The vase falls and
I don’t even bother to reach for it.
The glass touches my toes, dancing across my heels, drawing blood. But still, I walk onward, over the
treachery and through the doorway to the elevator.
The nurses are there again, and
they hold me down, injecting the poison into my skin. I’m not sick but they tell me I am.
I laugh. Dr. K gives me water, writes a note, and hurries off down
the hall. I sit down on my bed and
reach beneath the mattress once everyone has gone, and I find Sara.
There’s a pond out back with giant
koi and a skinny heron that eyes them longingly. I kind of feel bad for him. He goes back everyday, thinking that no one will fend him
off in favor of the koi. But each
day they do. Dolores sometimes
goes after him with a broom.
Underwater, the koi are
thankful. They blow Dolores
grateful kisses, pouting their lips and waving frantically to her with the
hands they don’t have. Tomorrow, I
will help the heron silence the koi.
Tomorrow they will be his feast.
Sara would like the heron. She would feel badly for him and bring
him bread. She would say, “Oh,
lovely heron, I will take care of you.
Today and tomorrow and the day after that.” But Sara is not here.
So she will not say it.
It is pizza day in the Lunch
Hall. It is called the Lunch Hall
even though we eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner there. We also have tea. But it is lunchtime now, and it is
pizza day. I choose pepperoni and
sit with Pete.
Pete doesn’t talk much, but that is
my favorite part about Pete. He is
very quiet and it is very nice to eat lunch with him. I sit next to his chair and he looks at me out of the corner
of his eye.
“Hi, Pete.”
Pete
looks away, and nods softly.
“Torey,” says Ms. Devon quietly,
“Time for art.”
And we go.
It’s watercolor day, and Ms. Devon
hands me the paint and some brushes.
I find a canvas in the corner and paint the vase. It’s very lovely and Ms. Devon tells me
so. She asks where I saw the vase
and I can’t tell her.
