The Wolf Of Rot

Chapter One

     The hospital I call home sits on the edge of a small, quiet town surrounded by forest. 

I don't know much about the town, I've only left the hospital grounds a few times but it's secluded like most things buried in the woods. I have been in this hospital for almost four years, it has large private grounds and only takes in a few patients at a time. The facility focuses on studying and providing comfort to those with Illness' that doctors were still trying to understand and cure. It wasn't a bad place to stay, in fact it was the nicest place I had ever stayed. My room was my own and they provided a bed, nightstand, window and private bathrooms. There had even been an effort to make the room look more homey and less hospital like, some of the furniture could even be found in a normal bedroom.

On the grounds there are towering trees, large gardens, some simple walking paths, a small pond and halfway decent food. All they asked in return was to study you and your illness, if you were lucky enough to have a confusing one. Some wealthy man a few years back left all his money to founding this place after he died. He had no family but was himself terminally ill. I have been sick for as long as I could remember. Bouncing from doctor to doctor, specialist to specialist each one more vexed than the last. It seemed my body was shutting down, they would say, each organ working in overtime just to stay functioning. Many ideas and diseases had been thrown around with long names and multiple syllables but none of them seemed to fit my disease. 

It didn't matter what they called it, because I've always known what it is, no other name is needed. It's the same illness that takes us all eventually, my curtain time is just a little sooner.

 The machine near my head continues its steady beep as a nurse strolls in, tapping her nails against a thick yellow folder as her eyes ran across the jumble of numbers on the monitor. 

"And how old are you now dear?", Her voice was nasally with a thick northern accent you don't usually hear this far south, she was fairly new to the facility, only here a hand full of weeks. 

The heavy heat of the Georgia sun was baking me inside the cramped hospital bed. Outside the window a handful of hospital workers milled about on cellphones with thick stacks of paper containing other people lives like the yellow folder the nurse was scanning in front of me now. She knew how old I was it was on my chart, she was asking to be polite. I didn't want to talk, or smile at her and give polite answers about meaningless questions even she had no interest in. I was already dying did I have to be subjected to boring conversations too?  

"I'll be twenty-four in a next month." My voice broke slightly, a mix of laughter and disbelief, I wasn't so sure I would make it there. 

Her thin eyebrows drew together as she sucked in her bottom lip. "Well, that's lovely I bet you're a scorpio, like my son." 

I smiled at her faintly, hoping she would pick up on my not so subtle hints of unresponsiveness. It wasn't that I didn't want to talk to this nurse in particular I just wanted to be done with it all. Recently all the doctors, injections, and pain have been too consuming, and it did nothing to change the outcome. Death was not soft and welcoming, he was brutal and liked to linger so long eventually you just want to throw up your hands and say 'Please me next! Anything to get off this fucking line!' Because thats all we were doing here, keeping our fingers and toes crossed that when death came he would at least use some manners.

 I use have a better outlook, that I would get better and one day have a normal life. Now I don't even want that. No, wants the wrong word, because of course I still wanted that, I simply couldn't have it, so I decided to just accept it all. I didn't want to see anymore remorseful stares or crinkled hospital sheets. No more days spent rotting away, each year becoming more painful than just dying. I rub at my eyes, tugging the IV in my arm careful not to pull it out. The bruises still haven't yet healed from the last time they had to put it back in.