Autompne

fourteen

FOURTEEN

Over the past few days, Autumn and I have been trying to cross as many things as we could off my bucket list. I'd managed to cross off things like; kissing Autumn, throwing a pie at someone's face, painting my whole body and creating a body stamp, climbing to the very top of a tree, wearing a hairnet for two hours and running all the way up a down escalator.

It was hard to get permission from Autumn's doctor, especially after her incident so we had to try and do some things at the hospital—like throwing the pie at someone's face. We ended up throwing it at two interns and they got very angry. They laughed about it later but still.

We'd gone to the mall to run up a down escalator and I'd bought Autumn jewelry and a teddy bear. I wanted her to remember me in any sort of way. We'd taken lots of pictures with her phone and it was a lot of fun.

We were walking around the hospital in search for a gurney in order to cross off one of the last tasks on the list: riding a gurney as if it were a skateboard. I didn't want Autumn to push the gurney because I wanted her to be beside me so I asked Paul for his help and he was happy to. He wanted to cause a bit of mischief in the hospital and our idea was his perfect chance to do so. We had no idea where they kept gurneys and so it was very difficult for us to find one. Paul went up to a nurse and indirectly asked her where they kept them and that was how we found one.

I hopped on the gurney, Autumn following behind, and stood up, making sure I was balanced. I held Autumn's hand in mine and turned to Paul, gesturing for him to push the gurney. Paul pushed it down the main, long hallway as nurses and doctors began to yell at us to stop. All three of us started laughing and I had no idea how Paul was still pushing the gurney with as much strength as he was in the very beginning. It felt very liberating to break the rules and having two people that I cared about with me made it ten times better.

So we ended up getting yelled at but it was okay and I realized that that was it—I was living my life to the fullest. If I was never ill, I wouldn't have even been able to do what we just did. Everything was going to be okay.

I was going to be okay, after all.