Orphan never seemed like a bad word until I became one. As I sit and stare at my home my vacant empty home, the word orphan sounds like the most horrible curse in the world. "Orphan." I say it a few times, each time catching in my throat.
Parentless. Homeless. What words could be worse? Prostitute. Sociopath. Murderer. Orphan. Nope orphan still sounds the worst.
"You want to go in? Make sure I got everything Harriet?" I look back to Darius, his arm still in a sling from the gunshot wound. He is my new family. They are my new family, Mitch holds a stuffed animal of mine and brings it to me. But forever and for just that moment, I was and would forever be an orphan.
The priest comes back the next day and prays for me, I can't help but roll my eyes, this is pointless and a complete waste of time. But he still prayed on, for the girl that is broken, bruised, cursed and unknown.
"I'm a thief, a rat, a nobody, I do not deserve your prayers" I say but they keep praying anyway. They pray for healing, and guidance, they prayer for the doctors to give them knowledge and hope to continue on. I haven't prayed in a very long time. They pray for my family in hopes that they will find me, but they will only find me in death. I stopped praying when it no longer worked for me. I don't think God will help me now that I have given up on him.
They left and a part of me hoped they would never come back, that they would stop making me relive my past. But another part of me hoped they would return and continue to pray for me. Even though I don't deserve it.
"Hello" My eyes race to the door and I can't help but hope its Mitch. I barely excite the idea before Dr. Arren Greyson opens the door and fully steps in reveling his slightly freckled face, as he enters my room. He leaves the door open a crack. I can see the maids and guards past, back and forth as he sets up for the day.
"I still don't know your name, what would you like to be called?" He asks me this every time he comes, which I find humorous because no other doctor cares to know who I am. "Feel free to wake up and tell me your real name at any time" his humor is a good distraction from all of this "but I have a few more ideas on what I would like to try to call you..." I inch closer to him, usually the names were typical and boring or ridiculous and outrageous and made me laugh so hard I thought I would pee myself, but ghosts don't expel bodily fluids.
"Esmerelda? Elphaba?" I break out laughing and fall back to the floor, today was outrageous and ridiculous.
"What kind of names are those?" I ask picking myself up off the floor. "Now you really must be grasping at straws. Do you know anyone with those names? Or are they from one of those books you read so often?"
"Okay..." he smiles to himself a little chuckle breaks though his composure. His soft eyes look up at me and then turn down with sorrow. "A story first," he says shaking away his worries "to give me more time... to think of better names, more realistic names." He adjusts his glasses and reaches into his bag to grab an old book. He always brings a book. He will start with taking my vitals as he tells me of his day then as the fluid drips into my body he tells me a story from a little book he brings with each time. I've never understood reading. Why so many people like it and spend hours reading about what other people think or why they are so invested in the characters' lives as if they were their own.
"Once upon a time" he starts, but puts the book back on the bed next to me.
"More fairy tales Arren?" I ask "don't you read any horror or thrillers? Something less, I don't know... magical?" I plop down next to him. As if he heard me he gives me a reason for his choice in stories. He is reading a fairy tale because he says my predicament is fairy tale worthy. I think through that for a moment and watch him work.
"I guess I agree, as long as I get a happily ever after too."
He squeezes my hand twice, I don't know if it was for his exam or because he cares but seeing it makes me smile. I think he cares, I hope he cares. He sets up a needle in my left arm and strings along a bag of fluids. "For when you wake up" he says "I don't want to be a shriveled up zombie." Fairy tales and zombies I imagine them together in story that would be interesting. He motions to the fluids that will keep me from becoming a zombie and marks in his notebook numbers and letters that I don't understand. But whatever they mean it's probably not good, or it's normal and maybe that is worse.
His stories usually last an hour. He checks his pocket watch before and after his reading and frequently checks the fluids to make sure I get what he sees fit as enough for the day. He starts reading out loud and I try to memorize him. His light brown, almost blonde ash hair, his green blue eyes, a mole on his right hand about the size of the end of his pencil marker. He rubs it when he's nervous or anxious or questioning a dead-ish girl, hoping for an answer.
"Then they lived happily..." his monotone voice draws me out of my trance and pops me up to face him. He pauses, opens his mouth then shuts it shriveling back slightly as if changing his mind and looks at me. He has only just started, I know I wasn't paying that much attention to the story but he can't leave now, he just got here! "The end." He says no emotion, just 'the end' as if he became a drone the palace is working on.
"Arren, I would like a better story, a longer story. A story that will keep you here forever." I say with a forced smile, trying to memorize more of him. But he stands and moves to his bag. "No please don't leave," I urge standing up, my posture is now tense and my fists clench unknowingly, he squats down to grab a different book from his bag replacing it with the fairy tale. I relax and move back to my spot on the bed and wait for him to join me again.
"You deserve a fairy tale ending" he says looking at the new book and not me, "but I no longer want to tell you fairy tales." His eyes flicker up to me and back "It's too sad." Arren's hands are shaking and he's biting his lip so hard I think he might draw blood. His eyes though, his eyes stay focused on the book. I lean closer and read the cover but it is so beat up and worn that the cover is eligible. The worn leather looks to be starting to deteriorate as well. He flips open the book and upon closer inspection I find there are lots of little tags in the book some with ribbon, some corners dog eared, others marked with pen. He strategically flips through pages stopping and restarting until he finds what he is looking for. I try and focus on the page before he flips it but I'm stumped on what book is. It's rather large but with such small print.
"Got it." He states holding his finger in the middle of the page. "I hope this," he lets out his breath and rolls his shoulders backward, I hear his joint click as he does. "This is Isaiah" he looks down to me unable to get a full sentence out.
"Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
And to the descendants of Jacob their sins."
"Who's Isaiah?" I ask trying to understand what he is reading because it is obviously very important to him.
"For day after day they seek me out;
They seem eager to know my ways..."
"I know this... how do I know this?" He continues and looks as though he might cry. Arren stop." I say trying to console him and let him know that it's not his fault this will never be his fault he's doing everything he can.
"Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
And exploit all your workers.
Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
And in striking each other with wicked fists..."
"Please Arren don't fret about this. Don't read this stupid book if it makes you look so ill. Please Arren," but he still continues on.
"And to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
When you see the naked, to clothe them,
And not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?"
How do I know this? He keeps going and his voice cracks and a tear wells in his eyes.
"Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
And your healing will quickly appear;
Then your righteousness will go before you,
Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
You will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I."
Arren stops reading and looks to me unmoving still. "Please" he begs "wake up."
******
"There is nothing more I can do! I can't fix her!" His voice raises and he drops the book with a thud to the floor, he's standing now, his eyes stare at the ceiling as if he waits for answer.
"Arren" I say hesitantly. "Who are you talking to?" He sucks in a breath and looks down at me, gathers his book and proceeds to pack his things. "Arren" I say but it barely comes out as anything more than a whisper. And as if he did a full 360 a fake smile plasters his face and the tears are gone as if they were never there to begin with.
"Right so the names" his attention, the intensity of that moment, gone. So fast, I hold my breath as I watch him pack up his remaining items and no matter how hard I try and keep him here and to make this moment last, there is nothing I can do...
"Bethany? Miranda?"
Because if he could hear me, I would speak.
"Abigail? Camilla?"
If he could look me in the eyes he would see how I feel.
"Susana? Delaney?"
If I could feel his hand in mine I would hold it and never let go.
"Lindsay? Any of those sound right?"
But no, I can't. So I let out my breath and watch him slip away from me again and again.
"No motion, I'm going to go with no," his voice stays light and fake, he is trying to hold himself together "okay no problem I will keep guessing next time I come-" his humor almost brings a smile to my weak face and dry eyes.
"Are you ready Doctor Greyson?" A voice called from the door a slight mock in his voice.
"No he's not ready" I yell "he's staying here with me," I run at the man, its Peter and push him out... well I attempt to but I only fall out the door myself. I stand up immediately and dust the grime off my dress; I don't know why I bother. My dress was already disgusting and cleaning a ghost dress didn't do anything. I can't take it off and wash it, or change, not unless they changed me which I didn't really want anyone seeing all that.
"Yes, Peter" Arren says exhaustion taking over him, " I'm done here today," Arren came close, really close, so that I can see the speckled blue in his green eyes as he whispers. "I'm praying and praying for you. Goodbye little rose," and then he removes his hand from mine. He stands and turns on his heels moving steadily across the scratched up wooden floors, headed for the door, walking right though me. Little rose he calls me and it makes me blush each time. Rose because of the lines of roses in the halls. The roses are for Aurora and the palace but I like that he thinks of the roses as mine too.
"Not him too" the moment of peace and kindness evaporates. "God hasn't done me any good in the past so don't waste your breath talking to an unknown being that may or may not even be real." He moves away and towards peter "Come on are all of you catholic? Or Christian? Or whatever else that believes in something you can't see!" I watch him walk away with Peter and my heart begins to sink. "Arren you are no longer my favorite, Matthews will be," as if he could hear me I try to convince him that God will never do me any good, not anymore "as long as he is not praying to nobody as well."
My heart aches out for my parents and screams out to the man that shot them and then to the omniscient being that took them away.
"Why do you come here so often Arren?" Peter, his only friend it seems because he talks of medicine, peter and me.
"I want to help, Pete, not all of us have other motives to coming here." Arren said with a smirk.
"Hey Aurora noticed me today and we had a conversation."
"Was it more than the 3 words she said to you last time? 'Hello, excuse me.'" Arren made his voice go up an octave to mimic the princess, I can't help but smile. When peter comes around Arren isn't business, he has a different energy to him, more relaxed, light and humorous.
"Yes, this time she said... 'It's such a lovely day, don't you think?' and then she walked away." Peter looks disappointed as if hearing it again made him realize that she was just being polite and didn't care for people like him. But Peter got his mind off of the princess rather easily by insulting me and my state of being. Arren pauses and turns back to my room, to me and just like that I don't care that he believes, I don't care that I don't believe. Because, I want him in my life. I follow them as far as I can. Then my mind goes back to the prayer and his new discovered belief.