When I walked into the dimly lit hospital room, I almost couldn’t recognize her. Her family claimed to bring her to this Godforsaken place for her own good, but I knew they were just a bunch of liars. I could tell a liar from ten feet apart. And don’t even get me started on the hospital. This building was hell on earth, everyone here was a liar. The doctors, the nurses… They all promised that she was going to get better. That she was going to be fine, play in the snow , dance in the rain and all the other stupid sappy cliche things she loved doing. But they took and took from her until she no longer existed. And here she was, looking out the dreary hospital window. She looked dangerously thin, her skin had lost color. However the worst part was her eyes, I couldn’t stand looking at them. They just looked so lifeless and dull, but of course I knew why that was. Sleep didn’t come as easy as it used to.
She knew I was in the room but she refused to talk to me, she refused to do a lot of things. She never ate anymore, couldn’t move. Even laughing hurt her lungs. She would stay in this moldy, disgusting room all day and all night, left with her thoughts. I wondered if she knew she didn’t have much time left. I could ask her how she felt, but she wouldn’t answer. Was she upset? Did she still have faith in herself? Would she rather die than live like this? I wanted her to say something, anything but she wouldn’t. After all the last time I heard her voice, I stopped visiting for months. She sounded so weak and nothing like the boisterous girl I knew that I couldn’t stand it. I did leave her flowers every Friday though. A bouquet of forget-me-not flowers. As I glanced at her bedside table, I saw a bunch of them. In fact, they were scattered all over her floors. The nurses told me that she said her greetings to the forget-me-nots each morning, that she pretended it was me she was talking to instead of the flowers. I noticed that plucked out some of the flowers, threw some at her walls and put some of the others in vases. I was so focused on the flowers that I almost didn’t see her slowly turning her head to look at me for the first time that day. I wanted to avoid eye contact so much, I wanted the ground to swallow me whole, I could do anything to stop her from looking at me with those dreadful eyes. But at the end of the day I’m merely a human, I couldn’t help but look after I heard her hiccup.
“It’s not fair.”
I didn’t have an answer to that. It really was not fair, a woman as young and youthful as her didn’t belong here. Back when she was first diagnosed with Fatal Famillial Insomnia, before she was hospitalized I often accompanied her at nights. I would always say that her dreams were too big for her body and that’s why she couldn’t sleep. She would laugh her annoying laugh and talk about the future. She would talk and talk until I fell asleep, and then she would be all alone with her thoughts in the dark once more. During her first month in the hospital, I snuck her out one night. We walked, talked, laughed and ran for the entire night. A couple of months later she lost her ability to walk. Seeing the tears streaming down her face, I didn’t have it in me to respond. There was so much she wanted to do. She turned her head towards the window once more and the silence became deafening. I really didn’t have it in me to be in the same room as her anymore, so I left.
I didn’t have to be a medical student to know that her condition was only growing worse, I had heard from the nurses that she has lost her voice all together. I knew she couldn’t talk to the flowers I got her, but I still sent her a bouquet every Friday. Eventually that came to an end too, right after I recieved a call from the hospital saying she was in the ER. But they were forget-me-not flowers, they had a meaning. When I sent them, it meant I was still thinking of her even when I didn’t come see her. However when I got a bouquet from her last Friday, I knew what they meant. When I rushed to the hospital, my vision blurry from the tears clouding my eyes, I knew what was going on. And when the doctors finally let me see her, I knew she would be sleeping soundly. I knew this would happen eventually, everybody did. Her funeral was small, not many people showed up. I didn’t go either, however I did go to her grave. A lot. I always brought her a bouquet of forget-me-not flowers. I made a habit of visiting her at nights, the graveyard was empty and peaceful at nights. Besides, sleep didn’t come as easy as it used to. She knew this, and now I did too.