I always thought that death was the end.
    I always thought that death was the black abyss, the darkness before the storm. And then, when it rained down upon us, death extinguishes us like water to a flame.
  I had been close to death for a long time. I lived every moment as if I was attached to the edge of a cliff by a feeble rope, trying desperately to hang on but not yet knowing what lies behind the edge of the cliff.
  I've lived in the hospital for a year now, surrounded by the stark white walls and Doctor's coats.
Dr. Opmen knew the routine well.
   He would come in to check my white blood cell count and ask me how I felt, and record with a thin clipboard and white sheet of paper each detail I revealed to him. I've learned to say that I'm doing fine. If you're doing fine, then they will never have to ask what's wrong.
    I spent the bulk of my day reading and doing schoolwork. because I've been here for nearly a year, I've had to do my assignments here since I was sixteen. I used to always read romance novels, but then I noticed a pattern; every romance novel I've ever read had a love triangle or a cheater. If they didn't have either of those, then the characters had sex too early. I don't read romance novels anymore because they were not romantic.
    I often had visitors here. My mom would anxiously tell me stories about people who have had kidney cancer and survived. My dad would sit across from me and talk. He didn't talk about anything in particular, he would simple ramble on about his day and how things were going back in Massachusetts, and how he was like when he was my age.
   On this foggy Sunday, my parents looked unusually excited. Dr. Opmen walked in and grinned his  toothpaste ad smile. I grinned faintly, hearing Dr. Opmen's suggestions to my parents as only a hollow background noise.
     "I've some good news", Dr.Opmen announced. "You have been showing steady improvement since the surgery. I think we're nearly ready to go home" he said enthusiastically.
  He failed to mention my depression, or the fact that transitioning to a life of home and friends and high school would be impossible for me. "I've discussed the matter with your parents. We came to the agreement of telling you a few days early". He grinned widely, his white teeth contrasting aganist his dark skin.
"How many days are you suggesting?"
"three days to be exact."
  Three days.
I had spent nearly a year in my hospital room, reading and knitting and playing card games with unwilling visitors. I lived off hospital sandwiches and emails from numerous family members. I've lived in these tall, shallow white walls. Day after day and week after week, the white walls greeted me and tucked me in at night. They were my scenery, my landscape.
 It figures that they would only give me three days notice.
"How do you expect me..." I paused, contemplating my
 words "to just move on like nothing ever happened? How can I just go back and be totally healthy and have a normal life?"
  Dr. Opmen looked puzzled. "Well, isn't that what you want, Miss Rose? Don't you want to go back to the way things were before?" Dr.Opmen had the awful habit of assuming things. I think he did it on purpose, so that it would be impossible to argue with him.
"I want to live at home," I replied.
Home.
It was almost difficult to conceive of a place beyond the shelter of my white walls. Whenever I received phone calls or emails or letters, they always talked about home. Home was a difficult concept for me to grasp, the hospital was my home.
 What a shallow idea of home.
 "It will be alright Miss Rose. We're all so proud of you. You're a beautiful, very smart girl. You'll do just fine." Dr.Opmen turned away and walked out of the room, leaving me with nothing more than those words. 

I pondered the idea of leaving the letter unopened until my last day, a kind of celebratory surprise. Yet every time I glanced on my bedside stand, it stood there begging me to open it. It was hard not to stare at it, and I held onto it tightly for the first hour or so I had it, keeping it near my chest.
The letters on the envelope were sloppy and uneven, and I got the impression that whoever wrote it was in a bit of a hurry. I decided to open it.
  It was from Eric.
  Eric and I met on our first day of high school. Everyone thought that he was a ninny and I was a hermit, so we became instant friends. He was always very intelligent, but also very childish. I liked spending my time with him because everything he did seemed so comical. I remember one year he ran briskly every time the bell rang and would sing like a madman. Eric was the only one in school that could really make me laugh.
   The blue inked letters scribbled a quick message across the page;

                Annabell,

      I heard you were getting out soon. I will stop by your house this week.

Eric

Eric had great patience for writing simple messages that contained little information.

  I gingerly grasped the mirror from my bedside stand. The room was unusually silent, illuminated only by the bedside lamp which created a soft yet tangible light, the kind of glow that inspired poets and dreamers for centuries.
  The mirror was trimmed in pretty blue seashells with the painted image of an ocean wave ingrained in the corner.
  I received it as a gift from my grandma when I was four. She always told me that she gave it to me because she knew I loved the ocean.
   The image in the mirror looked unforgivably afraid. Afraid of the future. Afraid of cancer. Afraid of living in my old house, cooking my own meals and socializing with my own friends.
  I had the awful urge to punch myself.
   Often, when I get angry or depressed, I get the urge to punch myself, to injure myself in some way. But I can never do it. I'll never be able to injure myself correctly, because I realize how silly it is.
   It was always interesting to me that the mirror was but a smooth piece of glass and perhaps a sheet of metal or aluminum. Such a simple construction, and yet it possessed the almost magical quality of reflecting a complex set of images.
  And every time I looked into a mirror the same face struck me- my ocean blue eyes and porcelain skin and the blonde hair that cascaded in soft sweet spirals.
  That was how others viewed me, but I always looked beaten and depressed to myself. I could swear I could see bruises, and each one of my eye sockets looked like a disfigured type of hole, devoid of the deepest love and isolated from any type of hopeful future.

   I had one day left.
  

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