Saving Jamie Hamilton
Prologue
The machines beeped a steady reminder that his heart was still beating, but only just. The faint scent of bleach and something more sickening; death cultivated in my lungs like smoke, how could anyone stand to breath this in all day?
It was a struggle to get the window on the far wall open, the only source of fresh air had been shut tight for probably months, no wonder he was sick. Peering out of the tiny window I watched the road with keen eyes, only the occasional ambulance screaming down the street disturbed the peace. All was silent in the cancer ward at Saint Joseph's hospital.
Turning away from the window and casting my eyes onto the figure of a boy, half dead and grey with disease, laying perfectly still on the mechanical bed. Jamie Hamilton read on his hospital bracelet acute leukemia, stage four was also typed in neat letters.
The room was empty, save for medical equipment, no get well soon cards, or hope you feel better flowers for the third and least favorite Hamilton son, no visitors for the least important member of a very important family. Jamie was all alone, and dying.
And it had been that way for months now.
The signs of an ex-rebel were there. That ill-advised tattoo on his forearm next to where the IV stuck out of his skin was scribbled in loopy letters "Happiness is a choice." And those pale scar marks where he'd fallen off his skate board years earlier marred his otherwise flawless skin. The cancer came suddenly and disrupted his life, he was going to go to college, he was going to grow up one day and be an artist, but now it didn't even look like he'd live to be eighteen.
I watched his chest struggle to rise and fall with each breath, even with my keen hearing I could hardly make out his faint heartbeat, it sounded like a hummingbird; erratic, even panicked, not that of a seemingly sleeping seventeen year old boy. His skin was pulled tight over his skeletal frame, bones curved and brittle, naturally thick dark hair long gone from the endless hours of chemotherapy.
Jamie Hamilton had shouldered a much older man's suffering, and it wore on his face.
But that would all change tonight, Jamie, my mate though he did not know it yet, would suffer no more after today.
He was helpless as a lamb, unaware and scarily ill, I doubt he even felt my canines until they were already sunk into his pale flesh, and the wolf was coursing through his veins.
It was a struggle to get the window on the far wall open, the only source of fresh air had been shut tight for probably months, no wonder he was sick. Peering out of the tiny window I watched the road with keen eyes, only the occasional ambulance screaming down the street disturbed the peace. All was silent in the cancer ward at Saint Joseph's hospital.
Turning away from the window and casting my eyes onto the figure of a boy, half dead and grey with disease, laying perfectly still on the mechanical bed. Jamie Hamilton read on his hospital bracelet acute leukemia, stage four was also typed in neat letters.
The room was empty, save for medical equipment, no get well soon cards, or hope you feel better flowers for the third and least favorite Hamilton son, no visitors for the least important member of a very important family. Jamie was all alone, and dying.
And it had been that way for months now.
The signs of an ex-rebel were there. That ill-advised tattoo on his forearm next to where the IV stuck out of his skin was scribbled in loopy letters "Happiness is a choice." And those pale scar marks where he'd fallen off his skate board years earlier marred his otherwise flawless skin. The cancer came suddenly and disrupted his life, he was going to go to college, he was going to grow up one day and be an artist, but now it didn't even look like he'd live to be eighteen.
I watched his chest struggle to rise and fall with each breath, even with my keen hearing I could hardly make out his faint heartbeat, it sounded like a hummingbird; erratic, even panicked, not that of a seemingly sleeping seventeen year old boy. His skin was pulled tight over his skeletal frame, bones curved and brittle, naturally thick dark hair long gone from the endless hours of chemotherapy.
Jamie Hamilton had shouldered a much older man's suffering, and it wore on his face.
But that would all change tonight, Jamie, my mate though he did not know it yet, would suffer no more after today.
He was helpless as a lamb, unaware and scarily ill, I doubt he even felt my canines until they were already sunk into his pale flesh, and the wolf was coursing through his veins.
♠ ♠ ♠
New story. Does the layout make it hard to read? I can't tell.