk was a little annoyed. "Visiting hours don't start until eight."

"She's not here yet."

Sigh. "Then why are you here, sir?"

"Because I'm going to wait for her." Karden stepped back. "Is that okay?"

"Well, just who are you going to be waiting for?"

Karden swallowed. "She's a volunteer here. Her name is Lydi Stern."

The woman leveled a stare at him, then slid over to her computer and clacked away at the keys for a little while. She frowned. "We have no registered volunteers by that - "

"No, she volunteers here. I've seen her," Karden forced out.

The woman glares at him. "I said, we don't have any volunteers by that name, but we have a patient. In the cancer ward. A seventeen-year-old girl."

Then the snow came. It filled Karden's head, cold and muffling and white, and he couldn't seem to think. His brain was frozen - frozen on that one phrase. "Cancer ward."

"Yes, the cancer ward." She glanced at one of her coworkers on the other end of the desk, then beckoned Karden closer. He stumbled a little. "Look, you should get some rest. Maybe come back tomorrow."

"I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know."

The woman smiles sadlly. "We rarely know people as well as we think we do."

Karden fell a step back. Then another. Before he knew what he was doing, he rushed out into the snowy dawn. He ran through the snow drifts, no direction in mind, until he happened upon a bridge. The bridge. Jasper Bridge.

He stopped there. Walked over to where they normally stood, saying nothing and play-acting at being all right.

No - but that wasn't true, was it? Karden didn't play-act. He never did. It was Lydi. And he had never noticed. He had never asked about her. He had never known.

Lydi had cancer.

Lydi had cancer.

Lydi had cancer.