I Fell in Love with Hope(60)

My face falls.

Sam laughs at me. “It’s not real, don’t feel bad. I couldn’t read the book for real anyway. The words are too hard. Nurse Ella just told me the story.”

I sigh in relief. Sam snickers. He’s amused by me, always amused. We’ve been playing for a year now and seldom does he ever not laugh at my misunderstandings.

Sam is allowed to play with me, no mask or gloves in the way.

He is kinetic. He is curious. He touches. When hair starts to grow on my arms, he runs his fingers over the prickles. He presses the joints in my shoulders, in my wrists and ankles, asking me if I’ve grown through the night. Collars, hems, and sleeves are his fidgets. He grabs and toys the fabric, asking if he can feel me, the skin of my neck, or my stomach.

Children explore physicality. It’s part of how they become self-aware. But Sam’s body is too medical. It’s a vessel, a thing that takes his mind place to place. There are screws missing, its parts improperly put together. Sam says his body isn’t his at all. It belongs to his disease. It is a problem for his doctors to solve and an engine for his nurses to keep running. Sam’s relationship with his body is passive, but since we met, he says he’s learning to accept it. I ask him why. He smiles and says without it he could not feel me.

In the mornings, Sam greets his broken things. He passes by all the rooms he can, waving to his sick people. I tag along. In the afternoons, we play together in his room. In the evenings we eat sweet bread and pudding on the roof, no matter the weather. Those are our in between moments. The rest are for Sam’s vessel and its repairs.

I spent so long watching Sam. Living with him is different. He talks and touches without inhibition. It’s harder for me.

This body doesn’t feel like mine. It is rebellious to exist too much with it. Touching him, interlacing our fingers, dragging my thumb across his palm, letting his pulse beat against my wrist; it feels like indulgence. Sam never thinks much of it. He accepts my touch and we walk down the hall to witness the stories the hospital has to tell.

One day, in the midst of Sam’s many lessons on how to be a knight, he pauses outside a particular room. Inside, a woman lays, feet wrapped in bandages. Pain pulls the strings, knitting her brows and scrunching her nose.

“Her killer is called diabetes,” Sam whispers, on his tiptoes to look through the glass.

“Her killer?”

“Mhm,” Sam hums. “She’s the nice lady who gave us our sweet bread, remember?”

It takes me a moment, but I do. The nice lady. The first thing I noticed about her back then was that she stumbled when she walked and that she always drank too much water. What Sam noticed was her warmth and the time she took to stop by his room to gift him treats.

He takes my hand.

“Don’t worry, my sweet Sam,” he says. “She’s strong. She’ll make it.”

My sweet Sam. That’s what he calls me. Sam because we share the name. Sweet because he says I never leave him feeling bitter. And my because I am his. Those three words have become my beck and call, a source of comfort like his touch and the yellow flares in his eyes.

The memories of red smeared across skin and floors alike have not left me. Violence continues to seep into these walls. It finds new shapes to take. Disease does too, skillfully. I’ve watched so many people succumb to them both, but Sam begs me to protect the castle and everyone in it anyway. He begs for us to do it together.

All I want is to make him happy.

So, I pretend.

I pretend for weeks as the kind woman deteriorates, that I believe Sam when he tells me it’ll be okay, not to worry, that she’s strong, and that she’ll make it. Sam doesn’t ignore that she’s becoming an outline of her skeleton fixed beneath the sheets. He acknowledges she looks worse, but rather than give up, he brings his potted plants and shows them to her through the window. Barely able, she turns her cheek, a brief moment of joy interrupting her stillness.

Another few weeks pass and every morning, Sam and I greet our sick people, and every morning, we bring the woman bread. She can’t eat it. Sam doesn’t know that, but I don’t tell him. Since he isn’t allowed past the glass, I am the one who delivers the gifts. The woman, hardly alive, tries to thank me. I nod and wish her peace. Sam tells me she’ll make it. I lie and say I believe him.

On the first day of summer, despite the agony and her killer’s many attempts to pull her under, the nice lady who brings Sam treats sits up. Color finds her skin. She sees me passing by and with strength that was once battling to keep her alive, she waves to me. I wave back.

I have to tell Sam.

I’m almost tempted to smile, to mimic the expression he’ll wear when I give him the news. He’ll throw himself out of bed to storm the halls, no matter who’s in the way. He’ll shriek. He shrieks when he’s excited. But when I reach Sam’s room, he isn’t in his bed. He isn’t in the room at all.

Down the hall, a noise jostles the air. Here, plenty of sounds are customary. The wheels and gears of a stretcher with a storm of footsteps. Codes, signals, machinery, chatter. This noise is different. This is a subtler sound, walls away like something’s been shoved out of place. I run toward it, the weight of the unknown twisting in my throat. I hear it again, this time louder. It’s coming from the supply closet, the large one that’s usually locked.

When I push the door open with my entire body, a ruckus of laughs erupt. Laughter can be beautiful, spontaneous. It’s one of my favorite things to hear because it is so uncustomary here. This laughter is anything but. It’s premeditated, superior, and it falls from the mouths of children beating Sam.