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By Audrey GarrettIllustration by Audrey Garrett On the cold wet tiles of the sink, I spit my last thought and turned off the light. The hospital bed was warm, and you kept the light on before 7 p.m. and the hall light on after 9 p.m. No one was in our room during the 8 o’clock meal. I drenched my salad with Thousand Island dressing, and you lifted your back in pain as you put the tray down. We shared the ketchup. You have worn that watch for seven years now, and I can’t tell the time any more without looking outside in the morning after or before the ceiling told me to stop staring. We climb the stairs together to remind my body it didn’t always need lab tubes, and you have worn wrinkly glue bottomed socks in solidarity for two hours today. I wish the doctors put a clipboard at the end of my bed. Then I could feel checked off by the doctors most days. Then they could leave a note to my parents to bring a better sleeping bag next time, and for them to pick me up in the morning. I slept with you last night, and you left your car running the day we met during rehearsal. It was a soggy day and I liked talking to the valet coat lady who I now know is called a concierge. Please don’t leave me, not until the morning. I waited for two days to not get worried. Also, the pink of the nurse's back and the blue of her padded socks have left me feeling dry in the mouth. She wears her hair curled up just so tight I wonder why I never watch Bugs Bunny at night, but then I remember it's because I watch it every day, morning, and afternoon on her name tag as she reaches across to my right arm to flick the catheter that’s more hers than mine. Calm pink and harsh blue and I take you. I take you away from me, away from the blood and the spills and the nights I don’t want to look at the corner of my pillow anymore. Most nights I am scrunched feeling your weight and the way you leave your leather brown pockets on the corner chair. I love that jacket, you got it in Missoula. I have never been to Cabo and don’t see why I won’t fly there soon. You bring me waves of hot chocolate but lately, I haven’t been sipping. Lately, I haven’t seen much of either of us and I miss the way I used to stand so congratulatory to the nurses who got to see us. “You will survive if he keeps lookin that fine” they would say, cracking up with laughter down the halls with their styrofoam coffee cups and hair pulled back, scrunching their knees as they walk because they laugh at things they don’t understand. You are sick in love with me and I have eight years to live, max. Which is actually a pretty good time grid for an undergraduate and master's degree. I’m getting mine in April— two years from now. I will write to you again and write about you to the editor down the hall. He has influenza and will die from it because his mom either loved him too much or not at all. He is on his way to 60, with a birthday on the 8th of November, and will die from the common cold. All the numbers have got to hurt, maybe that’s why doctors call me so many times and I call you at 4, 5, and 6 pm., waiting for you to get off the 5 South, so I can learn about your morning as your Mazda sits in traffic. Is it still blue? I can’t tell from my new window that doesn’t face the parking lot anymore. Pink lemonade is hard to remember when your parents don’t make it for you anymore, and I want you to know I would make it for our kids as soon as they got home from school and watch them sit at our counter with math sheets they really should just draw on. I love you and the way you crinkle your hair when you don’t put gel in it and I think the day you met my illness you made a promise to never mistake happiness for recovery. I’ll miss you for that and pray you’ll never waste a day missing me. Enjoy the pink lemonade, actually just come over right now. I know you have the mornings off and the Rose Bowl is almost starting. The floor is very quiet and everyone is awake. Please make your way through security softly and ring the doorbell twice. I will miss playing make-believe deal or no deal with you. I hope, this time, you land on the lottery without your luscious locks and laugh as you go bald like Howie Mandel.
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