Hope Blanchard                            

Personification of Death                        

I can hear everything – and nothing.

On TV, some woman is breaking up with a guy because she is in love with her friend’s ex-boyfriend’s brother.

Nurses and doctors whisper with a dramatic flair straight out of a bad movie.

My mother is crying in the corner of the room again. I’m pretending as if I don’t notice.

The air conditioner clicks on, but I can’t fathom why. Isn’t anyone else cold besides me? I have asked many times for the air to be turned off, but no one seems to hear. I guess it is summer. I’ve been here so long I’ve lost track of time and the season. Next thing you know I’ll be asking what year it is.

A knock on the door – probably another busybody nurse. I know what she’ll say; she’s no different than the rest. She’ll stand there and wring her hands, all the while asking questions like they’re on a checklist of things to do.

“Are you thirsty? Do you need to go to the bathroom? Are you comfortable?”

No. No. I’m a hospital, NO.

It’s like I’m a sniveling ten-year-old or something.

I roll my head over to see which nurse I have today, and if I scared the last one away.

But it’s not a nurse. It’s another teen, a scruffy haired boy with a bit of stubble and a flannel shirt that makes him look like a runaway Abercrombie model. I am about to tell him so, but I never have the chance. He dashes up to the bed, staring into my eyes, brushing my hair out of my face.

For a minute there, I was fooled. This probably is a runaway model – from the psych ward down the hall.

Sighing, I roll to touch the nurse’s button, when he reaches for my hand, kissing it gently, cautiously almost.

Okay, he doesn’t have to leave right now.

I dig out my best flirtatious smile, tilting my head slightly. My muscles are weak, so I’m sure I look like the crazy one now. He slowly grins back though, an oh-so-white smile, the kind of smile that touched sugar or coffee or the acid eating my body. Suddenly my head is in his hands and he’s kissing me and kissing me.

“Don’t you feel like dancing?” he asks and before I can reply he’s whisking me out of bed with no concern for tubes or wires and twirling me through the room.

I laugh and laugh and my mother has this look on her face like she doesn’t know what to do and I laugh anyway. He grabs me and we’re running through the halls, wires trailing behind, and spilling coffee and overturning wheelchairs.

We end up in the elevator breathing hard, bending over on our knees to gasp for air. I’m unable to believe that we just got away with the worst thing possible: chaos in a world where perfection and cleanliness is the only standard.

Something hits me on the head. It’s his name tag; I never noticed he had one. I pluck it up to read: “Death.”

The elevator opens, and we run.