Pestilence

Eleven.

He was only eleven.

When his Mother was eleven she was ripping pages from magazines and tapping them to her wall. She would run into her mothers room while she was downstairs making dinner and go through her makeup. Trying to copy the models flawless looks onto her freckled and pudgy baby face.

When his Father was eleven he got into a fight with his brother over the Ginger, green eyed girl that sat in front of him in science. 'Dibs' was the call of her hand and though he had called it. His older brother disrespected it and had his first on the mouth kiss with her. They ended up rolling and summersaulting down the stairs. He broke his arm. His brother fractured his wrist.

When you're eleven you're supposed to be a kid fighting to become an teenager. The ones in the movies wearing makeup and kissing boys and being on the football team. They're supposed to make fools of themselves but be completely unaware of it for years to come. It's when you are refusing your childhood and embracing what you believe adulthood is. Which is parties with red solo cups and spin the bottle.

He was eleven and he would never know the phase he missed. Here he layed in platinum steamed and straight scratchy sheets. Underneath a thin and drab gray blanket. Surrounded by a sea foam colored wall with white wave embroidery. It was supposed to be color in the white hopeless of the hospital. But all it did was remind his parents of the bedroom at home that he slept in less and less.

His life was filled with blood clots and black and blues. Easy bruising skin and wispy thin hair that started falling out in clumps by the age of nine. His cheeks were supposed to be rosy and flushed. Instead it was as white as the snow he could never play in or as white as the paper gown he had to wear every time he walked into his other home.

The worst part about the ordeal was this;

No one knew what it was supposed to be called. It was supposedly some form of leukemia, but that was only best guess. No medication worked and no diagnosis stuck.

His parents fought to pay the hospital bills, he was prayed for. He was cared for. He was loved. He wasn't getting better.

Now the family stands again in the room that shouldn't be his, in a building that's not home, with doctors they shouldn't have met.

His body had rejected him. His lungs, his blood and his heart were rejecting him. His future had given up. His past was no better

Life itself had rejected him. So in turn he had only one thing left to do.

Reject life.

His goodbye sounded like a flatline.