Soar // Hamliza

• chapter 3 •

• Alexander •

"Good morning, Mr. Hamilton." is the first thing I hear everyday. The same nurse with the same greeting comes into my room, opens the curtains to the tiny window, and wakes me up. And everyday, I give the same reply.

"Morning. What's going on today?" I'll say. Today is no different. She walks in and greets me, and I greet her and ask what they're going to do. Will I have a blood draw? Another MRI or some sort of brain scan? A chemo session? Who knows? Not me.

"Just a few little things. A quick blood draw and the usual vitals. Oh, and we're going to have you walk around for a while. We want to start easing you back into walking and such, since it's been a long time since you've been up." She said, bustling around the room.

I smiled to myself a little bit. Ever since I had the emergency surgery ten days ago, they never let me go anywhere, not even with a nurse. I assume someone will go with me so I can look around a little bit and take some time to get back on my feet, but that's fine with me.

Speaking of getting back on my feet, I couldn't help but long to be back in a dance studio. I often find myself pointing and flexing my feet when lying in the hospital bed. I'm sure I've lost some of my flexibility by now but I should be able to get it back pretty fast. I snapped out of my thoughts as the nurse prepped my arm to have blood drawn.

We got through the vitals pretty fast. I'm used to all the questions they ask me by now, so it's easy to speed through it really quickly. Soon enough, they tell me I can change into something other than a hospital gown and that a nurse will be walking with me soon.

I've had a bag of regular clothes in my hospital room ever since I first came here. I half expected them to tell me that I didn't actually have cancer, that they got the wrong persons file. But that never happened. I kept the clothes here anyways, incase I needed them for something.

They let me go into the bathroom attached to my room to change. I carefully put on the long sleeved gray shirt, making sure to roll the sleeves up so they wouldn't displace my IV.

I put on a pair of black sweatpants as well and went back to the bed, sitting on the edge while I waited for the nurse to come. This would be an interesting experience. Standing in the bathroom for five minutes was a slight struggle after being in bed for ten days straight. How will walking around a hospital go?

A nurse walked into my room a minute or so later, with a mildly careless look on her face.

"Ready, Mr. Hamilton?" She asked. I nodded and stood up shakily, clutching onto my IV pole for dear life.

We walked out of the room, very slowly on my part. She let me take control and sort of just walked behind me to make sure I wasn't going to fall or die or something. I wandered all around the hospital, hobbling around on my hardly used feet like an old man. I went everywhere that I could. I walked around the rest of the cancer ward, making sure to stop by the pediatric cancer area.

Over the past few months, the little kids in the pediatric area had grown to like me. When they let me leave my room back in the beginning of December, I would go to the game room and play games with them all the time. I grew really close to a little boy, whose name was Phillip. He had brain cancer too. He died on Christmas Eve, and I cried harder than I think I ever have when I found out.

It's just so unfair, you know? Especially since him and I had the same type of cancer. He deserved to grow up. But it's too late now. I still think of him a lot though.

I walk to the maternity ward so I can see all the babies. They all look so peaceful, sleeping in their tiny cribs in that room. It seems weird for them to be in a hospital, with so many people who are sick and dying.

I go to the cafeteria where Eliza buys coffee when she visits. It's always watery and kind of gross, but she's grown used to it by now. The doctors told me to stay away from coffee for awhile, so I didn't form the same attachment to it that she did.

I'm sure the nurse I was with wasn't very pleased that I decided to walk almost the whole hospital. But being on my feet felt so good. I wonder if I could convince them to let me go to a dance studio anytime soon... I'd love to dance with Eliza again.

We finally went back to my room and I sat down, tired from being up for so long but happy. Maybe this is the first step to recovery, to being done with this whole cancer thing.

Maybe.