Temporary Permanence

Written in response to: Start your story looking down from a stage.... view prompt

0 comments

Contemporary Fiction

My name is Josephine Taylor, and I am missing a lung.

My fingers move with the precision of a surgeon’s needle, picking only the right notes in a row of twenty-seven black and white keys. They do not stutter, like my clumsy tongue. Nor do they take a moment to catch their breath as they soar, like I so often do, halting conversation before its road has ended, slamming the emergency break and startling even myself. Instead, my small fingers move through the piece at just the right speed, flourishing in all the ways my underdeveloped body never can. I embrace the beauty of it, allow myself to idolize the way the sun shines through the crayon drawings hung on every window of the lobby. Stickers of Winnie The Pooh characters smile from the walls, and I smile back. I want it all to be as unchanging as my condition, but I can already feel the end approaching. “Time speeds by when you’re having fun!” Nurse Kelly says. But just once, I wish time would slow during the good times the way it does when the pain feels like it will never end, to make up for all the birthday parties and playdates and sports I missed out on.

I wonder if other kids think about time the way I do. I doubt it. When you have a small amount of something, it matters more what you spend it on.

This is the kind of thinking Doctor Jessica says is bad for me. So instead, I focus on the fact that when my song is over, it will have been complete. Not missing a lung. Not damaged. It will be perfect. And if perfection comes from you, then something about you must be perfect too.

Toby sings for me, since I can’t. We wrote this song together, but I did most of the work. Toby would never admit that, of course. He has the best voice in the hospital except for maybe my mom’s, and the singer takes all the credit – that’s what my dad says. He was a drummer for a band in college that broke up after a big fight. He tried to find gigs elsewhere, but nobody wanted to hire a drummer without a singer (and he can’t sing like Toby).

The hospital stage is made out of a few lunch tables pushed together with white bedsheets for a curtain, but it’s my first performance, so I make sure to be professional. I sit straight, shoulders back, like my mom taught me. I’m wearing a Tommy’s Children’s Hospital t-shirt and sweatpants – not the nicest recital gear, but they were the only unwrinkled clothes in the suitcase. 

This caused a bit of a fight this morning.

I have been living in the hospital full-time for almost a week now, but my parents still refuse to unpack. “It’s too final,” my dad explained. But what could be more final than my prognosis? 

I shouldn’t complain. Toby has it worse. 

A lot of kids here do.

I look at them now: my friends. Clarice sits in the front row, clapping her chubby hands to the rhythm. Nicholas and Christian don't pay attention on the floor. Nicholas has a DS he borrowed from one of the nurses and he and Christian are taking turns playing on it. Anne watches intently from the very back of the room, hands stuffed in her pockets. Her mother got her a wig for her birthday, and she wears it now: long golden hair tied up in a pretty braid. She is really good at styling hair; another example of life’s cruel irony.

The last is Jacob. He is seventeen – nearly old enough to go to the big hospital. I don’t know why he’s here. Whatever condition he has isn’t visible and he doesn’t like to talk about it. He doesn’t like to talk much at all, at least to little kids like us. He’s the only one not performing in the talent show today. I wonder if it’s because he has no talent or if he just doesn’t like showing off.

It’s easy to be the best when you’re older.

Parents are speckled in the benches on each side of the lobby, watching with smiles that range from adoring to on the verge of tears. My mother dabs her eyes several times before slipping away to the bathroom.

Luckily she comes back before the song ends. I let Toby take a bow and then bow myself. My friends clap wildly. The nurses, who were waving their phones with the flashlights on like in a real concert I’d see on TV, hoot our names.

“Toby! Josie! Toby! Josie!” 

We bow again, and then we take our seats. I hug Clarisse, who's next, and meet my parents by the doorway.

 “What a star!” My mother exclaims. 

“That’s my girl.” My father musses my hair. He never cries, but he does now.

We watch Clarisse take the stage. The room goes silent as she clears her throat and pulls out a lined piece of paper. I smile, knowing what’s coming. She told me about this. Her poem. 

“I want to go skiing,” she starts. “Or on a rocket ship. I…” Suddenly she pauses, rocking back and forth. She stares at us, mouth gaping like a fish. A few people cheer her on, smiling encouragingly, but she just shakes her head. Her hands tremble terribly, her knees following suit.

The silence becomes uncomfortable.

“I want to eat pizza with real cheese in it!” 

Everyone’s heads swivel to the back of the room, where Jacob stands propped against the wall. He looks at Clarisse, though, and she smiles, almost laughing. 

“I want to play basketball,” she offers.

“I want to dance!” Jacob sings, spinning in a circle.

“I want a pet orangutan!”

The poem continued like this, improvised nonsense, until everyone is laughing so hard that Clarisse abandons her piece of paper and leads the whole thing, calling on eager hands to finish the next stanza.

“I want a lion!”

“I want to fly!”

“Hot chili peppers in the sky!”

It feels too soon when the talent show ends. Everyone gets called back to the stage for one final bow with all of the kids in the seventh floor patient squad – a name we gave ourselves. The nurses and doctors and parents clap louder than they have all night, cheers enveloping the lobby and ricocheting off the walls, even Jacob grinning, and for a moment, I feel constant. We are here. We are residents of Tommy’s Children’s Hospital for however long we have, bound together by this strange life of temporary permanence.


December 06, 2021 06:02

You must sign up or log in to submit a comment.

0 comments

Bring your short stories to life

Fuse character, story, and conflict with tools in the Reedsy Book Editor. 100% free.