• Something seems off as I enter the white-walled prison of pastel blues and badly-made beds. The scent of urine and sickness pervade my nose the moment I walk in, but I can resist the urge to gag. How many times have I come to this room before to be greeted by the same scent, the same sounds? But today the faces seem different, and I know that something’s wrong. Regardless, I scan the room for the familiar face I came countless times before to see. My first check proves fruitless, and a twinge of fear pulses through my chest. An impulse tells me to look more carefully the second time around.

    “There you are,” the words escape my lips before there is a chance to clamp down on them. Something is off, and on some subconscious level, I’m starting to realize what it is. Automatically, my legs lead me between the beds and chairs until I reach the destination that was placed into my mind. An empty stare greets me for a long while before I get any response from the one I had spoken to.

    “Hey…”

    And the voice is even weaker than when I heard it last, nothing like I had grown used to in the years that had come to pass. The melodic sound of the different-pitched words that were once prominent in my youth come into my memory, and by no will of my own, my mind compares the past and the now. Something within me breaks, and I struggle against the oceans that are threatening to leak down my face.

    “It’s been a while, right?” the response is shaky in my head, but out loud I know it's stronger. I knew the faults for which my friend was guilty, and the extreme pride that humans all seemed to carry had not faded for a moment. If I weakened my resolve, it would be a greater insult than anything else. “Where’s your sister?”

    “Getting something to drink…been gone a while…”

    Pain tears at my chest at those words. But no, I must remain resolute to replace strength that the family of my friend cannot provide. So I sit by the white-sheet bedside and hold a conversation with the shell of someone I once called my best friend, and something contorts the face of the patient every so often. There aren’t words spoken about these expressions, but even in the casual words exchanged, I’m sure my dear friend can hear my thoughts. ’Please don’t let it be pain. Please don’t let it be regret. Please don’t let it be…’ and the thought cuts off. What is it that leads me to fear finishing that thought? I pray with a soft heart that I don’t ever have to find out.

    “Evangeline’s really…taking a long…”

    The sentence doesn’t even finish, but I can understand what should have been said. Time. Something that neither one nor the other of us have a lot left of. The sky begins to grow dark, fading from the painted sky into a rotting black curtain, pricked with holes every so often to see the cloudy skies that were waiting behind it. It felt like three minutes, but hours had passed since I walked into the hospital room. There are only about twenty minutes left of visiting hours, but I’m not sure how much longer I can take.

    Something seems off as the sound of raindrops start to patter against the window. The drops slide down like tears on a face, but they are cold to touch and mean nothing to anyone but a stinging pain and numbing sensation if they make contact hard and fast enough. My friend gives a soft wheeze, and for the first time since my arrival I realize that the pillows are not stacked on top of each other. For weeks on end pain would tear through the palely dressed being before me on any attempt to lie flat against the bed. Apparently that wasn't the case at the present.

    Beep, beep, beep…

    Something else comes into my knowledge as the sound rings into my ears. I had ignored the numerous tubes and needles and sounds surrounding the patient placed upon on the pale sheets of the hospital, and I tried to justify why I had not cared to see them. My mind tells me that I assumed that they had always been there, that they were not unusual, but everything else screams that I’m leading myself into a lie.

    “I’m tired…so I think I’ll go to sleep…”

    “Alright…I’ll leave once I’m sure you’re asleep,” the response comes a bit softer than I’d hoped, and the empty stare turns into one of fear and hurt mixed into an unknown emotion. I barely manage to hold back an apology. An apology will do nothing but ruin the stage I have struggled so hard to maintain. I, the actor, my friend the audience, and the illusion of my strength being the play. There’s a long silence between us, and I get up after three minutes. An unbelievably short time to be sure that one is truly sleeping, but something is off today, and I know what it is. I walk out the door ten minutes earlier than I usually do, trying to push the final sound of the hospital room that I will not return to from my head.

    Beep.

    Something is off today, and will remain that way forever.

    I step outside into the cold, hard rain pouring from the sky, realizing that some greater being has drawn a new curtain over the world. One without holes to give a peek at the bright skies behind the black drapery. A thousand cold needles run into my face as I turn to look at the new sky given to us, and I realize that the rain is falling fast enough to sting my skin before turning into nothing but a numb feeling. Something hot burns my cheek, but the freezing rain washes it away, and I’m sure that at that moment nobody can tell my meaningful tears from the frozen rain that means nothing to anyone, but everything to me.