I was putting the finishing touches on my sunset piece just as the nurse came through the door. I smiled and flipped the magazine I was using shut. I tucked my charcoal away carefully and put my art supplies next to the magazine stack on the table next to me.

"Hey Ken, how are you feeling today?" She asked me kindly. It was the beginning of her shift and she didn't know that I had been up for most of the night drawing again.

"Same as usual Mary." I tried for a cheery tone but I could hear the exhaustion of my voice regardless. I watched as she jotted down notes on her clipboard regarding all the machines that blipped, beeped, flickered and flashed numbers next to my bed.

"What've you been drawing?" She then asked as she worked, glancing at my art supplies. She put a stethoscope to my back and then my chest to double check my lungs and breathing.

"Mum brought me a new magazine on the tropics. I just finished a nice sunset. One day I am going to go and see it for myself." I said the last part wistfully with a look towards the door.

"You bet honey. Keep that positive attitude and I just know you can do it." She patted my shoulder. She was one of the younger nurses. The older nurses and doctors had seen too many people like me to dare say such encouraging words. They sounded too much like promises.

Some days I felt like I was doing it all just to make the people around me feel better. If I was happy and cheerful then they would act happy and cheerful around me so they didn't spoil my 'good mood'. It kept them off my back and me out of therapy sessions.

It also kept a strong supply of art supplies coming so I didn't get bored sitting around my hospital room. Let's face it, I wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. I was sick, broken, whatever you want to call it. I was too fragile to walk, run, or play like other normal people.

My heart was going to quit on me, but they had no idea when. I had weeks or months before I was supposed to go critical and I had to have a surgery or I was going to die. They were looking for a donor now, but my chances were slim. I still tried to be positive and hopeful about the whole thing.

I wanted to travel. I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to go to school and be with other kids my own age. I wanted to fall in love and have a family. I wanted to get a boring small house and a boring small car. Not even a sports car, just a little family go-getter or something.

I wanted to eat ice cream in any other flavours than chocolate or vanilla, because that is all they had on the menu at the hospital.

I saw my future like an unfinished drawing that I was just itching to complete but wasn't sure if I would. I saw my family start to lose hope and tiptoe around me as the sand in the virtual hourglass of my life ran out. I heard the pity in their tone as they watched me make plans I might never fulfill.

As if I cared about that. If you have nothing to live for then you really will give up and die. I had that though, something to live for.

I opened my book up to an empty page after the nurse left and flipped through the magazine looking for something new to draw. I stopped on a garden scene with white draped loungers. It looked so bright and relaxing a place. I wondered what the sound of the ocean was like.

I smiled happily and picked up my pencil. I started sketching out the proportions of the foliage and the loungers, humming to myself. Suddenly the door to my room crashed open and a tall boy with black hair and angry green eyes came storming into my room.

"Can I hide in here?" He demanded loudly. I nodded wordlessly and watched as he huffed and flopped into one of my chairs.

"Who are you hiding from?" I asked curiously. He glared at the door.

"Just everyone." He growled. I hummed and picked my pencil back up to continue my drawing. We sat together in silence for a few minutes before the angry boy finally spoke.

"I'm Dex. What are you in here for?" I laughed to myself, thinking he sounded like one of those people in the movies who are stuck in a jail cell together.

"Bad heart. You?" He didn't answer for a minute. I looked up to see his arms crossed and a sour look on his face. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"I'm not supposed to be here. I snuck off my floor. It's just... none of the nurses listen to me. It's frustrating." He finally said to me. I nodded. They could be stubborn at times. Especially about taking medications.

"I understand. They really just want to help though." I said kindly. He huffed. I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he took in all the machines I was hooked up to.

"How long have you been here?" He asked quietly. I shrugged.

"Stopped counting. Haven't been to a regular school though, if that gives you any idea. I read about them though. They sound interesting." I smiled as I heard him snort.

"Yeah they aren't." He shot at me.

"You only think that because you've been." I shot back. He finally smiled at me. He was tapping his arm and watching my hand move across the page.

"What are you drawing?" He said, leaning forwards. I turned my book to him and showed him the garden in the magazine. He nodded.

"I want to be an artist when I grow up. What do you want to be?" I asked him. He scowled. I could see him thinking to himself as he searched for an answer.

"I don't know. I kind of fu-er-dged my chances on that one..." He stumbled over his words as he spoke, blushing a bright red.

"It's okay, you can swear if you want to." I grinned. He grinned back sheepishly. "How do you know you are f*cked?"

"I just am. I haven't been doing anything right. I just wanted to have a little fun before I grew up, but I messed up badly." He scuffed one booted boot against the floor and picked at the slight, youthful scuff on his chin.

"Why don't you start over? When you get out of here I mean." I said as I started adding colour. He shook his head sadly.

"I can't. Even if I could, there is nothing left to go back to." His eyes filled with angry tears and I frowned in sympathy.

"I'm sorry." I whisper. He half laughs and half sobs.

"What are you sorry for? You are the one who is dying. What is the point of even making plans if you know they will never happen?" His harsh words echoed the thoughts of so many why had passed through those doors.

"If I don't make plans, then what have I to live for?" I raised my firm gaze to his shocked eyes.

"I-I-I'm sorry. That was harsh. You are a really good artist. I am sure you will be famous someday...." He tried to apologize, but I waved him off. He stood up and came closer to the bed. I sighed to myself.

"I know my chances aren't good, but without hope I will just rot in this bed. My parents both love me so much... they come and visit me, try to cheer me up, and spend so much of their money trying to save me that I would be crazy to just give up." I begin, his eyes are wide as he watches the strokes of colour bring the picture on my lap to life.

"I want to travel. I want to see what I am drawing with my own two eyes. I would walk there if I had to, just to say that I can do it. One day I want to get up from this bed and walk out that door. I won't let anyone or anything get in the way of my dreams then." I continue, bringing in reds and purples to highlight the pink flowers.

"I want to fall in love and make that person my whole world. I want to take them with me to see tropical locations and faraway places. I want to have a family, children even, who will love me without having ever known me as pitiful." I paused as I picked up the blue, staring at it like it held the answers.

"I hope you do. I hope you get to do everything you want to do." He whispered close to my ear. I looked up to see the tears in his eyes, his admiration shone so brightly as we smiled at each other. I was really tired, so I put my books aside and laid back on the bed. He watched me with some concern. "Are you okay?"

I shook my head as a wave of light-headedness came upon me. My breath started to slow and the world around me began to move as though in slow motion as well. I felt the crushing weight of my reality come crashing down on me. I was having a heart attack. I was really going to die.

I saw the angry boy, Dex, shouting next to me but the buzzing in my ears and the crushing weight on my chest made the words unintelligible. The machinery began to go crazy and the door burst open to panicked looking nurses and doctors.

"Hang in..."

"What's his..."

"Move... need to... room is prep..."

"It's okay. You are going to be okay." I felt a hand in mine as the world slipped away.

*

"Welcome back trooper." I blinked up at the nurse that stood over the side of my bed, taking a reading. Just another hospital? Was this heaven or hell? I was confused. I looked around and saw the sign for post-operation patients.

"Did... did I get my heart?" I asked nervously, hardly believing the pain in my chest could be anything but my bad heart still acting up.

"Yes, sweetheart. You got your heart just in time." She was smiling so big that I couldn't help but smile back at her. I was alive! I was really here. I looked down my gown and grimaced at the scars but grinned to know why they were there.

"I gotta tell Dex when I get out of here... Hey, when can I see my parents? Do they know yet? Can I get my sketchbook? When do I get out of here?" I couldn't stop as the questions poured out of my mouth and the nurse laughed at me.

She shook her head and answered only a couple questions, insisting that I answer hers back about how I felt and how everything was working so far. I had been patient for so long, I just didn't want to be anymore. I had to heal enough so I could leave, and they had to watch for rejection signs, but nothing bad happened.

I did my exercises diligently and sketched in my spare time. My favourite was the sketch of Dex that I did of him when he was grinning at me. I felt like his eyes were the happiest then. I would turn to the page and smile, just waiting for the day I could walk out those doors and meet him.

He had never returned to my room after the surgery. I looked up excitedly at every person who walked through the door, but it was never him. The doctors and nurses probably found him in my room that day and took him back, although when I mentioned it to Mary she didn't seem to know what I was talking about. Maybe he escaped in the shuffle, although I swear I heard him reassuring me.

When the day came that they told me I was free to go, I was elated. I even let my mum take me in the wheelchair out the doors. I wanted to walk but the hospital had policies. My dad went to get the car and pull it around, so I waited at the doors while mum thanked the nurse again.

"How did you know James?" I heard a voice say from my right. I looked up to see a boy around my own age with curly brown hair and bright blue eyes that were red from crying. I was confused. He pointed to the open notebook in my lap.

"You mean Dex?" I asked curiously. He paled at the name.

"How do you know that boy?" He leaned close to look at the sketch I had done of him grinning.

My chest tightened for a moment and I was scared I was having another heart-attack. I put my hand to my chest and tried to breathe normally. The boy noticed my distress and backed off a bit, and the pain in my chest lessened. I blinked. So, not a heart-attack?

"I met him in the hospital. He came to my room to hide out one day." I told the boy in a faint voice. He scrunched up his face in anger and grabbed my shirt.

"You lie. Tell me the truth, how did you know him?" The boy's face was so close to mine I could smell the spearmint on his breath. My chest tightened painfully again and I gasped. My mum saw the ruckus finally and came at us both, demanding he put me down.

"I-I-I am telling the truth. I was bedridden. Ask my mum! He came in my room and we talked, uh, two months ago I think it was?" He walked away a few paces, dragging his hand through his tumbled curls and muttering to himself angrily.

"It's impossible. He was in a coma for six months. There was no way he could have just got up and went to your room." He finally hissed at me as he leaned in close. My eyes widened and I felt my heart pounding painfully again, even with my medications. I gulped and shook my head.

"He-he-he was there." I whispered, opening the page to the picture of him sitting in the chair with a scowl on his face. He was wearing the plaid shirt, black jeans and combat boots the same as I remembered from that day. I handed him the book and he sat down on the curb cradling it.

"It's impossible." He said again. Shaking his head as he stared at the picture. I patted my mum's hand and asked her to wait with my dad. She argued with me for a second but I gave her a firm little shove in his direction.

"Listen, I don't know how this happened, or why really, but your friend there saved my life. I had a heart attack and he pushed the call button before it got too bad." I told him. It was true, someone had pushed the call button and it couldn't have been me.

"You keep rubbing your chest, are you the one they gave his heart to as well?" He stared at the red scar visible above the collar of my shirt. I put my hand to my chest with surprise.

"I... I suppose I am." I teared up at the thought that I was never going to meet my friend Dex after all. He was a part of me, but I would never be able to shake his hand or hug him and tell him he was going to be alright too.

"Be careful with it. James Dexter was too kind-hearted. You might end up being too kind-hearted as well." I wiped the tears from my face and I reached over to give him a hug, surprising us both.

As I held his firm body against my frailer one, I felt my heart start to pound in my ears again. I was worried it was so loud that everyone could hear it as it thumped a drum beat in my ears. I blushed as the boy put his arms around me gently and laid his head on my shoulder.

Would he hear it as well? We stood for a minute like that, then the world around us started again. People went about their business now that there wasn't going to be a fight. My parents watched with worried expressions by the car.

"Come on, why don't you come and have ice cream with us?" I blurted out. He pulled back in my embrace and looked down at me amused.

"Ice cream?" He said gruffly. I smiled and nodded, ignoring the now familiar racing of my heart as I looked into his beautiful blue eyes.

"Yeah, I want to try Peanut Ripple ice cream." I grabbed his hand and pulled him to our car as my parents looked on in shock.

"Peanut Ripple?" He said faintly with a faraway look in his eyes. I hopped up and down as much as I was able when I got to the door.

"Pretty please mummy? Can I take my new friend for ice cream?" I said with my best puppy dog eyes.

"You mean the friend that was just threatening you?" My dad said dryly. He exchanged glances with the boy, who blushed and bit his lip adorably.

"Uh, sorry about that sir." He bowed his head and I awwed for a second before pushing him into the car.

"Come on. I've been waiting years for this."