Marcelle is attractive.
Marcelle is a football player.
Marcelle is cliché.
Marcelle is a wolf in sheep clothing.
Marcelle is a Christmas fanatic.
Marcelle is just downright annoying.
Matthew Griffin is a certified theatre geek/video game nerd. And...
❝Seeing is believing, but sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we can't see.❞
The Conductor The Polar Express
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The oncology ward looks like the rest of the hospital.
White walls crust the outside of the germ vacuum, isolating clean atmospheric, bottled gas inside the rooms. The floor is waxed linoleum, glistening like spilled oil. The air is coated in a thick layer of cleaning material and lemons.
The only difference, is the tranquility in the ward. You don't see doctors calmly walking down the hall, smiling at you without being swarmed by work or nurses. You don't see nurses take as much as a breath in a normal ward. Maybe they're so calm, because cancer is a calm killer.
It's the Michael Meyer of all killers, strolling up and down the hall, teasing you with glimpses of his butchering knife as you try to scramble away. Of course you'll trip over your own feet.
Matthew takes a deep breath before he turns into his mother's room, using his gluteus to push open the door. She is in isolation for maximum amount of treatment in the minimum amount of time. She's being pumped with liquid uranium. With oleum.
He halts for a second, just embracing his mother's semi-healthy state. She doesn't look healthy, her face is corrugated with weight loss and her color is extracted to push all her energy into healing. She's wrapped up in a thin sheet, still shivering like a chihuahua.
She still has hair, but he can tell her hairline is slowly receding and her mop is slowly thinning. He's been avoiding this particular view of his mother for a while.
He doesn't have the heart to face her deterioration.
"Hi," she lilts happily, pulling a tight lipped smile over her pale lips.
"Hello, mother," he greets formally, pulling the elaborate balloons into the room to surprise her. He has the entire gift shop within his grasp, a giant pink teddy bear the size of a small child slung around his arm, a minimum of two gift packets in his hands and even a Starbucks coffee. Just for her.
"No!" She laughs, throwing her head back. She closes her reading book, burying it somewhere on her very unorganized nightstand. "You didn't, Matty."
"I did and you're just going to have to deal with it," he says, throwing all the gifts at the foot of the bed. "The teddy smells really good, too. It's like strawberries vomited in your nose."
"Thanks for the graphics, sweetie," she deadpans, squishing the stuffed animal against her chest. She buries her nose in the faux fur, just absorbing the present for a second.
