The boy sat forlornly in the stark white chair of the hospital waiting room—waiting. He had been slouching there for almost half an hour, but just staying there made him shiver uncomfortably from the apparent chill of the room and memories of flu shots and painful pinpricks. He knew his mother was somewhere nearby and could hear her frantic voice on the phone with his father, but shut his eyes instead to ignore his own thoughts about what might be happening to his brother at that moment. Tearing himself from his lonely seat, the boy marched to the only window and stared. Despite the boy's best efforts, his deepest doubts and worries ballooned out of control and coalesced themselves into cold, menacing fear: a conglomeration of “what-if”s and other questions too hard to put into words. The boy's grandfather had passed less than a year ago, and though the boy was no stranger to death, he was scared. Scared of the notion that a living being could simply cease to exist.

Trembling, the boy looked back outside the window to a scene of summertime, of life and health. Desperate to think about anything but that leech at the back of his mind, he let his eyes drift over the tall green grass rippling vibrantly in the sticky summer breeze, over the towering, majestic tree that saluted him smartly from the corner, and over the small, deserted playground at the end of the lot that leapt with splashes of color nevertheless. Closing his eyes, he remembered many moonlit nights on playgrounds where he and his brother, three years his younger, would act out elaborate games on the playground equipment until their parents would call softly if they would please climb down carefully from the jungle gym because it was dark and they needed their sleep. The brothers would say they wanted just a few more minutes because they were almost done so couldn't they stay a little longer? And the answer would always be that their time was up and that was the final say on the matter.
* * *

On Thursday, the boy's mother had sped to the emergency room, and by the beginning of the next week, he had started school in the fifth grade. His teachers knew vaguely about the situation the boy's family was struggling through, but of course suffered none of the emotional or familial repercussions of his brother's affliction. Throughout the day, the boy found himself thinking about his brother even when he did his best to focus on the trivial busy work in front of him.

The first time his brother had been dragged to the doctor's, the doctor had dismissed the sickness as simple pneumonia, insisting that the child's health would improve with antibiotics. And so his parents fed him the antibiotics, listening to his nearly uncontrollable coughing all the while—but his symptoms slowly worsened until he eventually could not breathe properly. Watching his brother suffer, the boy could not help but feel distressed over the possibilities of what could happen. Now, his fears had come true. Sitting in school staring absently at the lively colors of the walls, the boy recalled the bright red of the 'EMERGENCY' sign that jumped out at him only a few days ago, when his mother had screeched into the hospital parking lot after his brother could not swallow anything without promptly, and violently, vomiting.

The boy's attention snapped back to the whiteboard as the teacher tapped it sharply, announcing: “Time's up for your journal responses. We're now moving on to your history packets...” He sighed wistfully at the empty white page staring at him from his desk.
* * *

The boy's mother worked weekends, and the father weekdays. The boy was accustomed to having one parent at home and one at work, but now, one was at work and one with his brother inside the harsh, bleached pale walls of the hospital. The boy was often left alone at home to worry about his brother's health and spent many of his hours in isolation trying to remember how so much had happened all at once.

It had been only a few weeks ago when his brother had begun to exhibit alarming symptoms. He had caught a cold, and as was customary in the household, was instructed simply to drink enough water, eat enough food, and get enough rest. He had never been the healthiest or strongest child, but oddly enough, the boy's parents' patented treatment failed to cure the cold. Days had gone by without signs of improvement, and as the child coughed his way towards disaster, the parents began to have suspicions. They were continually pestered by a nagging fear that their son was suffering from some other disease worse than the common cold. The child was already bedridden, and soon, a mild fever prompted his parents to visit the doctor's office. Worried and confused, the boy's family had been plodding through the days until that fateful emergency room diagnosis brought their lives to a halt.
* * *

The boy sat next to his brother in his hospital room, waiting for his parents to return from speaking with the doctors. His brother was asleep, breathing shallowly and irregularly, as if he could not tolerate the mustiness and dreariness that pervaded the very atmosphere of the hospital. The boy cringed as he glanced at the numerous needles that protruded at strange angles from his brother's body, but could not help smiling when he saw the plush yellow dog lying loyally at the foot of the bed, which he had been told was a gift from the boys' piano teacher of over 5 years. But in the dim, feeble light of the lamp, even the dog looked pale, sickly, clutching at the vitality and vigor that, even now, was slipping away. Despite this, the boy liked to imagine that the dog was taking care of his brother as protector and savior.
* * *

Almost a week later, after more of the same drudgery at school and loneliness at home, the boy was totally and thoroughly exhausted. He had been having trouble falling asleep at night, kept up by anxiety and the fear of the bad dreams that, recently, always seemed to find him in his sleep, the one place where he could find peace amid the turmoil that had infected his life like the pneumonia that had infected his brother's lungs. Now, he was again sitting in the hospital waiting room, where all this had started. He leaned back, breathed deeply, and let his mind wander, just as it had that first day he came. Only a few minutes later, the doctor emerged from those stark white hallways to the boy's parents' eagerness and uneasiness to learn how their son was managing. The boy turned his attention to the doctor, but then decided not to listen, expecting the same gloomy prognosis that had disappointed the family so often. Just as he began closing his mind off to the unforgiving realities of the hospital, he could make out a word from the doctor several yards away: “improving”.

And that word was enough to bring the faintest smile to the boy's lips as he closed his eyes, this time in relief. And although that word was anything but definite, it gave him the hope to forge ahead into the unsurety of the future.