Coping With Clarity

Chapter Five

The page shined annoyingly from its stationary place on the coffee table. Selena glared at its mocking blankness. She needed to do it. Her pen was parallel to the paper in an orderly manner. She intended to do it. Or had intended. Or would have if the offending thing would stop flaunting its incompleteness in Ward fourteen family room. Selena really didn’t want to do the english essay.

It had been the haunting thought in her head from the moment she’d left her english class. Maybe even from the moment she’d sat in her assigned seat. Selena had about three seconds of comfortable greetings from Jennifer Stone, as well as an unwelcome smirk from Miley Cyrus, before a wad of papers crashed on the front of her desk. Completed essays. Selena knew she’d forgotten something. And her teacher, Miss Bitterman, knew it too. She’d grinned patronizingly down on her and kindly informed Selena that she had a detention. Selena doesn’t remember when exactly the detention was for; mainly because as soon as the lesson had ended she’d snuck out of the room, spared a ‘lonely’ minute with Nick and grabbed her bike - on the way to the hospital she’d resolved to finish the paper.

No matter how pointless it was. Selena couldn’t even think of what to write. It was meant to be creative, which defeated the whole ‘essay’ concept. Everything seemed pointless if you spent the majority of your life within hospital walls, or surrounded by hospital attitudes and personalities. She needed to get out. Her phone slid from her pocket, ignoring the way her essay called for her, she tapped out a text to Nick; who had redeemed himself in recent days by spending more time with her. Walking her to class, buying her lunch, rubbing it in Miley’s face...wait thats what she was doing. Her message sent with a ‘ping!’.

“I’m starting to think you’ve got your own room here.”

Selena, in her hope for a distraction, jerked her head towards the open door; which she’d left open for her mom, who had been checking up on her. Her lips twitched into a smile.

“I might as well.”

Selena was beginning to think that they had a thing about doorways. Their few meetings had all taken place between the frames. Except this time Demi wasn’t alone.

The familiar green hospital gown, seen on many of the more permanent patients, hung off Demi’s shoulders. It made her look bigger than she was. Swamped in the garb. The only clue to her real size came from her doll-like arms and legs that poked from underneath the gown. Demi wore her hair loose and Selena couldn’t believe for a second that the girl had wanted to be bald. She tilted towards Selena, her left arm clutching an IV hanger. The tiny tubing from a clear liquid bag swirled and trailed along the hanger and up into Demi’s arm. It led up the sleeve and out of Selena’s gaze. Its not the first time Selena’s seen an IV drip, but its one of the only times that she hadn’t known what was going in one. Her mother was quite informative when it came to things like that. In her own mind Selena believed that she could probably treat most of the stroke unit patients with her knowledge of IV drips.

“Judging from your response, your here voluntarily?” Demi’s IV rattles as people walk behind her. The bag wobbles threatening and Selena becomes more curious.

“Yup.”

Demi looks like she hadn’t walked in days, or at least since Selena had first met her.

“Wow. Your maybe sicker than I am. Do you want me to ask someone to book you in?” Demi smiled as she joked at Selena’s expense. Everytime they met the ice broke just a bit more. Selena remembers the roll of the idea.

‘Nah, I’m good.” Selena places her phone in her pocket and sighs at her ‘work’.

“So why are you always here?” Before Selena could pretend to be offended Demi had covered her bases.