Background:
I’ve been a bit slack with my short stories as of recent but I’m
trying so hard to get in a mood where I write something worth
reading. This is a story inspired by children with such diseases as
leukaemia and their battle of pain and love. This is dedicated to
those who have both won and lost the battle, little soldiers whose
hearts are full and are a true inspiration in the world. I listened
to Boyce Avenue’s acoustic version of ‘On My Way’ during
writing this.
Short
Story #10 - Separated
Saline
watched the fan whirl around in circles on the ceiling. It had gone
around four hundred times now, a continuous whir that buzzed in her
mind. Her wrist tickled where the plastic band was wrapped, her
medical details written in scrawling black ink. It was her twelfth
birthday and yet instead of being at home, celebrating with her
family, she was in a too-clean white room of the hospital,
recovering.
A
nurse walked in with a clipboard in hand, her scrubs glaringly
immaculate as she smiled. Kind brown eyes looked at Saline
sympathetically, like most people looked at her now. The nurse left
again after checking her progress.
Sympathy,
an expression that made her skin tingle with frustration. Saline had
collapsed during class one day and ever since it was the same
expression duplicated on so many strangers’ faces. She disliked the
expression so much, wishing that people would look at her like she
was a human instead of some thing that had mutated before
their eyes.
She
glanced to her right and saw the table beside her bed, a mass of
colour from the gifts and balloons that her family had brought. They
weren’t allowed to see her yet – she was much too weak from the
surgery. They’d seen her briefly when she woke, squeezing her hand
and telling her that everything was going to be alright. That wasn’t
what the doctors’ faces said as they wheeled her grimly away,
tearing her hand away from her mother’s.
“We
still have to allow her time to rest,” the main surgeon had told
her parents and sisters. “Then we’ll commence testing to see if
we cured her of her cancer. You will see her later.”
Saline
sat up, grabbing the first present and she tore open the paper;
inside was a box with ‘Danbo’ written in large letters. She
smiled, remembering the moment before all this; she’d been a happy,
normal girl back then, looking through various shopping websites with
her mother for gift ideas. When she’d seen the Japanese Danbo
robots she’d instantly asked her parents for one, disappointed when
they said no.
Apparently
they changed their minds along with the dramatic change in her
health.
Saline
went through the other presents – her first mobile phone, a
porcelain collectors doll; a portable gaming console with her
favourite games – but it was the last present that caught her eye:
a professional camera. She checked the card that came with it:
anonymous. Pushing the other presents aside, she opened the box and
setup the camera, waiting until the sun began setting before the
camera was charged and ready to go.
She
grabbed it, gently getting out of bed despite the doctor’s orders;
she could barely move but managed, sliding open the window to reveal
the pink-purple sunset over the Nevada desert. She raised the camera,
taking shot after shot as the sky changed colour, dimming until it
was completely evening. The moon raised overhead, a sliver of the
whiteness mostly blackened by the earth’s shadow.
Exhausted,
Saline walked back to her hospital bed and grabbed her laptop,
logging onto Flickr. It took a few moments to load but when it was
fully open she set about uploading the photos she’d taken, writing
a simple fact about herself on each one: her favourite colour, her
favourite season; her favourite sport and what she wanted to be if
she lived old enough. When she ran out of facts she started writing
haikus and sonnets describing the beauty of nature and the things
that people took for granted.
Yawning,
she put away the laptop as the words began to blur from her
exhaustion; she settled under the crisp blankets and fell asleep,
dreaming of the world the way she wished it would be. Morning came
quickly, the sun shining brightly through the window. She sat up,
going through the morning routine of breakfast and getting cleaned up
before returning to her bed to be left alone again.
She
opened her Flickr.
Over
2,000,000 views in the past hour alone and several requests from
Hollywood and big-time photographers to do a collaboration photo
shoot.
She
declined with a grin.
She
was only a normal 12-year-old girl after all.
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