Sempiternal

Every day had been the same for the past 5 months. I would wake up to the sound of the beeping and buzzing of the heart monitor and the smell of the sterile air, with the feeling of the stinging bed sheets on my skin. I was in that place where everything had that horrible, familiar smell of antiseptic; it was as if every type of anti-bacterial spray on the market was dumped in this one building. There was nothing really to do but to contemplate life, or stare at the black and white clock on the homogeneous cream coloured wall, watching time tick by with every second passing being a second closer to death.

“Are you scared?” a small, frail voice spoke up. I looked over my shoulder to face the owner of the voice; a small, young boy, around the age of 7 or 8, but his tiny figure causing him to look just 4 years old. Judging by his pale complexion and a bald head, I didn’t have to ask what illness he had. “Of dying, I mean.” “Are you?” I speak up, after spending a minute to study him in his excessively large hospital bed. “Hell yes.”

It was like a bullet to the chest. In that moment, the fact that I was lying here in this overly-sanitized, steel framed bed, possibly awaiting my death didn’t matter. The fact that there were a billion more people awaiting the same fate I faced didn’t matter. In that moment, nothing mattered because this little, frightened boy lying next to me was awaiting the same fate we all were. The difference was that he...

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...hat everything would “be alright”, when it really wouldn’t be. If it were alright, this young boy wouldn’t be lying in this overly-large and sanitized bed hooked up to a billion different machines which were just barely keeping him alive.“I believe that we are all just dust particles living in a decaying, organic coffin, but I want you to know that no matter what, whether there is such thing as a heaven, there will always be somebody there for you, and I know that Oli has been waiting for me.”

Contrary to what I was originally told, I was informed that I was well and healthy and I’d be free to go in the next few days. While I was packing up my belongings, the boy pulled a small stone out from underneath his pillow and gave me a meek smile.

“It’s to help you keep your feet on the ground, so you don’t leave too soon. The people here need you.”