Silhouettes by E. L. Tenenbaum

Author:E. L. Tenenbaum [Tenenbaum, E. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-68046-554-9
Publisher: Melange Books, LLC

12

On Tuesday, my usual hospital volunteer day, I decided to check up on the kids. My whole life was looking different from my new vantage point and I wanted to see the kids whom I had worked with through my dead eyes. I still hadn’t hit on the exact reason for why I was still here, but that original feeling of being anchored down was shifting. I sensed more than knew that there was something still keeping me here, and I hoped the hospital might have some of the missing clues.

The rec room where the volunteers hang out with the patients was located toward the back of the children’s ward at the end of a sunny yellow hall—yellow’s a supposedly happy color, so seeing it in the hallway was supposed to magically make patients feel better just by being surrounded by it, or something. The wide windows that caught the view of the beach made the white room look bigger and brighter. There were two large screens on the back wall for video games and movies, which were always catching the glare of the sun during the day, and books and puzzles and board games were piled all over.

There was a closet stocked with arts and crafts supplies, which the volunteers or nurses would use for specific projects during set hours. If the kids were feeling well enough, or if they had a sibling or friend visiting, they were allowed in here at any time. Chelsea and I volunteered for two hours every Tuesday and Thursday, though we often stayed longer, and there was another pair of volunteers who came Mondays and Wednesdays.

It wasn’t the regularly scheduled time for activities, so the room was quiet when I got there. I sat on one of the reading corner beanbags and looked around the empty room, trying to figure out what kind of emotions my return was kicking up inside me. I felt sad more than anything else. Chelsea and I had some good times here and there were many kids whom we’d really come to enjoy spending time with.

There was a temporarily wheelchair bound girl, who’d broken both of her legs in some freak accident, which neither of us could ever get the exact details of, who sat in the corner of the room and provided a running commentary on everything that was going on. She was a one-man, portable peanut gallery and kind of funny when she wasn’t being too obnoxious.

There was a boy with large brown puppy eyes who had been here only a few weeks with some rare form of cancer before his family moved to a bigger city with a bigger hospital and a bigger chance at getting the kind of help he needed.

There was another boy awaiting a kidney transplant, a girl with a heart condition, and one girl who’d been in the hospital a month with third degree burns after a pot of boiling water spilled over her shoulder and burned the skin off much of her back.

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