Maybe One Day

11: I'm Not a Cancer Patient

Two weeks in the hospital sucks.

It's not at all like when Kendall was in the hospital. When my sister was seven, she got sick with pneumonia so she stayed in the hospital for a week and had the time of her life. Once they got the IV in her arm and were pumping fluids in, she was fine. She wheeled down the hallway in her wheelchair all the time, she watched TV all day, got pizza and buttered noodles brought to her, she stayed in bed all day and played with the controls, and she was perfectly content.

I, on the other hand, did not have so much fun.

My days consisted of constant injections of pain killers or something like that, being spoon fed soup every day because I'm back in a full body brace and can't do it myself, and the nightly waking up to searing pain in one place or another. People came to visit but I was either too tired or too ashamed to see them most of the time. I try to just sleep all day but someone is always in my room preventing me from doing so.

I found myself slipping into some what of a depression. The doctor's saw it and treated me like I was a three year old with a boo-boo, which most definitely didn't help. I kept thinking about Matt and Skylar and being in this back/neck brace in this unfamiliar hospital in a city thirty miles away from my home. Every time I thought about this, I would feel myself sinking farther. It felt like I had jumped in a pool with a hundred pound weight tied to my ankle. Sometimes I would fight to swim back up, sometimes I could see people trying to help pull me up, and other times I would just give up and let myself sink farther.

Then one day things got a little more interesting.

I wake up to the door opening and instead of a nurse like I was expecting, the first face I saw was of a boy. He looked about 16, but he may have been older, and he was bald, which I thought was strange for someone his age. He was being wheeled in in a wheelchair by a nurse who turned to me and said, "Oh hello Olivia. This is your new roommate, Isaac."

Isaac looked up at me as he passed, bright blue eyes gleaming against ghostly pale skin. "Hey," he says quietly.

"Hi," I know I'm staring but I can't look away. There's something different about him and I can't figure out what it is.

The nurse pulls the wheelchair up next to his bed and the boy shakily gets up and climbs onto it. He lays his head back and closes his eyes. When the nurse leaves, he turns to me and states bluntly, "I'm Isaac. And before you ask, I'm not a cancer patient."

"Excuse me?" I ask, a little surprised and confused.

"Everyone thinks since I'm in a hospital and I'm bald that I have cancer. I don't. I do, however, have alopecia areata. Completely unrelated."

"Alo-what?"

"Alopecia areata. I can't grow hair."

"Oh, I'm sorry..." I stumble, at a loss for words. That's what was different, I thought. He's not just bald, but he doesn't have eyebrows or eyelashes either.

"Don't be sorry. I just thought I should clear that up. I'm also probably much older than you think I am, because of this disease. Go ahead, take a guess at how old I am," he tells me.

"Seventeen," I guess, thinking that was a little high.

"Wrong. Just turned twenty."

My eyebrows involuntarily shoot up in shock. I reply with, "I look younger than I am, too. Make your guess."

His blue eyes stare at me intently, studying. "Seventeen."

"Wow! You're right, but I'm almost eighteen. That was good though. I once was offered a kid's menu at a restaurant when I was fourteen. The kid's menu is for kid's ten and under."