I continuedto keep my stupid calendar. I wasn’t sure why.
My parents had visited exactly three times in the last twelve months.
They’d managed a few quick video calls too; my brother had been at soccer practice every time. I wondered if they planned it that way. Did they think he could catch illness through a video feed? Even if my disease was communicable, which it wasn’t, why couldn’t I be his sister even at a distance?
But I understood. Moab was much further from our hometown. A trip here took time, planning, money. They couldn’t visit often. I was lucky they came as many times as they did this past year.
I used to joke I was a bubble girl, but now that was reality. One room, a sanitation air lock, no one entering without full protection gear. I’d memorized every inch of the garden outsidethis building—well, every inch I could see through the smaller window that only gave me a snapshot of the living world outside.
Around me, the constants of my existence hummed and beeped. The oxygen monitor with its steady green light. The air filtration system that kept my room at precise pressure differentials—higher than the hallway outside to prevent contaminants from flowing inward. The UV sanitizing lamp in the corner that bathed everything in harsh blue light twice a day. My kingdom of machinery, my mechanical court, my jester only a click away in the form of endless social media trends I couldn’t join. I was the Queen of slowly fading away. Even my parents had forgotten me.
Outside my window, Moab's beauty caught the afternoon sun, turning the red rocks beyond the facility garden a fiery shade. I wondered if the world got so hot you couldn’t touch it here. I wondered if I’d ever find out.
I was so close to everything the world could offer yet separated by unassuming glass. Glass that was so clean, I could pretend it wasn’t there. Glass that I could break if I tried hard enough. I could push my thin body through the craggy opening, shards slicing my skin, and I could leave. Leave and likely die, but wouldn’t it be worth it? Sometimes I pressed my palm against the window, imagining heat that never came through the triple-paned barrier. For me, Earth was a visual creature, never to be touched, smelled, or truly experienced. I bitterly wondered if my brother was outside right now, playing soccer and sweating and getting a sunburn. And my parents would be watching him thrive and grow, a much better show versus watching me waste away.
"They have jobs," I whispered to myself, my voice barely audible above the music of the medical orchestra surrounding me. My reflection in the window looked ghostly today, with the silvery-white hair framing a face too pale to be healthy.Nowadays, my green eyes seemed far too large for my thin face. Gone was the Girl Next Door, and in her place was this otherworldly terror drained of color. Apparently, my new looks were due to years of endless treatments—both rigorously tested and wildly experimental. The sum of all the pills and injections turned out to be early graying and skin so thin it verged on translucent. Dark humor often made me joke that the skin issue at least made it easier to hit a vein. Vein after vein after vein, because the poking and prodding never ended. It never would, not until I was dead.
"They have lives. It's expensive to drive all the way out here. Gas prices are high." I spoke again, voice low, heart thudding sluggishly.
The excuses had become habitual. At least once a day, sometimes twice, I’d list off the reasons why mom and dad weren’t able to visit. If I repeated them enough, maybe I’d convince myself that I wasn’t an abandoned child.
"It's hard to watch your kid waste away." This last one I whispered with eyes closed. The cruelest excuse, but perhaps the truest. Who wanted front-row seats to their child's slow deterioration? Maybe my absence from their lives made it easier to pretend I wasn't sick at all.
The pneumatic hiss of the first sliding door broke my reverie. I plastered on a smile and pushed starlight hair from my face as Doctor Emerson entered the airlock, pushing his vitals cart ahead of him. He waved at me as the door number one whooshed close just as a fog of air sprayed down against him. Moments later, the second door slid open and he stepped into my room. A nurse was supposed to monitor me, but often the
"Afternoon, troublemaker," he called, his voice cheerful despite the yellow hazmat suit that made him look like an oversized canary. His face was visible through the clear visor—round cheeks, smoky eyes, gingery hair poorly tucked beneath a surgical cap. "Time for your numbers."
"Afternoon, chicken suit," I replied, summoning my best smirk. "Let me guess—you're here to subject me to your medical torture and terrible handwriting."
Doctor Emerson laughed, the sound slightly muffled by his Sci-Fi breathing apparatus. "Someone's feeling sassy today. Good. Sass means you’re not dead yet." It was his favorite phrase.
Anger means you’re not dead yet.
Sadness means you’re not dead yet.
Laughing means you’re not dead yet.
“Your patient is only mostly dead,” I retorted.
“Mostly dead means you’re slightly alive.”
“True, so you can’t go through my clothes and look for money just yet. Have to wait a bit longer.” I grinned at him.
“The movie buff in me is proud, Lucy,” Doc Emerson finished the journey to me and lifted the blood pressure cuff from the hook on the cart. “I’m offended though. My handwriting is perfectly legible.”
“On a scale of toddler to calligraphy master, you’re a three-year-old,” I shook my head. “Can’t even call it chicken scratch. That’s rude to chickens.”
Doc Emerson laughed at my chicken scratch comment, his eyes crinkling behind the visor. "Ah, but can those chickens prescribe medication? I think not."
"They'd probably do a better job," I countered, extending my arm for the blood pressure cuff. After it was securely in place, he pressed the start button and the sleeve squeezed tightly around my bicep. "And at least I'd be able to read what they prescribed."
“I’m sure a Rhode Island Red would make an egg-cellent physician.”
I groaned. The doctor had a thing for puns.
“But you might find out that a chicken for a doctor isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sometimes those guys only want another feather in their caps. No yolk.”
“Nooooo,” I half laughed, half groaned, “I give up. Uncle! Uncle!”
