The October Amaryllis

Chapter 61 - May 21st, 2020 - 10:45 A.M.

Two remarkable things happened at 10:45; one was that we had another person admitted, a young girl who couldn't have been any older than fourteen, and two, we got to pet animals! And not just dogs but cats too. There was one in particular that I really liked, a ginger tabby named Max. I'd honestly rather have a bunch of cats than a million dollars; at least cats don't make you feel lonely. Just the thought of money makes me depressed; it controls the world. You can get away with anything if you have enough dough. That's one thing I like about the Bible; it talks about how destructive greed is. People treat mammon as their God, you know? If I ever won the lottery, I'd give up all my money and go to live in the wild like that Chris McCandless guy, except I'd be smart about it and survive. For one thing, I'd actually buy a fucking map. I'd also buy a sasquatch suit just to mess with cryptologists; some moron would record me and claim that I was "proof" of bigfoot or some nonsense. People disappoint me so much sometimes...

"Dude, I know her," Madelynn whispered in my ear as I pet the tabby. His purring was beyond relaxing; I'm not sure why, but purring just sounds so good to me. And if only you saw his eyes, they were a brilliant teal, like the ocean.

"Really? What's her name?" I asked curiously.

"Kimberly, she's in my English class. I've heard her talk like once in my life. No one knows much about her. Not even the teacher calls on her," she whispered.

"Well, she's wearing a Motörhead shirt, isn't that the type of stuff you listen to?"

"Yeah, but it would be so awkward to be all like, hey, I know you from English class!" she replied with an embarrassed look, shaking her head.

"We're all friends here, aren't we?" I asked half as a joke.

"I suppose so... I'll be back; I gotta pet this one German Shepherd," she said, going off.

While she was gone, I looked for Morgan, who was nowhere to be found until I found him flirting with one of the nurses. The amusement I felt from watching him was virtually palpable; you should have seen how smooth he was; he was the offspring of Casanova himself! He called her beautiful in about a thousand different ways, and she blushed bright crimson each time.

At that moment, Kimberly walked up to Max and started petting him behind the ears, startling me.

Oh no, act natural.

"You like cats too?" I stupidly asked. She looked at me like I was an idiot at that moment but nodded her head silently.

I decided not to take any more risks by asking stupid questions and moved on to the other pets. I found this beautiful Husky with one blue eye and another brown and petted her on her tummy. You should have seen how she reacted; she rolled over like a bale of hay and started panting like crazy. I would have petted her until the end of time if I could have.

"What a beautiful dog. What's its name?" I asked, feeling tempted to squeeze the dog from how adorable it was.

"Hayley, we got her from the shelter a year ago, and ever since then, she's been living the life," her owner responded. I was at that moment beyond jealous that she had the dog; my parents had never in my life allowed me to have any pets. According to them, I was far too easily distracted and could lose the pet easily. While that is true to an extent, it didn't make it any less annoying. The closest I've come to owning a pet was when we took care of our neighbor's Labrador Retriever; the only problem was the dog could only understand Spanish, so he ignored virtually everything we said. Somehow, though, he understood what the word food meant, so he was quite clever in that way. What I hated about him, though, was that he'd bark at literally everything; I once saw him barking at a string. Sometimes, I wish I could speak dog, so I could tell dogs that bark at 3 A.M. to shut the hell up.

"Boo!" Morgan shouted, putting his hands on my shoulders from behind, nearly giving me a heart attack. I'll admit that as much as I hate it when other people do that to me, I do it myself sometimes. I have moments where I'm about five mentally; usually, they happen out of boredom. I still watch cartoons sometimes at sixteen; that animated Batman series from the 90s is stellar. I especially loved the fourteenth episode, "Heart of Ice," where they went over Mr. Freezes' origins. He's, in my opinion, the most understandable villain in the Batman series. All he ever wanted was to save his wife, Nora...

"So, how did it go with that one nurse?" I asked, winking.

"Dude, she's like thirty-five and has three kids; I don't know what I was thinking. Oh, well, maybe when I'm a year older," he replied, shaking his head.

"I guess you have a thing for older nurses with kids," I joked before petting the Husky some more.

"Guess so..." he said with an awkward chuckle as he wandered off again.

As much as I wanted to pet every dog and cat in the place, they made us leave after only fifteen minutes, which was lame. They organized this fantastic group and yet gave us as little time as possible, which I just didn't understand. So many good things are over far too quickly.

To this day, I can say that this was by far the best part of my stay at the hospital and the only part that I genuinely enjoyed. After that, everything just got weirder and weirder, and worse and worse...

After that, hell came to town.