Ward 39

• John Bivell, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2011

My life is spent. The doctors have told me I have only a few months left. When all you can do is lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, with only the pain to tell you you’re still breathing, everything is grey.

When you get cancer, there’s a kind of defeat which accompanies it. When you’re rushed to hospital in a screaming ambulance, you reflect on how your life went wrong. How did it get from a normal routine to be landed in hospital with no hope, and a struggle for every breath? After a while, you realize you’re dying. All the colour drains out of the world, and you begin to cry as you understand that you can’t have a future. It’s forbidden in the cruel game of life and death.

12 years old, and I’m the only one in Ward 39. When I first arrived, when I could still move, I had no one to talk to. I wanted to scream. I wanted to shout. I wanted to cry and thrash and scream so that I could get away from it all. It isn’t fair, a person so young to be diagnosed with cancer. I can recall when the blank-faced men in white took me from my home, while Mum cried and wailed as I was taken from her arms. I could hear her saying it was alright, she’d find me and I would be safe. I can still hear her, in my dreams, where I can believe that I’m safe with her and Pa. Then I wake, with the pain reminding me things can never go back the way they were.

That was 2 years ago. The people who take care of me now, they never speak. They never engage in discussion, or try and comfort me. They just set down my flavourless food in silence; giving me injections without any explanation. All they do is stare at me with those blank eyes, as if they’re robots without emotion. I never spoke to them. I never liked to speak to anyone after my diagnosis. I suffered my misery in silence, the inward battles unsaid. I was silent as my body failed me, dying as the cancer spread like a smothering shadow. But I would have liked to have had some company for once; someone I could relate with, someone I could laugh with. But I could never speak to anyone, not a single person, until it was too late. Until I had realized I had forgotten how to laugh.

It’s strange, lung cancer occurring in someone so young. Sometimes I hate my parents for having a history in cancer. Sometimes I hate myself for allowing this to happen to me. I haven’t seen my parents or my sister for 9 months. I don’t know what’s keeping them, or why they don’t come. I’m going to die without remembering their smiling faces, or their loving embrace. Eventually, I’m going to die in the hidden darkness of Ward 39.