Things Unsaid

My Journey

Four weeks. At least for now. Hospital gowns, tubes, and the whole idea of being stuck inside a building other than my own home torture my soul, but at least it knows that this is all worth it. I have to stay strong, I have to. They're keeping me on a strict diet, but if I would like pizza or something, they allow for once a week if my conditions are okay. Thank goodness...it's tough in a world with limited pizza, let alone none. There's a lot of old people. A lot of young people too. In fact, more than I expected. There's a little boy with leukemia two rooms over from me. His name is Ky. I don't think that's his actual name, but that's what he wanted me to call him.

Ky's the most innocent five year old I've ever seen, and he's stronger than me by leagues. According to the nurses, he only has a few weeks at most left. There's no more hair on his head, and his eyes are sunk into his face, but his smile lights up the room. It's almost as if everything's totally okay with him. Perhaps, it's his childhood ignorace being bliss, but just maybe, he can accept life and death better than the rest of us can. Old photos show that he once had some hair, but as soon as it grew in, it fell out. The parents were concerned, and the doctors saw the critical failure within him. To be honest, it scared me. Not only the life and death thing, but mostly the little things. Just the idea of internnally failing and loosing all my hair worried me. I loved my hair. Loosing it to the chemo wasn't a pleasant option, and I wanted to rant like a two year old about it.

As usual, I had my cold as-good-as-it's-going-to-get hospital breakfast and made my way back to the room. Today Jake was going to stop by for a visit. Even with all the tubes in and around me, there are still felt butterflies just thinking of seeing him again. Right as I stood outside the room, Ky spoke. It wasn't long until I realized that is was to me.

"Angel?"

Ky lay on the bed looking at me. in the dimly lit room, his eyes seemed to illuminate in the dark. Never before had I ever seen him look so sad before. The flame in his eyes were down to a low flicker. Carefully taking my medicine carrier with me, I went into his room, turned on a small table lamp, and sat down beside him.

"It's Angie. How's it going?"

He smiled back at me weakly. "Can you tell me a story?"

"Once upon a time, there was a brave young boy..." I continued to tell him the story until he fell asleep and all that was left was the beeping of his heart monitor going steady. With that, I turned off the light and made my way back to the hospital room of my own.