Never Met a Girl Like Her | ✔️

(6)

H E A T H

Text books, notes, post its, highlighted paragraphs. The contents that covered the surface of the old wooden desk in my bedroom. It sat in front of the window which overlooked the fence that surrounded our house and because it wasn't high enough, it allowed me a clear view of the neighbours living room.

It didn't make a lot of sense to me. The woman next door refused to put nets up. Not that I'd asked. It just seemed odd that she wasn't fazed at all, at the fact that I could see her three small children sitting in front of the television all day while she walked on her treadmill for a solid six hours. She was an odd woman and not to discredit her need to exercise, but it just seemed as if it was becoming a bit of an obsession.

It could be argued that I spent too much time in front of this window though. I shouldn't be so familiar with this  woman and her offspring. For example, I had come to learn that the smallest girl with pale curls hid her fruit snacks under the couch cushion.

The middle one with the same pale curls that reached her shoulders rather than her ears, was obsessed with hitting the little one and blaming the oldest one. Who was a boy with a mohawk and a total indifference to his siblings and their antics because he was either eating his weight in cheddar cheese or he was drawing in a small journal.

This woman really needed some nets.

Whatever though. She couldn't see me. Due to the nets that hung in front of my window. I had considered moving the desk and putting the double bed under the window. But staring at the faded  wallpaper seemed so much more depressing than watching the Mother of three shed more body fat than Zac Efron.

It's Wednesday and classes start on Monday, so I've been cramming in as much information as I can. I prefer to be at least a half a step ahead so that I don't feel so overwhelmed when our professors give us a load of assignments within the first ten minutes of being in class. It didn't seem to matter how much reading ahead I did though. It caught up with me and I was sufficiently overwhelmed before I could get ahead again.

My grades were great though and I was ahead of the class. Which wasn't just due to the fact that I was attending the college on a scholarship. I also studied more than I breathed. There was the slightest benefit to having a nurse for a mother though. I had spent a lot of time in the hospital as I grew up.

Being a doctor had been a dream of mine from the time that I was small. Hanging around and listening to the jargon, asking questions and showing a general interest in medicine meant that I had been learning from the time that I was a kid and it had made a difference to how well I absorbed the information.

There was a light tap on the door and I turned around in the desk chair as Mom peered inside. She was wearing her scrubs and I knew what she would tell me before she'd even said it. "I have to go in earlier than usual," she winced with an apologetic expression. "Can you please take Sarah to her appointment?"

I nodded and stretched so that I could relieve the muscles in my body after I had been sitting for such a long time. "Yeah that's no problem Mom," I agreed. "I'm not going to have as much time once I start College again though."

"I know," she scoffed with dismissal and began backing out of the room. "I would have taken her but work called. I'll leave some cash on the countertop to get dinner."

She closed the door before I could thank her. This wasn't unusual for Mom. She found it difficult to cope with Sarah's appointments. She didn't come to the chemo sessions either. It was subtle and she had a good excuse whenever it came up. But Sarah didn't seem concerned.