Stand By Me.

Chapter 2: Stumpy.

        My mind fades in and out. The room I'm in is dark, but the hall outside is light. The door is opened. It should be closed, right? I turn over on my side and I'm face to face with a person who I can't really see. I try to scream but my throat is fry, and I'm pretty sure my attempt drew some blood. I cough up a bit of it. I reach up for my lamp, just a relfex from home, when I remember I'm not home. My head feels different though, lighter. I feel it, only to find that my hair is short. Really short. It used to be like belly-button length, red, wavy hair. It was great. Now it's about as short as circa 2012 Emma Watson's. A small flashlight turns on and the shadow's face lights up. He is a boy. Head covered with a hat that says "Hakuna Matata". He has brown eyes, and a freckle-splattered baby face. It's hilariously resting atop rather broad shoulders. He's squating down in front of my bed, with only a hospital gown on, balancing his right hand on an IV. He smirks.

        "How you feeling? Had to check out the new girl before anyone else." He says, reaching out his left hand. I place my hand in it like dead weight and he shakes it, then after an awkward moment of me just keeping my achey hand there from exaustion, he drops it. "Gotta crush on my already, new girl?" He asks. I try to shake my head no, but I can't. My whole body aches. I hear some footsteps coming down the hall. Shadow boy quick looks out the door, panic-y. "Gotta go, new girl. See you soon." He says and crawls out the door. I can see his butt through the slit in his hopital gown. Classy. I fall right back asleep.

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        When I wake up, I feel claustraphobic. Pretty much my entire family is in the medium sized hospital room. Parents, brother, sister, grandparents, one of my aunts. I get up but am in pain.

        "Anyone want to explain what the hell is going on?" I say through gritted teeth. My family looks around the room at one another. They all look a mess. I feel bad- I must've sounded harsh. I hear a woman's voice. It sounds dry and crackly, like she has a sore throat. "Excuse me, doctor coming through." A taller woman with short blonde hair, up in a bun with pieces falling out comes over to me. She's quite pretty, probably in late 40's, early 50's.

        "Hi Henri. I'm Dr. DiMargot. Could everyone except this young girl's parents leave please? There will be plenty of time for visitors. Thank you for your concern, it will be of great support, shortly." My whole family clears the room, except my mom and dad. They have aged 20 years in 2 days. I think it's been 2 days at least, I honestly have no idea. "So Henri. When you passed out at school, it was from pain. After extensive research, they found cancer in your bones. Stage 3 osteosarcoma. The only way to quickly and effectively treat this was to amputate both legs, as they were both effected. Unfortunately, it's also spread to your hip-bones, which is where it begins to get harder to apmutate. We will be doing many bone marrow transplants, chemotherapy, ect. But, we have no garuntee it won't spread to your ovaries, the next possible location. And spread from there. But we amputated both legs, which solved the bulk of the problem. I'm sorry this all happened so suddenly, we had to act fast to save you. I'm sorry I can't be more... how do I say this... not sympathetic but, like, coddle-y? I'm a doctor I should know these things!" She says, making me laugh. She takes one of my hands in hers. "I'm here to give you the facts and help you get better. If you want someone to help with your emotions, we have a lovely shrink here, Dr. Dean Simons." She says. I nod.

        "I'm just really tired, do you mind if I get some sleep?" I ask,

        "No, go right ahead. You're going to be very tired in the coming weeks and months. Sleep is good though, I recommend it. I don't think we'll do anymore work on you until you wake up though. When you wake up, I'll give you the full tour, but here's the jist of what we do. This is a temporary room, you'll get a bigger one when you've become more stable. You can decorate it, yada yada, ect. ect. We pretty much are a giant dormitory of cancerous teens. We provide a stable, affordable home for patients like you, and we have 128 other patients. You will make friends, I have no doubt about it. It's pretty fun here, I like it better here than a regular hospital. There's activities, outings, shrinks, professional doctors and nurses, and other patients in your age group. Our only patients are in the 13-18 age group. We'll make your treatments as pain-free and enjoyable as we possibly can. Welcome to Reginald Jones."