BEFORE
Sam was born with a body unfit for the outside world. They say he was pulled from the womb with crumbling bones, blood oozing from his eyes, nose, and mouth, skin so thin it slipped from his flesh, wailing ear splitting cries, and cursing all those who touched him.
Those stories aren’t true. They’re tales children who Sam isn’t allowed to play with make up. They say he is separated from them, because he’s dangerous, a beast, that he’ll swallow them whole.
Disease likes to repulse, both in mind and body, tying fear’s nooses. Those children snicker into the back of their hands and spread their story. Like a disease of its own, it takes hold to whoever will listen.
In reality, Sam is just a boy. He was born naked and crying his lungs out like all babies. His body was a bit small, his head was a bit large, but he was nothing monstrous, nothing like what some made him out to be.
His mother only held him once. She cared about him, I think, however much you can care for someone you don’t want to know. The doctors told her he would need constant care, medication, therapies, and that he may not grow up to be like other children. She spent the night on the edge of the cot, blood she refused to have cleaned between her legs. Sitting there, she pulled the hem of her dress over the red. She looked into the crib where her baby laid wheezing. Her knuckles caressed his cheek and her lips laid a kiss to his forehead long enough for a goodbye. She left before the sun rose and no one ever saw her again.
By his second day of life, Sam was alone.
The reason he can’t play with the other children is simple. It is the same reason he can’t interact with other patients except through a glass partition. It is why all who come into his room must wear masks and gloves.
Sam’s body can’t protect itself. It has no shields. A cold that would pass in a week could kill him in a day.
The hospital is all he knows. It is all he can feel without something in the way.
Sometimes, I gaze over while we play with his potted plants and wonder if he’d rather be elsewhere. Sam’s fairy tales take place in magical places, places far less clinical and repetitive. I ask him, “Sam, do you want a castle? Do you want enchanted forests and high seas like in your stories?”
Sam hums at my question, adjusting the pots on his window sill.
“We already live in a castle,” he says. “The forests are for our adventures.” The adventures he wants to have with me. “And we don’t need a sea. The sea is scary. I read a book about it. The sea has a giant whale.”
“A giant whale?”
“A giant whale.” He hops to my level. “In the book, it ate a whole boat and all the sailors too.”
My face falls.
Sam laughs at me. “It’s not real, don’t feel bad. I couldn’t read the book for real anyway. The words are too hard. Nurse Ella just told me the story.”
I sigh in relief. Sam snickers. He’s amused by me, always amused. We’ve been playing for a year now and seldom does he ever not laugh at my misunderstandings.
Sam is allowed to play with me, no mask or gloves in the way.
He is kinetic. He is curious. He touches. When hair starts to grow on my arms, he runs his fingers over the prickles. He presses the joints in my shoulders, in my wrists and ankles, asking me if I’ve grown through the night. Collars, hems, and sleeves are his fidgets. He grabs and toys the fabric, asking if he can feel me, the skin of my neck, or my stomach.
Children explore physicality. It’s part of how they become self-aware. But Sam’s body is too medical. It’s a vessel, a thing that takes his mind place to place. There are screws missing, its parts improperly put together. Sam says his body isn’t his at all. It belongs to his disease. It is a problem for his doctors to solve and an engine for his nurses to keep running. Sam’s relationship with his body is passive, but since we met, he says he’s learning to accept it. I ask him why. He smiles and says without it he could not feel me.
In the mornings, Sam greets his broken things. He passes by all the rooms he can, waving to his sick people. I tag along. In the afternoons, we play together in his room. In the evenings we eat sweet bread and pudding on the roof, no matter the weather. Those are our in between moments. The rest are for Sam’s vessel and its repairs.
I spent so long watching Sam. Living with him is different. He talks and touches without inhibition. It’s harder for me.
This body doesn’t feel like mine. It is rebellious to exist too much with it. Touching him, interlacing our fingers, dragging my thumb across his palm, letting his pulse beat against my wrist; it feels like indulgence. Sam never thinks much of it. He accepts my touch and we walk down the hall to witness the stories the hospital has to tell.
One day, in the midst of Sam’s many lessons on how to be a knight, he pauses outside a particular room. Inside, a woman lays, feet wrapped in bandages. Pain pulls the strings, knitting her brows and scrunching her nose.
“Her killer is called diabetes,” Sam whispers, on his tiptoes to look through the glass.
“Her killer?”
“Mhm,” Sam hums. “She’s the nice lady who gave us our sweet bread, remember?”
It takes me a moment, but I do. The nice lady. The first thing I noticed about her back then was that she stumbled when she walked and that she always drank too much water. What Sam noticed was her warmth and the time she took to stop by his room to gift him treats.
He takes my hand.
“Don’t worry, my sweet Sam,” he says. “She’s strong. She’ll make it.”
My sweet Sam. That’s what he calls me. Sam because we share the name. Sweet because he says I never leave him feeling bitter. And my because I am his. Those three words have become my beck and call, a source of comfort like his touch and the yellow flares in his eyes.
The memories of red smeared across skin and floors alike have not left me. Violence continues to seep into these walls. It finds new shapes to take. Disease does too, skillfully. I’ve watched so many people succumb to them both, but Sam begs me to protect the castle and everyone in it anyway. He begs for us to do it together.
All I want is to make him happy.
So, I pretend.
I pretend for weeks as the kind woman deteriorates, that I believe Sam when he tells me it’ll be okay, not to worry, that she’s strong, and that she’ll make it. Sam doesn’t ignore that she’s becoming an outline of her skeleton fixed beneath the sheets. He acknowledges she looks worse, but rather than give up, he brings his potted plants and shows them to her through the window. Barely able, she turns her cheek, a brief moment of joy interrupting her stillness.
Another few weeks pass and every morning, Sam and I greet our sick people, and every morning, we bring the woman bread. She can’t eat it. Sam doesn’t know that, but I don’t tell him. Since he isn’t allowed past the glass, I am the one who delivers the gifts. The woman, hardly alive, tries to thank me. I nod and wish her peace. Sam tells me she’ll make it. I lie and say I believe him.
On the first day of summer, despite the agony and her killer’s many attempts to pull her under, the nice lady who brings Sam treats sits up. Color finds her skin. She sees me passing by and with strength that was once battling to keep her alive, she waves to me. I wave back.
I have to tell Sam.
I’m almost tempted to smile, to mimic the expression he’ll wear when I give him the news. He’ll throw himself out of bed to storm the halls, no matter who’s in the way. He’ll shriek. He shrieks when he’s excited. But when I reach Sam’s room, he isn’t in his bed. He isn’t in the room at all.
Down the hall, a noise jostles the air. Here, plenty of sounds are customary. The wheels and gears of a stretcher with a storm of footsteps. Codes, signals, machinery, chatter. This noise is different. This is a subtler sound, walls away like something’s been shoved out of place. I run toward it, the weight of the unknown twisting in my throat. I hear it again, this time louder. It’s coming from the supply closet, the large one that’s usually locked.
When I push the door open with my entire body, a ruckus of laughs erupt. Laughter can be beautiful, spontaneous. It’s one of my favorite things to hear because it is so uncustomary here. This laughter is anything but. It’s premeditated, superior, and it falls from the mouths of children beating Sam.
He covers his head instinctually, his elbows beneath his chin, arms covering his ears. One of the taller boys without hair on his head steps on his shoulder. Sam whimpers unwillingly, his teeth stuck together, his muscles braced. The shelves cast shadows, the lack of light outlining shapes and blurred actions.
Nothing obstructs the boys’ words as they spit cruel taunts. Where are your horns and fangs? They hit him again when he won’t answer, prop him up against the wall, and hold him down. Why do you get your own room? Why do you get special treatment? A little boy, one even younger than Sam, watches. Don’t touch him, he says. He’s smaller than the rest, trying to tug the older boys away, guilt on his tongue. Don’t touch him, he could kill us. It’s dangerous. We could die. Sam flinches as if he’s been hit again.
The boys aren’t done with him. A sliver of action, of life from him, is enough to keep probing. Another tries to grab him by the collar. I grab his hand and push him away. He stumbles back into his herd, the other boys following.
I stand in front of Sam.
The children, two of them in hospital gowns, the rest in their own clothes, are all sick, just as he is. The oldest will die soon. The pale green of his skin is telling enough, and he’s been here the longest. Another has more meat on his bones, but his wrist is shaky and his eyes bulge. His fist is damaged from hitting. He swallows hard and though I can’t tell you how I know for certain, I know he will pass away within the next few weeks. The rest will leave soon, patients of intermediation, small scars, and treatments that the outside world can tolerate.
We’ve never spoken, but I know them. I’ve watched them.
They aren’t cruel. They let cruelty consume them. It quickly spits them back out at the sight of me. I don’t frighten them. They don’t know me. What frightens them is that, like everyone else, they feel like they’ve met me before.
My gaze, my silence, my unwillingness to move is deterring enough. They disperse, running out of the room, almost knocking shelves over in the process. Their scurrying sends a shivering breath through Sam as if he’s been holding it since they started on him.
Once they’re out of sight, I kneel down, cast aside his hair, and look at his wounds. He clings to his stomach, wincing when I go near it. His lip is split, a swelling pit gathering color on the side of his face.
“Don’t move too much,” I mutter. Sam nods, his tongue poking at his lip. The coppery taste makes him frown and I’m almost too relieved that his biggest discomfort is the bitterness.
I carry him back to his room. We’re roughly the same size, but for the bravery I lack, I’m stronger than I look. I feel an urge to squeeze him, to show my relief. Instead, I am tender. I hold him with care, the way you hold a box or a tray of food.
Sam whispers an apology into my shirt, saying thank you.
I tell him to be quiet.
He is for a few steps.
“Why do they hate me?” he finally asks.
“They don’t hate you,” I promise him.
“They hurt me.” His voice cracks. “Why do they hurt me?”
“Because they’re weak,” I explain. “Hurting you gives them power. Or at least an illusion of it.”
“They want power?” Sam asks. “Like evil kings and queens in fairy tales?”
“No.” I shake my head. “More like… Sailors,” I say, turning into his room. “It’s easier to pretend you, someone as small and weak as them, is the enemy when there’s a whale circling the boat.”
I place Sam gently back in his bed. I ask him if his stomach still hurts. He nods, squinting. I tell him I’ll go get help. He whines when I try to leave, but it fades at the end. His eyes start to close, fluttering, his consciousness slipping into the back of his head.
“Sam?” I call, but he doesn’t hear me. He’s gone, a fit overtaking him. He must’ve hit his head in the closet. A seizure wounds his nerves, convulsing through him.
I yell for someone, anyone, propping Sam on his left side. I yell so hard my throat tears. And when the seizure ends Sam’s heart stops.
—
I can leave my body as I wish. That is how I can tell you things you think I shouldn’t know. It is how I can be a narrator even for the scenes I am not a part of.
Like people to the three thieves, a body is merely something through which I can be perceived. All I have to do is be completely still, and then I travel. Into the wall, the ceiling, the windows, anywhere at all. I can spectate as any part of this place, not just the hospital, but the stretch of its influence.
In the basest of terms, I am a soul like all those Sam likes greeting. I’ve always been able to watch, to see, but I’ve never lived. I don’t have a life, as people do. I am a narrator. Narrators watch.
But I became greedy. I’d had far too many violent, bloody tales to tell. It was through Sam that I learned how to create peaceful ones.
It’s been thirteen days since the woman I was sure would pass away got better and it’s been thirteen days since Sam fell unconscious.
The door creaks open, letting in a thin cut of light as the woman walks in. It draws right to Sam, bypassing my shadow in the chair next to him.
The woman wears sadness beneath her mask. With her gloves on, she hands me two sweet breads wrapped in wax paper. She tells me she made them for him, for when he wakes up.
The woman, in her kindness, made a mistake just now.
She said when. When Sam wakes up. That single word could hold such power if only it weren’t a lie. I want to believe, looking at his shut eyes and quiet body that he will wake. But time does not grant me a when. It is not that generous. It grants me an if…
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I find myself crying. A tear, slow and soft, trails down my cheek and catches on my jaw. I hook it with my finger, feel the wetness, taste its salt. Then, more tears well. They fall as I press myself against Sam’s bed and lay my face on his pillow. I used to touch his hair, his nose, his hands, but I can’t anymore. They’re too limp, too lacking of him. Instead, I beg silently through the dark,
“Wake up.” Again, louder, “Wake up, please.” Selfishly, “Wake up, Sam, for me.”
He doesn’t. He’s elsewhere, in another castle, in an enchanted forest, swimming in a sea as the whale circles, circles, circles.
—
“Sweet Sam?” A voice. It’s faint, raspy. The throat that bore it hasn’t been used in some time. “My sweet Sam, wake up.” Again, only this time it’s not a call, it’s a reach.
I open my eyes to a still, dark room. The ventilator hums onward, a machine of endlessness. But when I look up, the mask through which it breathed isn’t on. Sam holds it away from his face.
He is awake. Sam is awake, eyes half-lidded but still brilliant, full of light and life and him.
I shudder, pushing myself out of the chair so hard it falls over.
“I’m here,” I say, grasping the edge of his sheets, pulling the mask off entirely. It catches in his hair, making Sam wince. I smooth it down apologetically, but at the same time, I am relieved. I am relieved he can express anything, even if it’s discomfort. I am relieved his face scrunches up, and his body jumps on reflex. I am relieved his chest rises and falls on its own, the sounds of the ventilator silenced by his breathing.
“My sweet Sam,” he says again, a tiresome curve of his lips revealing a crook of happy teeth. “My sweet Sam, could you hold my hand? I don’t feel my best.”
“Yes,” I say, although it’s more a whisper. His palm meets mine, his fingers slow, his skin cold but radiating. His cuts and bruises healed while he was asleep, but there is still a mark on his wrist, a scar.
“You’re so warm,” Sam says, and like water, his light flows through my veins.
“Look,” I say, lifting our fingers, showing him our tether. “Our hands are kissing.” Sam’s fringe gets in his eyes, so I cast it gently back. He sighs and follows my touch, falling into it.
“Are you in pain?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “My knight is here.”
He’s lying. We both know, but neither one of us says it. He’s been kept alive through various tubes, an IV for liquids, isotonic fluids to keep his blood balanced, and another for nutrients for days. The suddenness of waking up is shocking.
Sam vomits on the floor. I lift his upper body up and cradle it, so he doesn’t get any on himself. His stomach is empty, a fit of acid burning his throat and tongue.
Nurse Ella rushes in to care for him. Two doctors enter too. They waste no time flashing light in Sam’s eyes, asking him too many questions at once. I stand back, against the wall, my other body. Sam looks at me the entire time he is examined.
“Thank you for protecting me,” he rasps after the doctors have gone. I drag the pad of my finger over the scar on his wrist.
“I’ll always protect you,” I say, sitting in my chair now, staring at our hands.
“Did you go see our stars while I was asleep?” Sam asks. “They’ll be sad if no one comes to say goodnight for too long.”
“They aren’t shining today,” I tell him.
“That’s okay,” Sam says. “They’ll shine tomorrow.”
Tomorrow is already here. Dawn washes over the skyline in the distance, blacks becoming blues, easing into the day. I shake, thinking that this would’ve been the fourteenth tally in my head. That if he hadn’t woken up, I would still be in that chair wondering if he ever would.
“Sam?” I call.
“Yes?”
“Could I–could I hold you?”
Sam nods, and when I climb into the bed, he wraps his arms around me. His touch runs down my back, kneading my shirt, feeling my skin, my spine, my flesh beneath.
“My sweet Sam, don’t cry over me,” he says as he feels my tears I don’t know how to control fall to his shoulder. “I’m strong. I’ll make it. We still have so many adventures to go on.”
“How do you know?” I ask. “How do you know that you’ll make it? How did you know the woman would make it?”
“I didn’t know,” Sam says, his chin on my shoulder. “I just hoped she would.”
I wanted an answer. I wanted, as I have wanted since I was born, a solution, a way to defeat the three thieves who encroach upon my home and reap it of its life. But as Sam speaks, he gives me that one thing I can’t fathom. He gives me another lock rather than a key.
“Hope?” The word tastes elder, a truth of the world, yet so young, like a secret.
“Mhm,” Sam hums. “Hope is like…” He shifts, his chin against my ear now rather than my neck. “Hope is like waiting for the sun to rise,” he says, looking through his window, greeting the sky. “We don’t know if the stars will shine or if the sun will be here tomorrow, but I trust the stars. I trust the sun too.”
“I don’t understand,” I breathe.
Sam’s heart beats against mine. The rush of blood coursing through his neck, the pulse I can feel calms me. His aliveness, his heat–it all feels so uncertain, but his heart, even if I fear it will stop, keeps going.
“I hoped for you, once,” Sam says after a while. “I dreamt, with all my heart, for someone, anyone in the world to be mine.” He holds me tighter. His hand snakes through my hair, and a tear rolls down his face to mimic.
I can only think as he touches me that his hands are mine, as he kisses my cheek that his lips are mine, as he talks that his words are mine. That he is mine. My light, my reason. I wonder if my wish for answers came true. I wonder if we were each other’s wishes.
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s okay,” Sam whispers. “It doesn’t have to make sense.”
We don’t talk anymore after that.
He just kisses my face till the sun rises.
