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Chapter 3

I met Emme a year ago. I was in eighth grade, and even more shy than usual. Whenever there's a new patient at the hospital who is scheduled for a prolonged stay, they get a grand tour- and this tour is usually lead by Janet. I've seen Janet around the hospital since I was little. People tell me she wants to study medicine and be a surgeon, but they've also warned me to never ask her about it. A simple mention of the subject in a conversation is rumored to be like pouring lighter fluid on a bed of smoking embers. Anyway, Janet had been wheeling Emme around in her wheelchair through the halls of the outpatient building, since there wasn't much to see in the actual hospital. She'd been clutching a little stuffed bunny and reeling at all of the bright colors that surrounded her. She was so pale and fragile that her skin stood out like a white flame. I'd been sitting around, waiting for my father, when they'd rounded the corner and approached me. I'd never known Janet too well, and her sharp features and dark black hair had always intimidated me, but it suddenly hadn't mattered. I'd run up and kneeled in front of Emme, and she'd immediately taken to me. Emme and I have been inseperable ever since.

It never phased me that Emme didn't usually have a parent around. I was always too distracted, because I was always too busy bonding with her. It didn't hit me until last winter that something was up. Emme had always talked about her father, and that he was always away on business, so I shouldn't worry that I never saw him. She told this to all the nurses and all the doctors, and they usually nodded knowingly at each other. I always felt like there was something they weren't telling me, but I never said anything, only continued keeping Emme focused on something other than her cancer. Emme has a rare type of brain cancer that I've never been able to pronounce, so I just leave it at cancer and move on. The intense chemotherapy that she's been on for over a year now is so hard on her body that she's lost an unhealthy amount of weight. It makes her so sick that some days she can't talk, only throw up. It's the hardest thing I've ever had to watch someone go through, and it isn't getting easier. In the last three months, which were the last three months of my eighth grade year, she's been put onto 24/7 treatment. I don't remember the last time I saw Emme smile.

It's my summer break now, and I'm soon to turn fifteen. There isn't any time for boys or friends, though, because I spend every day at the hospital. From eleven thirty to six I'm a receptionist; I get a break at noon for lunch, when I usually go out to eat with Janet. From six to nine I'm a friend. I visit random patients, usually; Emme is the only one I see regularly, because she's the only long term patient at the hospital right now. Normally there's a mother I'll sit and cry with over her newborn child, or a kid with a broken limb that I'll entertain with a game of cards or sneak a candy bar from the vending machine to. It's a weird kind of fun that I've gotten used to. I'm never bored here, only busy making others happy-and that's what makes me happy. Although, I don't think I've ever been as truly happy as right now.

"So, you've never tried coffee?" Cliff says, and I give him a wary look.

"No, I guess I haven't," I reply, folding my arms across my chest. After a solid twenty minutes of me sobbing like a crazy person all over Cliff, he insisted we get up and do something. Part of me thinks that he just wanted to keep his imported fleece sweater dry, because before he resorted to this, he'd tried to distract me by telling the story of how he aquirred it. It had been at a street fair in some far off town at a late hour, and it was apparently handmade by a medicine man. I really doubted this was true, but it made for a strangely interesting few minutes.

"Well, you'll love it. Coffee is like God's tears, or something." I give him a really weird look, and so he finishes with, "it's just really good. Trust me."

Of all the years I'd spent roaming Carnation Children's Hospital, I'd never visited the coffee shop on floor five. It's surrounded by kiosks and small shops filled with stuffed animals and overpriced clothing made for middle aged women. I spent so much time here, buying things for Emme, that coffee was never really on my mind. Sometimes I'd try to flirt with boys here, but it always failed miserably- too vivid memories were running through my head as Cliff asks,