Leviticus 20:13

Farewell My Sunshine

The hospital was a good half hour away, and with the traffic that was now building up on the high way John reached the large parking lot about an hour later. He found a spot and walked into the hospital, the balloons wrapped firmly around his wrist so that they didn't blow off, the wind knocking them around and forcing him to swat them out of his face. He said hello to the secretaries who simply gave him some pitiful smiles in return, for they knew exactly who he was and why he was here. John did his best to make it to the hospital every day to bring Rosie a present or to cheer her up a little bit just by his being there. He knew that he had to make do with the time he had, and despite the hours he worked he always made a point to be sitting at her bedside at least once a day, even if it was at eleven o'clock at night. He usually let her sleep, sitting in a chair beside the bed and either reading her a story that she would never hear or falling asleep himself, leaning against her bedside and collapsing with the exhaustion he had been feeling since he had last woken up. Today, however, it was only two o'clock, and he was certain that Rosie would be awake. She was on the second floor, a couple of doors down from the elevator. He had decorated her door a couple of days after she had been declared a permanent resident, bringing up all sorts of streamers and pictures to paste on the outside so that everyone who walked in was reminded that she was a human being and not just some slab of meat they were trying to preserve. He had pictures of the happier times, of Rosie when she was healthy with both of her parents, smiling into the cameras when they were on vacation, or on her first day of school. Most of the streamers had either ripped or fallen down, and yet most of the pictures remained intact, stuck to the wood just so that John could stare back into the long forgotten face of his smiling wife. John knocked softly at the door, to which a nurse quickly opened it, smiling widely when she saw the big bundle of balloons John was carrying.
"Oh Rosie your father is here!" she said happily, opening the door wider so that John could walk into the dimly lit hospital room, pulling all the balloons along with him and finally letting them float up to the ceiling. Rosie lay there in bed, wearing a pink flowered bandana over her recently shaved head. She looked so small, tucked under the white blankets with her bony arms exposed, seemingly in the middle of coloring a picture with big boxy crayons.
"Daddy!" she cried happily, throwing aside her coloring book and holding out her arms for a hug. John laughed happily, his heart warming tremendously to see his daughter smile. He swooped over and gave her a big hug, feeling her thin little arms wrap rather tightly around his neck in glee.
"Hey there sunshine, how are you?" John asked happily, looking over at the nurse, who had been watching the scene with something of a tear in her eye. He pulled over his chair ot the side of the bed, collecting the strings of the balloons he could reach and bundling them all up in his hand.
"Are those for me?" Rosie wondered hopefully, ignoring John's previous question as she gazed up to where the balloons were bouncing silently along the ceiling tiles.
"No I brought them for the secretaries down the hall, I hope you don't mind." John said sarcastically, and Rosie simply laughed, obviously used to this type of mindless humor from her father.
"They're for me, aren't they daddy?" she asked with a knowing laugh, and John simply smiled, holding out the strings of the multicolored balloons for his daughter to take.
"Of course they are. I thought they'd brighten up this drab old hospital room a little bit more." John decided with a smile, looking around the room at his previous attempts to liven the place up. There were vases of flowers, old and new, lining both the dresser and the window sill, posters of Rosie's favorite TV shows and bands (all of which were much too multicolored and childish), stuffed animals, dolls, and even some weird animated cat that sat in a little pillow and looked like it was breathing. That thing creeped him out, especially at night, and yet it seemed to amuse Rosie, since she had always wanted a cat.
"They're beautiful." Rosie said happily, letting the strings go one by one and watching as they bounced against the ceiling and rolled along the lights.
"I thought you might like them." John agreed softly. He took up the coloring book that Rosie had been working in, looking at her half-finished picture of a princess that had been very haphazardly colored in with obnoxious shades of blue and purple. Nevertheless he smiled, making a mental note to tear that picture out and put it up on his fridge.
"You smell like the diner again." Rosie observed, leaning over so that she could get a better whiff of the lingering smell of grease on her father's clothes.
"That's because I was just there." John admitted with a smile, and Rosie nodded in satisfaction.
"Did you do anything exciting?" she wondered hopefully. She always thought that John's work was a lot like SpongeBob's work at the Krusty Krab. Since he had told her that he was a grill cook she always wanted to know if he went through any of the shenanigans that happened on the show (it just so happened that she had a large SpongeBob SquarePants poster plastered on her wall) and John always made up these lovely tales to make his adult life sound much more interesting.
"Oh yes well of course! Today...my boss made me go get the burger patties from our supplier, deep on the other side of town. I had to go up to the mother patty and chop of each and every burger patty from the frozen meat, stored in a container so cold I had to wear a winter jacket and goggles, just so that my eyes didn't freeze inside of my skull!" John exclaimed excitedly, to which Rosie just gaped, believing every word.
"Does every restaurant in the world get their burgers from the mother patty?" she wondered in fascination, to which John shook his head pitifully.
"No Rosie, there are a couple of the mother patty's siblings all over the world, because it wouldn't really be fair if people on the other side of the globe had to travel all over just to get their hamburger patties would it?" John asked with a pouty face. Rosie thought for a moment before shaking her head, deciding that yet, that would be rather unfair.
"Are you warm now?" She wondered nervously, looking at John's eyes as if to make sure they hadn't frozen on the drive over.
"Oh yes, I'm very warm now. Once you collect the patties you're able to drink a nice warm cup of hot coco and you get a nice fuzzy blanket." John assured softly, to which Rosie nodded thankfully.
"Like my blanket?" she wondered, gesturing to the obnoxiously fuzzy blanket that John had bought for her way back when. It had some sort of rainbow print on it, with unicorns dancing around the pattern and an extremely fuzzy underside. Hospitals got cold, especially in the summer when they consider it necessary to blast the air conditioning, and so John wanted to make sure his little Rosie was snuggled up nice and warm. There was a small silence; John took to flipping through the rest of the coloring book to see Rosie's other creations while she collected her crayons into her small hand.
"Do you want to color one?" she asked hopefully. John just laughed, pausing his flipping on a page with a black and white dragon with hardly any details at all.
"Well if you insist. Do you want to pick it out for me?" John asked, handing her the coloring book while she nodded. Rosie flipped around for a moment, settling on a picture of a large tower with a princess hanging out the window, sort of like a rip of Rapunzel.
"Do this one." she decided finally, handing John the coloring book and the crayons. For a moment John sat there coloring, finding these big blocky crayons to be virtually impossible to fine tune any of the colors and stay in the lines, however he was quite sure his colorful atrocity would only make Rosie feel better about her own attempts at coloring. When John was finished he handed the coloring book back over to Rosie for her approval, and she looked over it like a very harsh critic. John was actually nervous for a moment, worried that his own daughter wouldn't approve of his artful masterpiece, until finally she nodded and he sighed in relief.
"You like it?" he asked hopefully.
"Of course I like it daddy!" she assured with a very high pitched voice, hugging the coloring book to her chest before attempting to rip the picture out.
"Here, let me do that." John interrupted quickly; worried that while she tried to rip it out of the book she would in turn rip the whole thing in half. John carefully tore at the edge of the page until finally it ripped cleanly off, shutting the book and handing it to Rosie.
"Would you like me to sign it? That way when I'm famous you can sell it online." John suggested with a teasing smile, to which Rosie just laughed and nodded. John signed the coloring page in the biggest, most obnoxious way possible, just like movie stars who have no sense of respect for the blank space and the picture. They always made sure to sign right over their own face or something stupid like that when there was obviously all this white space at the bottom of the page. However John's haphazard signature made Rosie laugh even more, and he helped her tape it to her bedpost where it fluttered ever so slightly as the heater began to turn on. There was a slight knock on the door, and a nurse poked her head rather reluctantly into the room.
"Mr. Watson I'm so sorry, but it's time for Rosie's medication." She muttered sadly. John just nodded, clearing his throat a little bit and getting to his feet, tucking the chair back against the wall and giving Rosie a quick kiss on the forehead in farewell. When they gave Rosie her medication they didn't like people in the room, in fact when Rosie did most anything they didn't like to have a witness. Maybe they thought that John would interfere somehow, or maybe his presence would upset Rosie. Either way it didn't matter, he wasn't allowed, and after all this time he knew how to take the hint.
"You be good sunshine, I'll be back tomorrow." John muttered softly, and Rosie simply nodded, looking upset that her father had to leave so early.
"Bye bye." She muttered mournfully, frowning slightly as she watched the nurse roll in the little cart where they kept the pills. John moved out of the way, nodding once more in farewell before slipping noiselessly out of the room. The door shut behind him and he stood for a moment in the harsh white hallway, collecting himself and staring blankly at the plain white wall in front of him. No parent should ever have to go through this, it was a crying shame that he had to dedicate so much time because his daughter was in the hospital, it was a shame that he only got to see her for an hour at most, thrown out because of a simple little pill. It was a shame that he had to go home alone.