When You See Us

Prologue+Chapter 1

On my fourth birthday I got to two new perspectives on life that will always be with me. January 18th, 2001 is the date I'm thinking about now, last night, the night before that, and every night in my future. It's always two different scenes in the same setting but with very different meanings.

The beige rooms in hospitals always remind me of orphans. They look almost like normal rooms with a tv and some comfy chairs and maybe even an abstract picture of a sailboat, but underneath you can feel that layer of pain and grief that the room as held within it's walls. That's why a room that was glowing pink stopped me in my tracks. A nurse had given me a dollar to get some food at the vending machine because the doctors needed to talk to mommy and daddy alone. But I didn't understand how because mommy and daddy had been sleeping off hours while their machines made funny beeping noises. But thoughts of my parents were swept from my mind when I saw a bit of pink glowing out of a crack in door C216. I walked towards it, mesmerized by the little bit of color when I'd been surrounded by beige and white for hours since Carol the babysitter had dropped me off because mommy and daddy needed to spend the night here. My four year old self had no idea that it could possibly be an intrusion of privacy walking into a hospital room. Especially, not when I saw the inside. Pink feathers were literally just thrown around the room, pink sheets were on the bed, a pink teddy bear sat in blue plastic sofa in the corner, a picture of dog wearing a pink tutu was hanging where a usual generic picture in neutral colors should be hanging, and the tv and metal bed structure had been outlined with pink gem stickers. I was in four year old heaven, and it took me a while to notice the frail girl with pale skin engulfed in the pink sheets. She just smiled at me when my gaze finally reached hers.

"Hi, I'm Molly, are you lost?" Even her voice sounded weak.

I was immediately shy because the girl was much older than me. Probably about twelve which meant she went to big kid school. I just shook my head no, to nervous to speak.

She smiled,"That's great I like new visitors."

Shyly I said, "You're room is pink," not realizing it was redundant to point out the obvious.

This only made her grin become wider,"Yeah this room needed some color. You can only look at beige for so long. Plus, pink is my favorite color."

I nodded my head up and down very quickly in agreement. Then I blurted out, "Where'd your hair go?"

Molly's smile never wavered,"The doctors took my hair away because they think I'm going to die."

This puzzled me, "Mommy said we should listen to our doctors so does that mean you have to die?" Daddy and Mommy's parents had all died, but I'd never met them so I didn't know what it did.

At this she started laughing,"What's your name, sweetheart?"

"Alice."

"Well, Alice, your mom is right and you should usually listen to doctors. But I know a secret."

"What?" I whispered, eager to be confided in by a big kid.

"Death is a choice. You can choose to let it take you or fight back. Eventually, death will always find you, but 'do not go gentle into that good night/rage, rage, rage against the dying of the light.'"

At that point the same nurse who had given me a dollar came bursting in the room and dragged me into the hallway, apologizing profusely to Molly.

Twenty minutes later the same nurse gave me a second revelation on life.

"Alice is it ok if I talk to you for a second?" Her tone was foreign to me and I didn't know if I had done something wrong or if she was going to send me away again. We'd been sitting outside of room D628, the nurse writing on a clipboard and me playing with a blonde haired Barbie doll. She had just come back out of the room where mommy and daddy were sleeping.