Hello Sunshine

Before

KINSEY

There isn't a guide on how to act when you get horrible news.

No instructions on grief or heartbreak or sadness.

Everyone deals with it differently.

Sam Flores was put onto the third floor of the ICU after being recovered from a suicide attempt. He'd been there for three weeks, enough time for our small town to have lots to gossip about.

It was announced at school, not that it wasn't wildly inappropriate for them to do that, with also an incoming slew of mental health 'support' where they just threw a number for the local therapy office at you or prescribed you things like Sertraline.

When I found out, it felt like my heart had fallen from inside of my chest and dropped to the floor, my throat was tight and it felt impossible to swallow. I really didn't know why I felt like such a mess about it, Sam and I had never been friends.

Although, Sam was pretty damn handsome with his golden hair and insane tallness, with a defined brow that shadowed his eyes making him look extremely serious. He just seemed to hate most people, not sparing them much more than a glare or a sneer if he even thought you were worth that to begin with.

Like I said, we weren't friends. But, we'd been in the same town and schools for years, that at least warranted some kind of concern? If not, just being a decent person?

Still, I felt awkward as hell standing outside his hospital room. Was it too private? Too personal? He probably didn't want visitors especially people from school... I'd written him a card though.

So, I knocked. No answer. 

I clenched my shaking hands into fists and poked my head around the door.

The machines in the room were whirring, beeping, doing their thing around the boy in the bed. God...there he was in that white bed, his neck wrapped in white bandages, in that white room. 

Why was everything so goddamn white? 

My eyes zeroed in on a bible next to a vase of lilies and I sucked my lip in between my teeth.

Under the circumstances I'm sure the big man could understand the profanity.

Sam's body was covered in one of those thick, scratchy blankets usually kept in storage for when the heating went out. He looked like just a head without a body, no obvious shape of one under the blanket. He was asleep, that was probably for the best.

There was no one else in the room aside from us, though there was a lone handbag on the chair beside his bed. Maybe gone for coffee?

Somehow, the card seemed silly seeing his gaunt skin against the sheets, seeing what he'd done to himself. I took it out of my bag, and set it gingerly next to the bible. It had an elephant on it, don't ask me why.

There was a page marked in the bible and my eyes flickered to Sam's closed ones, his even breaths and then at the door before I picked it up and flipped it open.

The pages were worn and looked like they'd been thumbed through a few times, I'd opened the bible to Joshua 1:9 where the book mark laid and began reading the passage.

"Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go."

Sam shifted in his bed when I finished the small passage and my heart leapt in my chest, I was ready to run out of the room when he settled and seemed no closer to waking up than before.

Was handbag lady reading these verses to him? 

Nobody had left anything else for him, it wasn't shocking given that Sam was like a pariah our school.

It was a hate-hate relationship he had with the student body.

The room felt very odd, like I was Alice after drinking that potion, shrunk to the size of a mouse. I was small, insignificant with this massive elephant in the room. Maybe Sam was off somewhere in his mind, somewhere nice, a little version of heaven.

I'd known him for years, well known as in seen him in school. 

It was strange to see Sam without his trademark scowl or snarl in his bed, the contours of his well-defined face were smooth and not creased by pain or grief or anger just content in his state. With narrowed eyes, I tilted my head and knew what was to come after he left the hospital. 

Part of me knew he'd fight them every step of the way, but he had to wake up first.

Finally, I left his room and tried to slink away in the dim light of the corridor.

A sniffling woman was on the approach as I began walking to the elevator, holding a bottle of water and a Styrofoam cup in her hands. Handbag lady? She was all tattoos and dark hair and red eyes and her sheer height reminded me of Sam. Maybe I would never know who she was, the elevator enveloped me before I saw her enter any rooms.

That night, a weird existentialism came over me, old feelings of pain and grief simmered below my surface. Sam was still on my mind, behind my eyelids. That night we shared at the party... somehow I felt responsible to check up on him. 

And that's just what I would do.