We Are Not Forgotten

chapter twenty one.

I couldn’t sleep. I simply laid awake, staring at the darkness from underneath the blanket and realising how utterly uncomfortable this bench was. I don’t know what I had expected though. My back was aching and I knew it was unlikely I would ever get to sleep.

  

So my mind drifted. I started to think about my life and all the things that had happened to me over the years. I didn’t understand how it had turned out so wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be this way at all.

I wasn’t supposed to have a child at sixteen, I wasn’t supposed to have gotten kicked out of the house by dad, and I wasn’t supposed to be sleeping on a bench in the park right now. But here I was and that’s exactly what has happened. Why was it all such a horrible mess?

To be perfectly honest, I knew why. In fact, I could pinpoint the exact moment my life completely turned upside down and I remembered it almost as if it was yesterday.

  

“Why is this happening Dad?” I questioned innocently, although I was actually totally aware of what was going on. I was asking more to fill the silence between us.

  

The solemn look on his face and the swollen bags under his eyes told me he didn’t particularly feel like answering my question, but I wanted to know. I wanted to know whether he believed in any kind of after-life or God. Maybe he believed that there was reason for this happening to us, but his reply disappointed me.

  

“I don’t know Rebecca… I-I really don’t know…” The wobble in his voice caused a lump to appear in my own throat and I begged for him not to cry again. I hated seeing him cry. I had seen him do it so often recently.

  

Despite being only nine years of age, I knew I had to be strong. For mum and for dad. It was turning out to be really hard though.

  

“C-can we go see her?” I said quietly, feeling the tears welling in my eyes even though I had tried so hard to hold them back. I knew that if I started crying, it would only make my Dad sadder. I didn’t want to do that.

He didn’t answer this time. I could tell he was far too drained so I didn’t blame him. I merely sighed and fell back onto the uncomfortable, plastic hospital chair.

Dad and I were currently sat outside the ward in which my Mum was in. She was extremely ill and we didn’t exactly know how much longer she had left. Cancer. Shortly after my ninth birthday was when they found it. A tumour of her brain and they told her she only had a few months to live.

  

She had tried everything to get better. She was constantly at the hospital having medical treatments that made her weak and her hair fall out. It was scary, not because she was bald but because I knew she could die. She was always crying too but wore a head scarf so that I wouldn’t worry as much. I knew what was happening though, I worked it out myself. I might be young, but I wasn’t stupid.

“Dad… I said can we go see her?” I tried again, sounding more impatient.

As if on cue, a young male doctor strolled out of the ward and gave us a crooked smile. It wasn’t a happy smile exactly but then I guess he realised how much pain we were both in. He had to deal with situations like this all the time.