10/1/01
Luckily, angst is one thing I enjoy doing in my writings (much to my characters’ dismays, I’m certain!). I believe my viewpoint writing brought forth the main ideas of tension in Lawrence’s storyline. But I would like to explore (grown) Michael’s storyline’s conflicts. His plotline will be much more clear when I’ve explored his times at the hospital as a doctor by simply writing about it.
The little boy’s round face became rounder as cheeks puffed up and mouth widened into a smile. “Michael!” he exclaimed, raising his hand, making the iv that ran from his thin arm jiggle on the post.
Tiptoeing across the sterilized ward floor with a matching grin on his face, he held a finger up to his mouth. He whispered back as he perched on the stool by the bed, “Quiet Jamie! You’ll wake…” he looked around to see most of the children of the ward snuggled under their covers with flashlights or hiding top scoring handheld video games under their pillows. As his eyes swept what were too many beds, they rested on the main desk he had snuck past; a middle-aged nurse sat there, her head on a clipboard, arm outstretched and dangling over the side. “You’ll wake the nurse,” he finished, turning back to his young friend. Such enthusiasm for someone in such dire circumstances. Such excitement from someone who was slated to die before the year was out. Such exhilaration and elation that Michael couldn’t help but feel every problem and sadness of the day simply slip away. “You’re chipper tonight. What’s up?”
The thin little boy sprang to his knees and turned, hand upon his headboard, nose pressed against the windowpane. “It’s snowing! First snow of the year.”
The boy was indeed right, for outside the window fell a heavy stream of snow, which danced in the nearly full moon light. Everything was as still as death itself, but alive from the windblown snow. Michael knew that outside the ER things were moving hurriedly, plows clearing way for emergency vehicles to pull out, staff members pitching in to shovel out the ambulance bay. But on this side of the hospital, everything but the snow was calm and still. Cars were buried. Sidewalks, streets, and grassy commons all blended into snowy ground. Pine trees were covered from above so that the bellies of their branches were still bare. The snow fell most noticeably around the few street lights scattered about a few stories down. They glowed a bright yellow, the only color in the white bath of snow and moonlight that could be seen. Michael, who realized he was leaning so far forward to the window that the wheeled stool could have sprang out from beneath him, held onto the bed railing and straightened himself. “It’s beautiful. So lively,” he said with a smile.
“I wish I could go out and see it. I’ve never been in snow,” James pouted, settling back down in bed. He had been in hospital beds nearly his whole life, he had been in trouble, he had been in critical condition, but he had never been in snow.
Michael spoke softly, comfortingly. “I’ll tell you what…” he pulled the sheet and two blankets up over the boy’s drained little legs, up past the tiny waste, the heaving chest, and tucked beneath the smooth chin. “If your t-cell count’s still stable tomorrow morning, I’ll try to sneak you to an open window for a few minutes.”
The boy’s bright round face which already showed happiness filled with such incredible joy that Michael was afraid his young friend might burst.
“And if you promise to paint me something else for my office walls when I’m resident.”
The boy, despite himself, bounced in bed, disturbing the covers. “Did you make it? Did you hear?”
He shook his head. “They make their decision tomorrow.” His nervous uncertainty shown through; he couldn’t help it. After today.. after losing the vet the first time, and the second time, he wasn’t sure he deserved it. It had been such an open and shut case. Tend to the hypothermia, call psych, call the VA, discharge. But everything had just gone so terrible wrong. From the flat line to the amputation to the gunshot. The loud, startling gunshot which still rang in his ears like the cold porcelain walls of the bathroom. The children’s ward had probably heard the shot it was so loud. To control shaking of his hands, he pulled the covers back up, tucking them around James.
James settled back accordingly. “Don’t you worry. You got it. I know you did,” little James said with such definite assurance that Michael wanted to simply push the window open right then and there and let the snow blow over them both. The lovely snow. So calming. So soothing.
The season of winter was the season of death. But without it, there would be no season of life as the green poked back up through the snow in the spring. That was what he most wanted to have James see. He just hoped the boy would live so long.
“Get some sleep, Bond,” he whispered, getting off the stool to leaned in and kiss James on the forehead.
The boy giggled at Michael’s pet name for him. “G’night Michael.”
“Goodnight my little warrior. Dream of snow.”