the broken

Chapter 23

MAY, 2009

Dan

Time doesn't move in here.

The clocks are seven hours slow, but Pj and Phil have been around constantly to pass the time, playing cards with me or telling me about silly pointless things from the outside world that make me laugh despite the disheartening fact that I have now taken to calling anything outside the hospital 'the outside world'.

"Hey Danny!"

I look up from the sprawled position I'm in to see a grinning Pj.

"Don't call me Danny."

Pj is smiling like a crazy person.

"I brought you something to cheer you up."

"Really?"

He nods with a smile and hands me a small brown paper bag, which I take, opening it up and peering inside, grinning when I saw what was in it.

Inside the bag sit my two most favorite possessions in the world.

I pull out the first, a gemstone that Pj had given me a couple of months ago. I had seen it in his room and picked it up, admiring the sky trapped inside. Pj had come up behind me and told me that I should keep it, that it was a magical stone and it had magic powers that would make me feel less sad whenever I held it. I'd hugged him and pocketed it carefully, and as soon as I'd gotten home I'd set it on my night stand. When I'd wake up in the middle of the night with muffled screams, I'd roll the stone around between my fingers and feel okay, if only for a second.

The second item in the bag was a picture, edges slightly tattered.

My fingers gently brush over the pretty flowers woven into my hair, eyes flitting over the smile on my lips, the pink in my cheeks.

Back then, it hadn't looked like me. When Pj handed it back to me right after, a stranger had stared back at me, face painted with an unfamiliar smile.

When things got bad, I'd pull this picture out and close my eyes, remember the sun on my cheeks, the way Phils fingers had woven through my hair, the crooked smile on his lips.

The me in that picture had been just as much of a stranger to me as the face I see in the mirror now.

Sometimes while Phil sleeps, I tiptoe into the hospital bathroom and study every curve of my face, try to find myself in the face in the mirror.

These eyes are used to seeing skeleton cheeks and lips tilted down and empty eyes staring back. I spend hours in front of that mirror trying to relearn my face, a face with pink cheeks and eyes that feel.

I don't know how to be me, how to be happy, but I'm trying. No matter how strange the reflection in the mirror is.

I look up at Pj and smile.

"Flower boy," he teases, and I roll my eyes.

"Thanks, Peej," I say softly, resting the picture on my leg and rolling the rock around in my hand, rubbing the tips of my fingers over the smooth edges absentmindedly. He nods and gives me a one armed hug.

"I gotta run, I'm meeting up with someone for dinner," he says, starting to leave, and I raise my eyebrows.

"Oh, and who could this someone be?" I say mischievously, and he goes red.

"No one, just a friend," he mutters, but my grin widens.

"Have fun with your friend, Peej," and he slaps at my arm, a tiny smile on his lips as he walks out of the room, and then the door snaps into place. Without Pjs wild curls and crazy green eyes, the white walls of my room seemed even whiter, the musky smell of antiseptic and laundry detergent mixing together to make an unmistakable scent that fries my brain.