A Completely Different Story (Completed)

Chapter 15: It's A Small World, Said The Hospital (Part 4/4)

So—here I am. Standing in front of Room 702. I don't even know what got in to my head for coming here. I'll just suffer staring, the quivalent pain with hers.

"I don't know if I can even do this." I said to myself, "maybe I should just go back."

I stepped back, turned left and was about to again start walking when I, in a sudden, saw Veth passed straight seeing her at a distance without noticing me. I travelled throughout the path I stood and later on turned at the direction of where she went. I don't know but something just pushed me to follow her. In the endless walk, I kept on track. Blue walls, white tiles, succeeding straight light tubes on the ceiling with sunlight providing brightness in some corners within the building through the windows.

In a period of time, long enough to finally stop, I hid. Peeking from a distance, seeing her pulling the knob of the door of her bound area as she went in doing the opposite thing for privacy. I took the remaining steps, quitted from concealing. I stood in front, took a short stare at the three-digit numbers—961. And it seems that I'm still on the same floor of where Gayle and her sister is on. Recently heard about the special floor for cancer patients back when Virgil had this severe fever causing by his tonsillitis. It could not have been Veth having some serious problems, maybe it's just one of her relatives. But in the first place, it would definitely be shameless of me to suddenly enter a territory of a friend that I just met. At least I've discovered the place. The mystery still wonders me.

I turned my back when— "Kadar."

It's Gayle. Again. And her eyes, were undoubtedly red, I wondered if she was crying.

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"Please, follow." the only thing she said before slowly turning the opposite direction as she started taking steps. Begged in her simplest way. There, sometimes—is not the proper way of describing myself in a state of being totally shocked and nervous in the same time. I wanted to react, tried once, but she never paid attention. Kept walking throughout the hallway in deep and quite eerie silence. I had no choice but to obey, just noticed the closeness of Veth's room from this secondary elevator as Gayle and I passed through it. I followed her from behind, about a meter away. Perhaps she was intending to go down the time she saw me, good thing she didn't ask about the room.

Not a word was spoken in our way, even though I wanted to. My curiosity kept stabbing me until I had this slight acquaintance of the path we were taking. It wasn't that much long before we arrived in front of Room 702 that again brought me to another great state of shock. She clutched the gold-painted knob as she then twisted to unlock the availability of the door to be opened. She pulled and went in without giving me the entitlement in doing the same thing. I hear people crying. I had never been so flagrant in my life, but I knew I had to go in as well. So I did.

"Err . . . mom, dad. This is . . . Kadar." Gayle introducing me after embracing the two of them, probably her parents. The rest seated looked up at me as well, same despondent emotion. I couldn't remove my eyes from that white and pale looking little girl laying on the only standing hospital cot within the room. Eyes closed. "Kadar." Gayle calling me for a couple of times but I just can't move. In a sudden, someone held my right hand from beneath. I looked down. It's another girl, much younger than the one laying but as black as Gayle's skin. ". . . Kadar." Gayle mentioning my name for the last time that reflexively made me lift my head up at her, she's beside her parents. Now I'm staring at her mom, much more sorrowed than her. Same color and quite fat as well, just like her. I couldn't control the wideness of my eyes that affected my mind in knowing what to do nor what to say. Within the moment, her mom, in a sudden, went closer as she then embraced me that I didn't even know if it melted my heart or simply broke it into pieces. She wept. I could see the rest of them from a short distance as Gayle and her father started crying as well. Hugging each other.