Formaldehyde

            All the lights are off in my room; I should be asleep.  Sleep fights disease, right?  I suppose I’m not going to be cured anytime soon then.  I’m not sure what time it is, I can’t check since the only clock in my room isn’t digital.  It has to be real early (maybe two, three in the morning?) for it to be this quiet.  I can’t even hear the nurses shuffling from room to room or chatting at their desks.  The only sound is the beep, beep of my monitors, assuring me that I’m still very much alive.  The children’s wing of the hospital is always the quietest, save for the morgue.  I’ve been cooped up in this 5x6 box for a couple of days now.  Missing out on a life that doesn’t seem to want to wait for the ill.  It’s a Friday night, so most people are probably doing something that is very different from what I’m doing.  Maybe they’re out with friends at a party.  Maybe they’re home with their sister, watching something from the vast collection of exceedingly mediocre films on Netflix.  Maybe they’re doing something more important, like writing a book that will one day be a New York Times Best Seller, or maybe they’re talking their best friend out of suicide.  Maybe they’re the one considering downing that bottle of pills.  Who knows?  All I know is that I’m not doing anything of those sorts.  I’m here.  In a hospital bed with itchy sheets, not affecting the world outside of these walls.

            I must have dozed off, drowned myself to sleep with my own thoughts.  A nurse gently shakes me awake, “Just drawing some blood, sweetie.  Then you can go right back to bed.”  I’m too groggy and half-asleep to comprehend anything.  Then I feel the pinprick in the crook of my arm and I’m immediately pulled from my blissful state of almost sleeping, to painfully awake.  And then it’s over.  The nurse leaves the room with two vials of my plasma, platelets, and blood cells.  In some lab they’ll examine it, make sure my blood count is still a-okay.  A lot of samples of my infected body are in labs somewhere.  They told me they’ll use them as a case study.  To help people in the future who have whatever sickness I have.  I swear, I have taken every test.  I have been laid under every scanner.  Not one from the abundance of doctors that have had a clipboard with a list of my symptoms has been able to figure me out.  They can’t piece together the puzzle.  My sickness still goes undiagnosed.  Maybe it’s something that hasn’t been “discovered.”  Maybe I’ll get it named after me.  My name could be immortalized, but only followed by the word disease or syndrome.

Our Abode

            We’re speeding down Transit road.  All three of us are in the front seat of Austin’s truck and  headed to an undetermined destination.  It’s not even that warm, but it’s the first day in months that isn't freezing.  I’m sandwiched between my best friends, Austin and Charlie, with the windows rolled down and blink-182 blaring from the shitty radio in the old Chevy.  We’re all smoking these horrible cigarettes that Charlie got from the Indian reservation.  They don’t taste like anything; it’s like I’m smoking air.  I rip out half of the filter, but it only improves the flavor slightly.  I don’t even know why I’m wasting my (partially) healthy lungs on something this mediocre, but I am.

“Aust, where are we even going?”  I ask as Lockport whizzes by us.  

“Away.  Anywhere,”  Austin offers as an answer.  I put my cig out in the make-shift ashtray we made last summer (an old Tim Horton’s coffee cup in the left cup holder of his truck) and light up another one.

“Let’s go to Vic’s,” Charlie suggests, flicking the ashes of his cigarette out the window.  I nod in agreement.  Vic always has bud at his place, nothing to disagree with there.  Austin speeds through a red light near the produce market (he’s honestly the most reckless driver in the universe.  I don’t know how he hasn't managed to get a ticket,) which means we’re out of Lockport.  Out of one town and into the outskirts of another.

 “We should go out west, get out of that piss hole.”  Austin is always talking about how much he hates Lockport.  How it’s an old washed up town, full of liars and people who don’t give a fuck about anything.  He’s always dreaming up these big plans of leaving, going somewhere warm, making something of his life.  I've tried to tell him that Lockport’s not as bad as he says it is, how its got a certain charm, but he won’t hear any of it.  Austin can’t wait to get out of Lockport and never come back.  That’s what everyone says though, isn’t it?  How they’ll leave their hometown, say they’ve got nothing to hold them down to it anyway, and never come back home.  But it feels like everyone ends up staying.  You always see the same people getting coffee at the same diner downtown.  The same teenagers are always loitering in the same parking lots.  To me, Lockport is one of those towns that everyone claims to hate, but never seem to leave.

Bedroom Eyes

            My eyelids flutter open slightly, and for only a second I am suspended in that time between being awake and being asleep.  Where you’re out of the world of dreaming, but still not part of the world of the conscious either.  In that second, I believe that you’re still in bed next to me.  Then it’s over.  I glance over to where you would be asleep, and all I find is empty sheets.  Pale, morning sunlight is dancing through the eyelet curtains that I’ve had for only God knows how long.  I stare at the patterns that are swirling on your side of the bed.  I remember watching them on your sleeping face when I woke up in the morning.  I was always awake before you.

            You’d always wrap yourself around me while you were sleeping.  You’d pull me in close and not let go.  Let me tell you; I have yet to experience anything nicer than waking up in your strong arms.  I’d often just lay there, tangled up in all of you.  I wouldn’t move or try to wake you.  I’d breathe in the smell of us; the mix of your Old Spice body wash and my kiwi shampoo.  As much as I loved you, I loved us even more.  I’d memorize the rhythm of your breathing.  You were always the one thing I could count on to be stable in the whirlwind of chaos that is my life.  Then you’d stir slightly, and I’d know you were waking up.  Your blue eyes would meet my brown, and we wouldn’t say anything.  Neither of us uttered a good morning, because it didn’t need to be said.  We both knew it was already a good morning.  We’d stay wrapped up in each other in bed, our cold feet rubbing together, and our smiles identical.  I remember it was waking up with you, when I was looking into your heavy lidded eyes, I realized that while I had never really liked blue eyes before, they were now my favorite color.