Memory From Hospital: Noah, October 11, 2008

This is something I wrote for school. The teacher made us do some creative writing {I got an A, like a boss}.

     There was a dead boy laying next to me. He was breathing, but he wasn't alive. Separated by a brightly colored wall and a curtain, all I heard was feet shuffling, monitors blaring, and his wails. During this particular moment of his existence, he was not living. His ghastly moans filled a hallway so accustomed to these sounds. The translucent lights mixed with his cries of help and blended into the customary mixture of pain and death. He sounded about eight years old, and yet as time passed by, his voice grew older. 

     The Children's Memorial Hospital was my home for about two months at this point in time. I had many roommates, although none of which had been assigned a particular room, just a section of the ICU. The average stay for many of my roommates was less than a week, when they would either be rolled down the hallway to an actual room or back to the emergency room. This time, though, was different...

      The boy was wired to multiple IV's and needles protruded from many angles of his body. For a small duration of time, everything stopped and all movement ceased. I turned my head, and the glare of the ceiling images of daisies and wild flowers filled the right side of my vision. 

     Time passed and the chaotic dance of the hospital resumed. The nurse came, right on time in our daily schedule, to walk me to the bathroom. With a weak but firm hand, I held her armed, and I dragged my medicine pole. As I walked past his section, through a part in his curtain, I saw him. He looked like a human robot with a yellow, slimy covering. His artificial skin was taut over his face, and his eyes were slightly askew. His arms rested on his blankets, and his hands gripped the sheets. Right then, I realized he was not a child. He looked no bigger than to be in second grade, but all concept of age escaped me. He seemed to be as old as humanity.

     I asked the nurse to walk me over to him. The closer I came, the more clearly I saw the definition of his scars. He was hideous. The veins and bones of his body could be seen through the artificial skin. He had no hair on any portion of his body. His nose were merely holes marked out in the area between the eyes and mouth. I called out to him softly to ask him what he was in for. In a gasps, he answered. He had just had re-constructive surgery on his entire body. He had been trapped in a fire and most of his body had third degree burns. I asked him how much it had hurt, but he did not answer.