Points

"He was such a dear, sweet little thing," she would say to anyone who listened. "So adventurous. He had these two dear imaginary friends. John-Jon and Sammy he called them. He was forever playing with them, making up games. Games of the impossible sort, you know what I mean: If I fly over there, I get 2 points, if I make a magic potion, that's 3. Turning into a unicorn, oh, that's 5 at least."

"I never thought to care about it," she continued awkwardly, looking anywhere but at the hospital bed in front of her. "I kept saying, 'Oh, it's all harmless fun, he'll grow out of it soon enough.' But he never did. He never did."

The woman was dabbing at her nose with a small hanky, her eyes darting everywhere, narrowly missing the boy in the bed. The closest she ever got to seeing him was his strong hand, gripping at the side of the hospital bed. The nails were short and chewed off, the fingers strong and tight around the metal bar. A child's hand.

"He would always ask, 'Could John-Jon and Sammy come over to my place?' And what could I say? After all, they were his friends. So he would play with his friends day in and day out, never thinking to talk with the nice children in his classes. And such nice children they were! Just the sort that he could be friends with, if he ever tried to. But he always seemed so happy playing just with John-Jon and Sammy. They were only imaginary of course, but sometimes it was easy to forget. There were times that I would ask him, 'Why don't your friends ever invite you to their place?' And then I would remember, and laugh at the question, as if it had been a grand joke."

The hand on the metal bar tightened. The knuckles were almost white.

"But that's all silliness and nonsense, isn't it?" the woman remarked to the quiet room. "That's not why my son is sitting on this hospital bed, is it? No, it was the seizures." At this, the woman's hand tightened on her damp handkerchief. "The thrice-damned seizures, that what. That's what stole my little boy's life away from him!"

Determined, she continued on forcefully. "Oh, it began gently, of course. It always does. He would be sitting on the floor, staring dreamily into space. Like a daydream, almost. And then, when I tapped him on the shoulder, he would smile and wake up. He was always making up stories about where he had been, talking about nonsense like unicorns and dragons. But oh, he was so little and innocent, and far too young!"

"The daydreams got more and more frequent, longer and longer. And the stories he told got more and more strange and fantastical day by day. Why, I remember clear as day, one time he looked straight at me and informed me that he had gotten almost a hundred points that day. 'A hundred? Well, that's quite a lot,' I told him. He must have been talking about a test in school, but he said it with such conviction, such joy! Oh, he was only a child!"

"Then, it got worse. He would be struck by daydreams in school, without warning. Only they weren't really daydreams, no, they were seizures. That's what the doctor's said. He would stop and stare, and nothing seemed to affect him. Just stop and stare."

"I'll be frank, it scared me worse than the time I found him playing with matches, lighting them one by one. I didn't know what to do with him! You could pick him up and he'd be stiff as a board. Just like a board! It took hours to wake him up, and that was with me pleading at his bedside the whole time."

"He mostly stopped speaking at around that time," the woman added sadly. "He would wake up from his seizure, eat a little food, look around a bit, and start staring into space again. I begged with him during those times not to have another seizure, but that was rather silly, now that I think of it. It's not as if he was doing it on purpose, of course. The doctor assured us that it wasn't something he could control. Why, he's probably trying desperately to wake up even as we speak."

The woman's eyes almost made it to the child's face. Almost.

After a pause, the woman started speaking again. "I remember the last thing he said to me before we moved him to this hospital. I remember it, clear as daylight, clear as the color of his eyes. 'I want to go, but I'm scared,' he said to me. He woke up, ate a little soup, looked me straight in the face, and said that. It was the last thing he said to me. The very last thing. And I don't know what he meant!" she wailed.

The small hand on the side of the hospital bed was shaking. Ever so slightly, the hand was quivering, almost as if it couldn't decide what to do.

Heaving a noiseless sigh, the woman pulled herself together and again addressed the empty room. "And now he's here, in this clean, no-nonsense hospital that could do him a world of good. If only he could wake up! I'm sure, if he woke up, he would see how wonderful the hospital is, how much it could do to help him. But," she continued, "he hasn't, has he?"

Her eyes again nearly made it to the child's face.

"No, I suppose not. I don't suppose he'll ever wake up. I don't suppose I'll ever be anywhere but here, holding his hand, comforting him, praying that he will." A pause. "I don't suppose there really is a God, after all. Because I don't suppose He would allow my son to suffer like this."

All of a sudden, the woman laughed. She laughed and she laughed until tears were running down her face, and then she was crying, but there was no difference. It bordered on hysterical, the laughter of a mother who has lost her son.

Wiping the tears from her eyes, she addressed her invisible audience once more. "I was just thinking, I don't suppose I'll ever see John-Jon or Sammy again, either. Strange, though. There were times…but I'm repeating myself." Another pause.

"I suppose he never did go over to their place. I suppose he probably wishes he did, though."

And the boy's hand slipped down from the bed bar, and in his last breath, he whispered, "That's gotta be at least a hundred points all on its own, right guys?"