The Boy Who Liked Needles

I’ve never liked hospitals, the antiseptic smell filling the air and the whole building cloaked in a gloomy, bleached white. I screamed as I tried to yank my eight-year-old wrist from my mother’s tight grip. “Nooo! I don’t wanna! I don’t wanna!”

“Alice! Quit your whining. It’s one little shot.” She dragged me onto a cold, plastic chair. I struggled against her, but to no avail.

“Alice Delmar?” a middle-aged man with an already balding head and huge, round, gold-framed glasses asked. He held a long, dripping needle in his right hand.

I dug my nails into my mother’s arm so tightly that she gasped and immediately let me go. I didn’t think twice and dashed out of the room.

“Alice!”

I ran down a long hallway with picture frames of landscapes and sceneries littering the walls every few feet. There was a door just at the end of hall. I made for it, and luckily, it was unlocked. I quickly shut the door behind me, leaned my back against it, and slid down to the floor with my eyes shut and my breathing heavy.

“Who are you?”

My eyes flew open. I wasn’t alone. Right across from me sat a completely bald kid who looked to be in his early teens. His skin matched the hospital walls, but his eyes were a sparkling bright blue. The kind of blue that everybody longed to have. “I’m Alice. What’s your name?”

“Dylan. Who are you hiding from?”

I climbed onto the edge of his hospital bed right next to his feet. “My mom. And this doctor. And his long needle. I don’t like needles. Do you like needles?”

He smiled, knowingly. “Actually, yes.”

“What! Why? Needles hurt. Nobody likes to hurt.”

“That’s true, but needles make me better. So I like them.”

I scrunched my nose at him in a confused and a little bit of a disgusted kind of way. “You’re weird. I don’t care. I’m still not getting a shot.”

He laughed at first, but then started a chain of coughing. He sounded horrible.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah…” But he started to cough again. “Dang. Looks like it’s time for my medicine.”

“Are you sick?”

He smiled at me again with that same sweet and knowing smile. “Yeah. Just a little.”

“But the doctor is gonna fix you right up, right?”

“We’ll see.”

“Alice!”

My head shot around towards the door. Oh no. Her voice is getting closer. “Well, that’s my mom. I better go.”

“Hey, Alice? Why don’t you come visit me tomorrow? I wanna show you something.”

“You’re still gonna be here?”

“Yeah. And I get really lonely here all by myself.”

“Okay. I’ll come back with Mommy tomorrow.”

“Promise?”

“Yep. I promise.” I ran out the door right as my mom turned the corner.

“Alice! There you are!” She wrapped my up in her arms and squeezed me tight. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!”

“I’m sorry, Mommy. But I don’t feel so good. Can we come back tomorrow and take the shot then?” I tried hard to make myself look as sickly and pale as possible…kind of like Dylan.

She sighed. “Alright then. Let’s go home.” She grabbed onto my hand and talked to me about how shots weren’t that bad and that they only hurt for a second, but I wasn’t really listening. My eyes were glued to that door. That door that led to the room of the most mysterious boy I have ever met. Mommy led me around the corner, and the door disappeared.

---

“Wait! Alice! The shots are this way.” Mom pointed to the opposite direction from where I was leading her.

“Let’s go see my new friend first. I promised him I’d come see him again today.”

She watched me, puzzled. “New friend?”

We got to the door, and I didn’t even stop to knock. I just stormed right in. What I saw almost made me faint.

Dylan and his doctor looked over at me. His doctor held a shot with about a foot long, half-an-inch-thick needle at the end. Whatever was in that shot did not look good. Seeing me grow pale made Dylan laugh. “Hey. Just on time. I’m about to get better, see?”

That was when I first noticed the difference in him. His face was even paler then before (if that was even possible). His once beautiful blue eyes were dull, but maybe it was just the lighting. Little drops of sweat hung to his forehead, and he couldn’t stop coughing for the life of him. There were splotches of blood on his hospital clothes from where his coughing had been too fierce.

The doctor turned Dylan onto his side so that his back was facing him. He quickly unbuttoned Dylan’s hospital gown just enough so that the middle of his back was naked. Dylan looked over at me, and I could tell from his eyes that he was scared. “Alice. Can I hold your hand?” I nodded instantly and took his cold, clammy hand into mine.

The doctor took no hesitation. Immediately, he pushed the full length of the needle into Dylan’s spinal cord. Dylan’s eyes shut tight, his face scrunched up, his hand strangled mine, and tears lightly fell down his cheeks. Before I knew it, I was crying too.

It was all over within a few dreadfully long seconds, but I could see the instant change in Dylan. His face started to see some color. His coughing was getting less horrible-sounding and was no longer so closely strung together.

Eventually, he opened his now back-to-normal, glowing, blue eyes back up and smiled at me. “Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

My eyes watered up again. “Why? Why do you have to do that? It was so long and…”

He grabbed just below my chin. “Shhh…Don’t cry. It’s okay. See? I told you it would make me better.”

“Doesn’t it hurt?”

“I’m not going to lie. Yeah. It hurts a lot. But do you know what makes it hurt less?”

“What?”

His eyes twinkled as they gazed into mine. “Someone’s hand to hold that you care about and that you know will give you strength.”

I didn’t know what to say. “…But why?”

“Because I have cancer.”

My body tensed. I’ve heard about that. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I know that it’s bad. “How long?”

“Almost two years now. I’ve been very lucky. But it’s only because I’ve taken all my shots.”

“Alice?” I turned around. I had forgotten mom was here too. “We’re going to miss your appointment.”

I nodded and looked back at Dylan. “Can I come back tomorrow?”

Dylan looked at my mom for approval, and when she nodded, he nodded too. “You better.”

I smiled and followed my mom to that scary, white room with the cold, plastic chairs. I followed her to the middle-aged man with the balding head and the huge, round, gold-framed glasses. I sat on the hospital bed, and when the doctor came at me with the long, dripping needle, I closed my eyes and held my mother’s hand.