at the ICU. They almost—almost—look as distressed and scared as the moms and dads down at the oncology ward. Almost.
Although no one will ever look as distressed as Mr. and Mrs. Dlamini, when Sizwe died right in the room next door to me a few months ago. He got an infection after a bone-marrow transplant and it led to septicemia, which is the worst kind of infection you can get. That’s what Sister Mary told me anyway. I didn’t know Sizwe for very long, but he was cool and I was sad when he died. I couldn’t go to his funeral, though, so we all had a little funeral here in the hospital. We lit candles and said a prayer, and I feel really bad sometimes about what I prayed for. I know I was supposed to be praying for Sizwe and stuff, like praying that he went to heaven and that. But I was really praying for myself. I was praying that I didn’t die too like him, and that my mom and dad didn’t have to scream like that and crumple to the floor, and they didn’t have to call a doctor to give my mom a sedative like they had to give Mrs. Dlamini. Sister Mary always says that losing a child is unnatural. That you should never have to bury your own child. She says she cries for days when she loses a child in her ward. I wonder why she works in the pediatric oncology department then, if it upsets her so much.
Monty and I couldn’t knock on the wall that night. He’s feeling very weak today and is in a lot of pain. I hope he doesn’t die either. I would be really sad if he died and it would seriously suck. We have been in and out of hospitals together for a while now. But I’m trying not to think about that. Instead, I’m thinking about the Christmas lights and how I wished I could go outside and see them for real. I don’t get to see much stuff for real. I only get to see things from behind a window. Except that time we all went to the zoo together. This charitable organization arranged it for us all—well, for the cancer kids who were allowed out of the hospital. They even opened the zoo an hour earlier for us so that we could all see the animals without other people being there. It was very kind of the zoo people. The lady who ran the zoo lost her mom to cancer or something like that, and now she ran these things where cancer patients could come out and look at the animals. I got to play with a lion cub, which was pretty much the coolest thing ever. Monty and I joked that maybe we should steal it and smuggle it out with us. We could keep it as a pet in the ward and no one would notice. The only thing I didn’t like about the zoo was the panda bear. He looked so sad and lonely. Panda bears are actually only found in China, and China is like a million miles away from South Africa, and I wondered if maybe he was missing his family back home. After that I decided that zoos weren’t so cool. That no animal deserves to be locked up like that and look at the world through a pane of glass, like I do. For some reason I was thinking about that panda a lot when I looked at the Christmas lights. Maybe it was because spending Christmas, or my birthday, in hospital is literally the worst ever. But I guess I’ve kind of got used to it. The nights before Christmas and your birthday are usually the worst, because my parents can only come on the actual day, so the night before, it’s only me. They used to take turns to sleep in the hospital with me when this first all started. But after a year of doing it, and me getting older, we all agreed it wasn’t necessary anymore. I was used to being in the hospital, and now that I’d gotten to know all the staff and other kids, I kind of had a family here in a way.
I walked away from the window. Looking at the lights was starting to irritate my eyes. But I couldn’t go to sleep either. Mostly because there was a constant stream of business in the