(U asked for it and here it is RoxyPuppyLove)

Breathe. Count to ten. Repeat.

Ignore the red light above the door of the emergency room, ignore the beeping coming from inside. Just Breathe. Count to Ten. Repeat.

It was then that the door of the emergency room opened. The doctor entered the corridor. My heart was pounding, my breath was stolen. I stared at him with undivided attention, dreading each and every word he could say. He hung his head down and shook his head.

Breathe…Count to ten…but I couldn’t. I couldn’t. All the control went out the window. The tears came raining down like a thunderstorm. Numerous, countless tears just streamed down my face for endless hours.

Cry. Wail. Repeat.

After so many hours of crying that I lost count, I found myself sitting on the floor in the hospital corridor. My hands were clutching my knees close to my chest.

I looked up from the floor and was caught looking into the eyes of a boy. From my tear induced blindness, I could see that he was about my age. He looked like a red-headed mushroom to my tired eyes. I wanted to smile, but I couldn’t. I rubbed the remnants of the tears out of my eyes and stared at my observer.

He was standing right in front of me. His red hair were wild and tangled. His gray eyes were focused on me. His mouth was still, unmoving. He blinked.

I wasn’t sure why he was staring at a crying girl but who could blame him, I doubt there were any other things worth watching at a hospital. He slowly walked towards me and sat beside me on the floor. Okay, maybe he wanted to be my floor buddy. I did not have a problem with that but he did something he shouldn’t have: he spoke.

“Hi” he said, softly. It was barely above a whisper and I might have missed it, had the hospital not been dead silent.  “Hey” I said, unsure what else I could say.

“I know that it is not good to intrude but I felt like you could use some company” he said. “Okay” I replied, dumbfounded.

“If you don’t mind can you tell me what happened?” He asked. He was just being polite, asking the most obvious question.

“I…my mother passed away. She was the only family I had” I replied, politely.

“What happened?” He asked, politely.

“She…she…cancer took her” I said, politely.

He remained silent. Politely.

It was a mandatory silence. After enough time had passed, he said “You know this isn’t my first time here”.

I knew he was trying to change the topic but trying to hide the elephant in the room with a curtain does not make it invisible. I couldn’t get rid of my pain but I was somewhat relived to be distracted from it.

“I am a regular here actually. I am a patient” he said. I dreaded asking him what was wrong with him. It was not a polite question after all. Thankfully, he spoke without prompting.

“You see… I am depressed” he replied. I was expecting something better, but better in what sense was not clear. No illness can be better than another in a positive sense, can it?

“I am sorry to hear that” I said. He nodded and moved his fingers in circles on his jeans.

“Since when have you been depressed?” I asked.

“Two years” he replied. I could almost feel the suffering and struggle in his voice. I sympathized with him. “It must be hard” I replied. Truthfully, I was pretty sure that I had no idea how hard it must be, since a) I hadn’t suffered from depression and b) I knew very little about it.

He acknowledge my observation, instead he said something else “I am used to looking at the darker side of things”. What he said was based on an assumption that there was a brighter and a darker side of things, but in the situation I was in I couldn’t possibly imagine what the brighter side could have been.

“I can tell what you see” I replied, staring at the floor. For a moment we were both silent, this time I decided to break the silence.

“So, what it like?” I asked. “Huh?” he asked, caught off guard.

“What’s it like staring at the darker side of things?” I rephrased my question. It took him a moment to register what I was asking.

“It’s a thousand different metaphors. It’s one of those things that’s so hard to put into words that it’s way easier to connect it to other things. In my experience, my set of metaphors have been quite different. It’s like the rapid change of seasons but sometimes it’s so rapid that you don’t have enough time to get used to it and you just end up getting a long-lasting cold. It’s like the weather, one moment you are standing at the eye of a hurricane and suddenly, warm bright sunshine is kissing your face. Sure, the hurricanes last longer but it just makes the sunshine all the more precious and worth savoring. It’s like a broken bridge, like a sinking anchor. It’s like falling into this endless pit and thinking that you would hit the bottom any second but when you reach the bottom, you start to float” he said. His thoughts were beautiful. They should be because they were the ones bothering him.

“Are you sure that at some point the storm ends?” I asked, gravely. I was unsure of what was ahead and whether there was still a future worth thinking of and I needed some assurance.

“Yes” He said, smiling. “How?” I asked.

“It is human nature to believe that there can be a better and brighter tomorrow. That part of human nature is called hope. If I gave up hoping then I will no longer be human anymore” He replied, his eyes twinkling.

“How can someone hope when everything is going downhill? How can someone be sure of anything when they can’t be even sure whether there is a life after death? How can someone be sure if there will be an end to her misery if she isn’t sure where she goes after her end?” I asked, knowing that they were big questions and there was no way he could answer them.

“Is the end worth wasting away the present?” He asked.

His one question was the answer to thousands of mine.

 
“I know you are thinking about where your mother is now. How a person can be with you for a moment and then be lost forever, leaving behind just memories. Many people will come and tell you she is in a better place without a single proof to support their statement but I’m not one of those people. I won’t tell you that everything is okay, because it is not. I won’t tell you stop to being sad, because you will be no matter what. I will only ask you to pull away slowly, very slowly.” He said, his voice soft and calm.

“No one can tell you where she is or whether she even exists anymore but you know that she lived once, is that not enough? Knowing that she walked, smiled, laughed, talked, lived? Sharing countless memories with her, getting to know her through the years and being her creation. Is it not enough? She isn’t really gone after all, you were made from her. She still lives in you, she still exists in you. She is gone because everything has to go at some time but that should not stop you from using it, from loving it. In the same way, you and I are going to be gone sometime and we both are well-aware of this fact. It shouldn’t stop you or me from living, should it?” He said.

The words that he spoke weighed so much that I thought I would sink under them. I couldn’t deny that they were true, I just couldn’t accept it.

“I don’t know what to say” I said, flatly.

I felt a pressure on my hand. I looked down to see that my companion was trying to hold my hand and I let him. With our hands in each other’s we sat in comfortable silence for sometime but I eventually broke it to ask a last question: “I am Agnes. What’s your name?”

“Andrew” He replied, smiling.

(Although I am not too big on explaining the author's intent as I like to leave the interpretation of a story to the reader, this time I think I should explain this. The ending is supposed to be a new beginning..every end is a new beginning...)