Chapter 4
“Happy Birthday dear Penny, Happy Birthday to you!” The clapping filled the small hospital room. I smiled at Penny who was grinning too. The chefs down in the hospital kitchen brought her a cake that read ‘Happy Birthday Penny: 15 and 3/12 ‘. My parents had come up with the idea of having a birthday party for every month Penny made it. I personally wasn’t crazy about the idea, it kind of set me in a melancholy nostalgic mind set and seeing Penny blow out the candles for the third time in 3 months just felt like a count down. The day the doctors told us how many months she had, well, it wasn’t hard to do the math. Of course they tell you she could live longer, but what’s two more months in the grand scheme of never getting another birthday, or a life.
Later in the day Penny was sitting reading on a bench, hooked up to her rolling IV stand and monitors. We had joked that when she walked around the hospital with it, it looked like another person. She had laughed and now referred to it as Harry. She had explained that he was a boy in a band that she loved.
Once, I had come in after she had been having an awful day. She had said her head felt like millions of hammers all pounding at her skull that cracked beneath the pressure. But as the nurses added some more med ands the drugs started to take effect she had reached for her ipod, put in the ear buds and closed her eyes. I could see the tears coming down briefly before she wiped them away. Penny never showed her pain, I think she felt like she had to be strong for us, or maybe for herself. She soon fell asleep, but I went to check on her and saw the band playing. One Direction, it was the band that Harry was from. Penny wasn’t a fan girl, but I think she relied on them more than anything. She would play their music when she could barely stand, and play them when she was feeling on top of the world. Well, as on top of the world as someone with terminal cancer can feel. But somehow, Penny felt those boys understood her. If they only knew what an impact they had on her. And if only she knew what had happened earlier that afternoon.
Mom, dad, and I had been discussing with the doctors how things were going. They were as good as they could get for Penny, her pain was for the most part numbed down to tolerability and no major functions had been impaired yet, though it was only a matter of time. But then the subject of Make a Wish came up. I smiled broadly, which was an odd thing to do when your in the room with a bunch of depressing doctors telling you about how may loose the ability to move the lower half of her body due to her cerebellum basically being consumed by cancer. But I grinned from ear to ear because I knew exactly what Penny would want, and I knew that it should be a surprise.
“Mom, Dad, don't kill me and please don’t think I’m horrible selfish before I’ve had time to explain, but can I pick out Penny’s Wish?” I went on the explain that what Penny would want, and I being the all knowing older sister who understood her best of all, would be to meet the band One Direction. It took some convincing, but I finally got everyone’s approval and they set to work contacting the Genies down at Make A Wish and getting five boys from the UK over to meet Penny.
So now we both read in the courtyard of Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital, I was getting dark, and the sky was reaching that brief yet unmistakable moment where the has just fallen but the light still burns, like an echo of it’s warmth. And it’s like the rest of the sky hasn’t noticed it’s gone yet, and deep reds and pinks still leave streaks across the expanse, a brush stroke on a canvas. I sat there trying to think about what I was reading, but all that consumed my mind was the fact that Penny was going to get her dream in a few weeks. So I hid my grin behind the book I was supposed to be reading over the summer for my college English literature class. After a while Penny closed her book as the light receded and stared up.
“How is it that something so immense and powerful, can be dimmed from sight just by a couple of tiny city electric lights?” Penny said wistfully, like she wasn’t really sitting there, her mind wandering around in some unknown place.
In response to my puzzled look she said one word, “Stars.”
I smiled and looked up.
“They might be dimmed, but the few that shine though all the madness that is this city are all the more special.”
Penny laughed, “But even if I could see them all, that star could be gone already, it’s light just hasn’t traveled the millions of light years it takes to reach my pupil. When you see one, you can look into the past. Into the unknown.”
And as I sat there I fully realized how much Penny had grown up in these past months. The small perfect girl seemed deeper than before, wiser than me I thought. And with a pang I realized how many people wouldn’t be able to appreciate her ponderings which numbered as many as the stars themselves.
“I think that’s the beauty of stars,” she went on, “the mystery and the past. Like you never really know where or even when they are. They’re like all the moments ever spread out across the universe, which expands to make room for more moments in time.”
Then she said smiling, her face still turned upwards, the star light shining in her light eyes, “When I’m gone, remember this moment. Look into the sky and think that out there in time and space, I’m still alive in the stars.”
Penny couldn’t see it, her face still aglow in the night, but a tear slipped down my cheek.
I smiled knowing that it was true, Penny’s light would always be there, no matter how dim it got.
Later that night, my mom and dad pulled me aside as I helped Penny back to her room.
“Eliza, guess who just confirmed that a certain boy band is coming to meet your sister?”
“Robin Williams?”
My mom hit me playfully and said, “Yes! The Genies!”
I smiled knowing that soon another kind of star would soon fill Penny’s eyes.
