the boy in room 5 ; style

6: Kyle Brovloski

a/n: tw -ana mention,  panic attacks, mention of death & dying, suicidal thoughts

• I love basketball. I've always loved it. When I used to be allowed to play sports I used to always choose basketball over everything else. It's sad I'm stuck to watching people play now, that's not very fun.

Watching the kids run around on the court, laughing and yelling and jumping and playing. I miss it. I used to be so active, even if I have been sick since being a baby, but I used to play everyday. I had so much energy, I refused to stay in bed and rest, I refused to let myself get better. All I wanted to do was be out playing, but I never had anyone to play with. Dad used to play with me. He'd always let me win, because I was a little 7 year old kid. I miss it, I really do. My Mom took me to the court just outside the hospital on our walk, just to relive my childhood. It doesn't make me feel better, only worse.

"Can we go?" I ask, pulling my knees to my chest. We're sat on some bench engraved with someone's name. Mom sighs and puts her hand on mine.
"Kyle, are you feeling alright? Mentally." She asks. I shrug.
"Yeah Mom, I'm fine, I just don't wanna be here." Its obvious I'm not feeling okay, but what does she expect? I'm dying.
"Are you sure, Bubbala? I thought this would help."
"Let's just go back." I pushed to my feet, forgetting my crutches. Mom picks them up for me and follows close behind, a sad expression painted on her face.

The warmth of the hospital hits me in the face as we walk through the lobby. Mom nods to the lady at the reception as we walk past. I see the sympathetic look on her face out the corner of my eye. I'm so sick of that look. I'm sick of the head tilts and the 'are you okay's, I'm sick of being sick. I can't wait to get better.

My hospital room feels cold, even though it was nice and warm. I tuck myself under my duvet and turn away from my mom, who's eyes I can feel digging into my back. "Stop staring." My break in silence is followed up with more silence. I hear mom exhale, and a shuffle of her feet. She's closer now. "Mom please, just go away." Footsteps echo outside, accompanied by the distant chatter spoke by muffled voices. There was no noise in my room, which just made all the noise outside the door that much louder.

"Mom!" I say again. I hear her sigh and she turns, leaving me be. I feel a sob building in the back of my throat as I cuddle into my pillow, burying my head away from the light streaming through the hospital rooms window. It's silent, and that silence cuts like a blade. It feels like it tearing my skin away, right off of my bones, but noise would feel like my ears were being clawed away. I can't win.

I feel my cheeks heating up and the pillow my face is hiding away in is growing wet. I sniffle and sit up, wiping my eyes and biting my lip, looking to my thighs. I have every right to be upset, so yet why do I feel so invalid? What remained good in my life left long ago and I remained with old pain and self hatred, and I feel alone. There's a high chance I will die, so why do I feel as if my feelings are invalid? I feel as if I am overreacting, as if I'm stupid and begging for attention.

That's what this is though, isn't it. I'm begging for attention. I want my bones to show through my skin for the attention I get from it, and I act the way I do about my sickness because it gets me pity, gets me love and comfort. I'm selfish, just a selfish boy.

I know deep down this isn't true, that I'm in every right to feel my heart break and sob, cry, beg for the warmth of a hug, but at the same time I feel like a faker. 'People have it worse than me' but really they don't, I'm dying, starving, insecure and more or less alone. Not many people have it worse than me.

My breath is caught in my throat, my heart racing, pounding against the bones in my chest and tightening my lugs second by second. I grip the blankets covering the hospital mistress and squeeze my eyes shut tight, begging for the ground to open up and swallow me in whole. Maybe this is how I die. My toes dig into the duvet and my head spins round and round, the works circles me and my thoughts clammer up and become gibberish screams in my head.

I just want everything to be quiet, I want to go to sleep and not deal with the pain waking me up, not deal with the nightmares that cloud my mind. I want to go to sleep and stay that way, a dead sleep. I want to be dead. My heart continues to hammer and my head continues to spin and fog up. I bury my head in my knees.

Maybe if I kill myself before my illnesses can kill me, they won't win.

Maybe if I kill myself now, it won't hurt anymore.

maybe...

I shut myself up. There's no point in thinking about suicide and taking away all hope when there's a little bit left, and my breath calms. I might not die. I'm not going to die today at least, nor tonight, nor tomorrow. My heart is pounding but at least it's beating, and with that thought it slows. My mind is running but that means I'm alive, and the voices echoing around the shell of my head quiet to silence.

Before yesterday I'd have nothing to keep going for, but now I do. I have a person to keep me alive now, I have someone to live for. I have a friend.

(1038 words)