Ariella

Ariella

 

Day 1.

The effulgent yellow wallpaper is covered with pictures of lions, leaves, and disproportionate flowers. You could have thought it was a daycare or playroom of some sort, until you saw the IV poles, the white coats and scrubs floating in and out of rooms voicing medical jargon.

Room 510 was a spacious room, with wide windows and morning light flowing in. A small girl of 4 years old lay in the bed, pouting almost. To see her lying here restfully, a bystander would never guess that she had been admitted for severe respiratory distress, a CT scan revealing a tumor larger than the size of a golf ball occluding her airway. “Ariella?” I say. “I’m the student nurse working with you today. How are you feeling?”

Ariella looks at me with her brown eyes, saying nothing.

Day 3.

My nurse preceptor puts up the systemic poison that will be intravenously channeled into Ariella’s body for the next fifteen minutes. She asks me to stay with Ariella for a few minutes, to which I happily oblige. She seems to be in a good mood today, eating her yogurt by scooping neat spoonfuls of pink into her mouth. She has started to smile at me. Her aunt scrutinizes me from head to toe.

“You’ve been her nurse?”

“I’m a nursing student. I’ve been working with her for the past few days, yes.”

Her facial expression softens.

“Her hair, it’ll all fall out soon?”

“Yes, it will fall out in the next week and a half or so.”

Ariella giggles, even though I know she has no idea what I’m saying. She babbles something to her aunt in Yiddish that I likewise cannot comprehend.

“She likes you, she tells me. You’ll be here tomorrow?”

“Unfortunately not tomorrow, but I’ll be back Thursday.”

Day 6.

With Ariella in my lap and her two sisters, ages 2 and 5 each grabbing my arms, I’ve become a human jungle gym. And then out of nowhere, come the crayons. Ariella shrieks with joy as she and her sisters decorate my left arm with various colors, finding it more interesting than the lonely white paper sitting on the table. Their mom watches me with smiling eyes, as she talks to me and the nurse.

“Alrighty,” I laugh, “I think it’s time to go to the playroom.” Decidedly, I round them up before my arm turns blue.

“Playroom! Playroom! Playroom!” Ariella chants.

Day 12.

There are wisps of light brown hair strewn all over the room: on the floor, on the white sheets of the bed. My nurse and I look at each other and then at Ariella, happily eating her yogurt at the table.

“We need a broom,” she says to me. “And a dustpan.” She adds.

Ariella’s aunt looks at us. “I think it’s best we just let it fall out naturally. I don’t think her mother wants to have her head shaved.”

By the time we return with the broom and dustpan, Ariella is scratching her head…and pulling on her hair. Each time she pulls, another enormous wad of hair comes out. And another. And another. Ariella expression doesn’t register shock, nor pain, but rather a confusion of sorts. Her eyes seem to ask the question: “Why does it keep on coming out?”

Her aunt watches her for a few seconds, then looks away. 

Day 13.

Ariella isn’t feeling well. In fact, she is fatigued all the time, taking several naps a day now, for hours at a time.

In the playroom, she wears a mask. It served to protect her from the potential germs that could invade her susceptible body now that her white blood count was dropping. After only a few minutes of coloring she turns to me and says: “Shteeb”.  

“Shteeb?” I repeat, completely lost.

She returns to her coloring. A few minutes later, she utters the same single word: “Shteeb”.

I pull out google translate, but as soon as I had figure out what she means, she is already taking charge, holding onto her IV pole and scooting me out of the playroom with her.

“You want to go back to the room already, Ariella?” I ask, surprised. She adored the playroom.

As we walk back down the yellow halls, Ariella hardly looks at the giant flowers and butterflies. When we enter her room, she promptly heads for her bed, crawling back under the covers I had folded earlier. She sticks her thumb in her mouth and her big brown eyes look up at me. I squat down next to her so that I was eye-level.

“You’re tired? You gonna take a little nap?” I whisper.

I stroke her hair back away from her eyes, which slowly droop into sleep.

Day 20. 

I enter room 510, as I have so many times in the past two weeks, rubbing the stringent purell into my palms. I peek my head around the corner of the curtain that has been drawn, Ariella’s voice playing in the back of my head. Asleep in the dim light of the room is a small boy, probably not quite two. His brows are furrowed, the way kids’ do when they are having a bad dream. I see that his left arm ends at the elbow, a short stump where his forearm would begin. His father sits at his bedside, his head cradled in his hands until I walk in.

“Hello.” He says. “Do you need me to wake Aaron?”

 

 

Reviews

[Captain Rilen]

Beautiful yet sorrowful. It evokes and conveys strong emotions. Happiness, sadness and despair were all present. I also felt as if time was slipping away as the writing progressed. There is so much sincerity present in your writing. You wouldn't have had to have mentioned the fact that you were studying oncology, one could read this and simply guess. Great descriptive work too. Keep it up.

[7ofspades]

it's nice to hear that it was able to evoke those emotions. thank you for all your comments!

[Nope]

This is heartbreaking and really well written. I like your structure and how you've picked out moments in time in one setting; it really moves the story along at a steady and increasingly intriguing pace. I like the detail added by small clinical phrases also. My only question would be; how does the person telling the story feel? I loved it though :-)

[7ofspades]

thanks so much for your thorough commentary! your comment made me consciously aware of how much i minimized the explicit mention of any emotion. to be honest, i believe it (partly) has to do with my original intention of writing for myself and not for an audience. i actually did a revision of the story where i added more of what i felt, seeing the flaws in the story where others who were not in my shoes would need more detail. ...and then i still ended up posting this original piece :) i think maybe with more writing experience and time ill eventually learn to how to disclose more :)