Water Fountains

I didn’t understand what was happening—why was my mother crying? Why wouldn’t my father talk? And foremost: where was my sister?

No one would tell me as I was pulled through the hospital by a distraught mother, but the effect of those white walls, a place I could only recall being once before, was catastrophic on my emotions. The entire place whispered of the horrible things that had happened there—I could suddenly hear every dying breath and every cry of anguish. I could feel the tears flooding into my eyes and I tearfully begged my transformed mother as to why we were there. She didn’t answer, save for more tears.

And then the doctor walked into the room and asked very specifically to speak with my parents alone. I didn’t want to be left by myself in the echoing room of dying hope as people of the past cried out for their loved ones: I had a horrible feeling that I would soon become one. But I saw the finality of the statement in the eyes of that doctor and in that glance, I saw him turn into a beast who was fighting against me. For whatever reason, he had declared me as his enemy. I knew that after that, I’d never trust a doctor again.

So I sat down, alone in the waiting room. The white walls seemed to scream at me in their silence… I wasn’t welcome. And without my parents, the room seemed so much bigger and lonelier, and me much smaller. I felt like I was in a desert with all those blaring lights burning my skin.

Then, there was the periodic ring-ring-click! Of the secretary answering phones and her almost inaudible murmuring and the soft scratching of her pen—they pierced my ears like the struggling questions in my mind, prick-prick-pricking every morbid possibility until it enlarged and festered. Every letter she wrote, every breath she took, and every phone call she answered seemed to awaken yet another horrible thought, worse than the last.

I tried to numb myself, to dull the noise and block out the light. I hugged my knees to my chest to feel myself in the new surreal world and to assure myself that the room had not squashed out my existence.

I tried not to think of my mother’s tears or how she had looked like a crying water fountain. I tried not to be pessimistic and wonder at my father’s silence; my sister’s disappearance. Instead, I closed my eyes and wrote myself a story, fabricated a new day where I had not been brought to the hospital.

My sister and I were fooling around in our backyard. My mom and dad laughed at us as we sprayed each other with the hose. And ran away with glee. The sun was a giant, gold dewdrop of warmth just feeding out happiness. We giggled as we ran, now out of reach of the water, but still catching out parents infective laughter. I had no fear. I knew what was happening—I wasn’t confused. And I didn’t have to think of the worst. My sister wasn’t in the hospital, because she was now hitting me with balloons filled with ice cold water.

But when I opened my eyes, the doctor was back, his face looking very grave for a monster in a white coat intent on ruining my life and my family’s, but her couldn’t be looking sorry, could he? My parents hadn’t come back yet, but in my mind I could still see them laughing, rocking in their chairs and clutching their stomachs from the intense her of their glee. They weren’t crying and I promised myself I wouldn’t cry either—I would be numb. No matter what this beast said, I wouldn’t even shed a drop. I would turn the water fountain off.

I kept that promise. What he said next was not accompanied by tears. In fact, I just stared at him. No one but me knew that after his first four words, my image—my dream—in my head was shattered and lost; his voice was drowned out by a scream in my head, and at that moment, I felt something slip from me to be hidden and broken forever.

Saxifrage

A/n: This is an experimental one shot. Even though it's on a "cliff hanger," the challangewas to write a story and not conclude or finish. But, I hope you enjoyed it anyways. Please review!