As a beginning side note, I went to the first show I've been to in a while. I had to go, it was THOU, a really good doom band. I had been planning to go for a month, and hadn't been planning to be in the hospital... so fatigue be damned.
Anyway. I made some observations.
I am soooo over the "punk scene". I'd realized this before, but now it's pretty cemented in my existence. It's so stupid and pointless. The same exact conversations night after night about "punk stuff" like what cool shit you dumpster dived, what misdemeanor crime you got away with, what band you partied with last night. How wasted you were.
It's annoyingly repetitive. I tried to remember how I was when I identified with all the people I saw tonight but I just can't. It seems like a lifetime ago, it feels like I'm an entirely different person.
How can so many people have so few goals or aspirations in life?
ANYWAY OFF THE SOAPBOX.
I left off with my first encounter with Sidney. Ah yes...
After that first official meeting, we became inseparable. I felt like a kid again. I was up walking around, and since she and I were the only children who weren't bedridden or infants, we had full reign over the entire children's floor. It was a bit creepy because only about 10 rooms were actually in use.
It was an entire floor of winding hallways decorated with 80's style disney characters. Mickey mouse ran along the floor board flying a kite and a flaky Minnie ate a picnic under a tree with a faded Donald Duck. The whole back part was completely abandoned, but with plastic blocking it off.
One day, we wandered past our usual haunt, the "teen lounge" (which consisted of a shitty pool table, chalkboard walls, and a computer with internet access), and through the plastic. It was a child's dream world.
A whole nurses station with a broken computer, and office chairs. There were tons of wheelchairs, and beds in all the old rooms. We ran back to our rooms and grabbed all our stuffed animals.
I don't recall which ones she had, but I brought a plush Winnie the Pooh, a duck I called "quack-quack" and a couple bears I had acquired over the course of my long stay. The nurses who loved us lent two clipboards, some paper, pens, and two lab coats. On our way back to the playground, we stopped at a cart and sneaked out medical supplies. We played doctor for hours, sitting at the nurses station filling out fake paperwork, ordering medicine, and treating our patients.
It was through our game that I learned Sidney had Cystic Fibrosis, a fatal hereditary disease with no cure. She'd been dealing with it since birth, and would need a lung transplant eventually. Even then, her disease would attack the new organs.
At that nurses station, Sidney 13 years old, and I 11 years old, talked about our deaths. She believed that she would live as long as she was meant to, and that she would probably die of getting hit by a bus, knowing her luck. I was still skeptical, but quick to adapt her upbeat way of thinking. It wasn't scary if I looked at it like that. All our animals had IV's and were sleeping when we started re-arranging the rooms. I was so oblivious that I didn't feel a thing when my nurse came running into the room. She looked at me with surprise and sat down to catch her breath.
"You need to come rest for a while, your heart rate is up to 185 beats a minute!"
I didn't even feel a thing.
The days flew by. We visited the intricate glassed-in doll houses in the upstairs hallway, and rode the elevators to every floor over and over again. One night Sidney and I had a sleepover. I bunked in the empty second bed in her room and we rented the movie "Arachnophobia" from the hospital library. We were scared shitless! It didn't help that there was a thunderstorm outside, and Sidney had told me earlier that the windows across the courtyard from us was where they kept the criminals. We had seen a man in cuffs and an orange jumpsuit earlier that day, and it seemed plausible. We took turns peeking out the blinds to try and see a criminal in bed.
The day I went home was very incredibly bittersweet. I wanted to leave, but I wanted to stay more. The place had become comfortable to me. The doctors knew me, the nurses loved me, and I had made a very good friend. I was scared about what was going to happen when I got to my house. Afraid of the hordes of people, questions, and expectations.
We said a short goodbye, hugged, and gave each other a present. She gave me a junk toy from the treasure chest (for when you do well in the treatment room), and I gave her a drawing of some fireworks. I finally left the hospital.
I never saw her or heard from her again. There is a small bit of footage of her from a day in the hospital when my mom gave me her video camera, but it's less than a minute, and its from behind so all you can see is her long thick blonde hair.
It's as if she was meant to meet me at that time. As if she knew what she was doing by being my friend. I asked about her in the years to come, but no one ever knew who I was talking about. It was as if she never existed.
HOME.
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