I met Darla Walters one a gloomy April morning in a particular place. It storming outside and thunder cackled with anguish across the indigo horizon. Rain sprayed on the thick windows of my room and the hall lights flickered on and off every time lighting lit up the room with a crack.

I had group therapy that day, which was a given time when us cancer patients would gather together and pour out our fears and thoughts about being cursed with a plague that was killing us every day, hour, and second. The sessions were usually depressing. Most of my fellow patients in the St. Francis’s Children Hospital’s Cancer Treatment Ward talked about the likelihood of death, since we were all knocking on the door of the Grimm Reaper.

Today through when I rolled out of bed my hair crumpled and my breathing short, I was not in the mood to listen people ask if they died would they go to heaven or would they get sucked into a black hole of stupor. Their souls bounding off the starry walls of death, lost in chasms nothingness. When this question was asked my therapist, Mrs. Brittney, would tells us every time, that of course there is a land where Jesus embraced his brothers and sisters. After Mrs. Brittney revels that to us for the fifty sixth time (not that I’m counting) Mary Jane would usually burst into tears, and Bald Josh would start praying, his hands cradling his cheeks.


I was pleasantly surprised though this morning when my nurse informed me that because of the howling wind and fierce downpour, Mrs. Brittney wasn’t able drive to the hospital for group therapy. I was ecstatic for a moment. Thinking I’d be able to curl back into bed, in a cocoon of covers, and go back to sleep with the melodic sound of rain hamming against my window. That dream was quickly terminated though when my nurse informed me that the other cancer patients and I were going to attend group therapy on the bottom floor of hospital, which was the ‘Behavior Central.’ That was the sugar coated name for it though to lure sick patients into a web of needles and padded rooms. To us cancer patients the bottom floor was an abyss of crazies. The Mental Hospital housed people who had Schizophrenia to Multi-Personality Disorder. I could only imagine what their therapy session consisted of, and I don’t believe they spend their whole hour and a half talking about ominous thoughts of death, and cancer rotting them to dust and bones.

I didn’t argue with my nurse through, I slipped on my required lemon yellow scrubs and a Fall out Boy band t-shirt. I then filed into the colorful cancer ward lobby where Mary Jane was fiddling with her oxygen tank and Juliet was being rolled around in her wheel chair.

As we all walked to the bottom floor, I learned that to even get into the mental hospital we had to pass though impenetrable doors marked with ten number key codes. These doors were heavily guarded with men wearing unreadable expressions and carrying guns and tasers. I felt like I left the hospital behind on the fourth floor and walked into a prison that housed lethal criminals.

The nurse left us cancer patients once we crossed over into the crazy house’s threshold, where we were instantly engulfed by more pail faced security guards, and the thick smell of belch.

We just stood there for a while in the white walled lobby. The chairs, the countertops, and even the nurse’s scrubs were pail and drained of blush. Gray outlined everything, and I felt uncomfortable standing in a pail colorless world that clashed with my yellow scrubs. By the look of this place it was pretty obvious you weren’t support to be comfortable, and you weren’t supposed to feel any warmth from the dreary gray interior. The feeling this place gave off reminded me of an icy crypt, and it just gave me the creeps.

I couldn’t be more relived when a young man no older than me ambled over to us and greeted us with open arms. He had light brown skin kissed by the sun, and transparent blue eyes had turned white under the light. His body was outlined with thick bulging muscles, and I would bet my money that he could knock a kid unconscious. His size and build probably didn’t require him a carry a taser. He also wasn’t wearing scrubs like the other staff members, he just wore a plain blue t-shirt that stuck to his chest like a second skin, and jeans that were destroyed and frayed with holes poking through the seams.

“Hello,” he greeted us with a paralyzing smile. “My names Adrian, I’m the behavior center’s group therapist. The other kids are already in the therapy room so…this way.”

Adrian led our group of eight to the therapy room, which was small and lined with plush inky black sofas and (to my disbelief) colorful beanbags. The room was filled to the brim with patients in lime green scrubs. They all look rugged and had angry looks on their faces. Adrian told us to find an open seat, and we obeyed. I headed to the back of the room and sunk into a leather couch next to a boy with scars trailing up his arms.

“Did Darla show up?” Adrian asked, as he plopped down in a cushioned chair marinated in rips.

“No,” answered a boy to my left with sandy blonde hair and haunting black eyes. “She’s probably hiding somewhere reading-

Before the boy could finish, the door to the therapy room tore open, making a couple cancer patients jump. A girl glided into the room like a ghost. Her auburn hair was braded down her back, and her golden brown eyes were framed with thick eyelashes. She didn’t wear the required lime green scrubs, but a hospital bracelet did hang limply from one of her wrists. I couldn’t help but notice she was beautiful.

“Darla you’re late,” Adrian said as I watched the girl slide into a seat next to the boy with the blonde hair. “I’m going to have to deduct points for your behavioral chart for your tardy-

“Go ahead,” the girl said her voice light and fragile like a feather. “It’s not like I have any points anyway.”
“And I should probably take points away since you’re not wearing the required scrubs,” Adrian continued, not liking that the girl, Darla, interrupted him. “But I know that nobody can make you wear them.”


“That’s correct,” The girl said in a sing-song voice, her golden eyes glittering with amusement. “I’m above the rules Adrian, being here for two years gives me the privilege to do whatever I want.”

“Sure it does,” the boy sitting next to Darla scoffed. “I’ve been here almost as long as you have, and you don’t see me strutting in here like I just walked out of a Hot Topic catalog.”
“Now did you say that or did your imagery boyfriend over their say that, Sebastian,” Darla giggled, as she pointed to a vacant beanbag on the other side of the room. “I forgot his name.”
Sebastian just glared at Darla, his black eyes squinted together and his lip twitching with resentment. He clenched his fist tightly together, turning his knuckles a pail white. He glanced towards the beanbag and his lips folded into a frown, as he stared at empty air.
Like Sebastian, Adrian was livid, as he started down the bubbly girl. Darla though wasn’t even a tad bit affected by the piercing dagger like glare from her therapist.
“Darla you know better than to make fun of someone’s disorder. Would you like it if Sebastian made fun of you for trying to kill yourself?”
“No I wouldn’t mind. If it makes you feel any better though Adrian I’ll apology to Seb,” Darla complied with a smirk. “Sebastian I am so sorry that I made fun of you having Schizophrenia. And tell what’s-his-face that I’m sorry I brought him out of the imagery world and-
“That’s enough Darla,” Adrian said, stopping Darla before she turned this apology in a catastrophe.
“I accept you apology Walters,” Sebastian abided, with scorn dripping off of his words. “And so dose Alec.” Sebastian then gestured to the empty beanbag, where this person supposedly sat.
Darla just chucked under her breath, and stifled at curt wave to the empty beanbag. A smile then tugged on Sebastian’s lips, and his anger he once held towards Darla deflated, along with the unemotional mask that covered his face.
“Now by dear friend Adrian, who are all these people?” Darla asked, delight tickling her voice. “Are they in a new program called ‘Be a Mental Freak for Day?’ Because if you’ll are welcome to the behavioral ward of hell!”
“Don’t say hell Darla,” Adrian said with a warning tone.
“We’ve been over this Adrian hell not a cuss word. It’s more of a… place, where I will probably end up. And even if it is a cuss word, it’s not like I’m swearing on a stack of bibles.”
“Can we please get on with therapy Adrian?” the boy that sat next to me asked. “These people don’t want to hear Darla talk.”
Adrian opened his mouth to speak, but he was beat out of words as Darla cut herself into the conversation.
“And what, would they rather hear you talk Eddie? I doubt cancer patients want to hear about your (insect cuss word hear please) life.”
“Darla, now that is a cuss word!” Adrian exclaimed inching to the edge of his seat.
No one was listening to Adrian’s outburst though because Mary Jane mustered up some courage to speak.
“How did you know we’re cancer patients?” she asked.
“The oxygen tank gave it away sweet heart,” Darla said, her voice sticky like honey.
Darla then did something unexpected, she turned to be. Her gold eyes met my mercury, and a smile touched her lips as she started at me. Her eyes then scanned over me before they landed on my face again. That’s when she shot me a wink before she turned her head back to Adrian, pretending that she never checked me out.
“Okay let’s get back on track,” Adrian said, trying gain control of the group. “Now last week we were talking about how Carrington is on new medication.”
Adrian motioned to a girl sitting on a green beanbag. She was a frail girl, with thick straw colored hair that was tied back by an elastic band. She had purple bags hanging under her eyes, and her lime green scrubs practically feel off of her body.
“Oh please Adrian I don’t feel like doing this today,” Darla groaned as she tossed her hair back, her braid smacking her in the face.
“Then leave,” Adrian said indifferently. “And face the punishment of sleeping in the hallway tonight, because if you’re too unstable to not even sit though an hour and a half of group, then you’re too unstable to sleep in your own room with no supervision.”
“I didn’t mean I wanted to leave,” Darla expressed, a look of horror overcoming her like a wave at the thought of sleeping in the hall. “I just mean I don’t want to talk about Carrington’s new medication, that’s boring. No offence to you Carrington, I’ve very happy they are trying to eliminate that nasty second personality, but we should learn about the cancer kids. When is their going to be another chance to know what it is like to have cancer and live on the fourth floor?”
Silence enveloped the room for a second. All you could hear was the faint growling of the air conditioning kicking on and the faint hum of talking coming from outside the small therapy room. After a few seconds all the kids in the lime green scrubs stared nodding their heads, agreeing with Darla.
“Fall out Boy,” Darla then exclaimed, her voice bringing me out of my trance.
“Me?” I asked, pointing to my chest.
“Yes,” Darla laughed, hilarity burning in her voice. “You are wearing a Fall out Boy t-shirt over your scrubs aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
Darla just smiled, showing rows of teeth that resembled sharpened diamonds. I then felt like some on grabbed my chest and twisted it like they were ringing out a wet wash rag. She was so beautiful, how she could light up a room with her cheesy taunts and jokes in this morbid and somber place. She wasn’t affected by the depression and darkness that draped over this gray building. She had strength and beauty, and I could help but admire that.
“Well I like you t-shirt,” Darla said. “I’ve been in this prison so long that I haven’t been able to get their new album, is it good?”
“It’s great, awesome accompaniment and sick vocals. That Patrick Stump can sing.”
“He sure can.” Darla smiled. “You know don’t look very sick Fall out Boy. You’re the only cancer kid in here that has hair. You’re not missing any limps, and you’re not lugging around a tank.” Darla observed, as she pointed to Mary Jane with her oxygen plugs up her nose.
“Darla what did I just say about respecting other people’s health? This boy is obligated to tell you anything,” Adrian reimbursed his voice sour.
“Its fine,” I said, turning back Darla. “Go on.”

“Okay,” Darla said her voice lighter then sunlight. “Why do you look so healthy, so radiant?”

“Because I’m not that sick…yet”
“I said that when I came in here two years ago, only to realize weeks later that I’m very sick,” Darla reviled.
“I mean that I haven’t been at this hospital very long,” I explained. “I just found out two weeks ago that I have cancer. My cancer in only causing me a smidge about of pain in my abdomen at the moment, but it is said to get worse. I start chemotherapy in a couple days.”
To be honest I couldn’t believe I was talking. Usually in group therapy I lean back, and got comfortable as I listen to my fellow teen patients exploit their fears, and cry into the palms of their hands, before Mrs. Brittany gives out tissues. Yet, here, in the colorless Metal Hospital that smelled like hand sanitizer and cough syrup, I felt comfortable telling my story. And to be honest, the only reason I was letting myself become the center of attention in this dysfunctional group therapy sessions was because of my attraction to Darla Walters.
“So what kind of cancer do you have?”
“Darla,” Adrian hissed. “You’re not the therapist.”
“I said its fine,” I told Adrian. “I have stage two exoctire pancreatic cancer.”
“Now I’m no doctor but that’s pretty fatal… if I’m not mistaken.”
“Yeah,” I muttered with a shrug. “I’ll probably die; the survival rate is under ten percent.”
“Oh Patch,” Juliet said shocked. “I’m so sorry.”
I shot the girl in the wheel chair as small smile, and I turned back to Darla to hear her say, “You don’t seem afraid of death.”
“I’m not, it happens to everyone naturally.”
“Well I’m glad you had the self control to wait,” Darla said, and I knew she was referring to what Adrian mentioned earlier about her trying to commit suicide.
“You are talking as if your dead,” Juliet then pointed out, her face tried.
“I sometimes wish I was dead,” Darla exploited.
“Why?” I asked, my curiosity about Darla reaching its pinnacle.
“She won’t answer that question,” Sebastian chimed in, sounding board.
“That is my little piece of mystery Fall out Boy,” Darla reviled, a smug looked plastered on her face. “Everyone has them. Why does Seb see this boy named Alec? Why does Carrington have an extra personality? Why did Eddie’s Dad use to beat him? Why is Damon over their blind?” Darla asked, pointing to Damon who sat alone wearing tinted knock off Ray Bands over his eyes. “Why do you have cancer Fall out Boy?”
“Yet, these people have questions that can’t truly be answered,” Adrian butted in. “You can tell us yours Darla, and you know if you do, you could get out of here.”
“I don’t want to leave just yet,” Darla said to no one unparticular. He voice was beyond limits and as hazy and limp like a cloud. Her eyes seemed to become two reflective windows of watery glass. For that moment she seemed to be looked in the future, trying to uncover something that no one in this room could remotely understand.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because Fall out Boy, this place is better than the real world. My life beyond this place is a wasteland of lost dreams. In this place I feel like I’m away from my crappy life.”
Silence engulfed the room for a second time, as Darla’s words stung us all like a bee sting.
“You know what, I think we should have an open discussion today,” Adrian offered, running his hands though this shot cropped brown hair, breaking the silence.
“What’s the topic?” Sebastian acquired, as he lay down on the couch, his head resting in Darla’s lap.
“How about death?”
“Oh please no,” I commented.

“What’s wrong about death Fall out Boy?” Darla asked. “Don’t want to talk about something you’re not afraid of?”
“No, every day we talk about death upstairs. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“Then what do you want to talk about Fall out Boy?” Darla asked, as she started to play with Sebastian’s liquid gold locks in her lap.
“Life,” I said with ease. “The empathy of our sadness.”
A thick clash of murmurs then hovered over the room as the conversation flare up like someone poured gas over and open flame. Adrian then had to usher everyone into a capped silence.
“One at a time, you know the drill,” Adrian enforced, as he curled up like at cat in his chair, flinging the clipboard in the floor. “Talk.”
“I’ll start,” Carrington obliged, raising her bony arm in the air. Adrian gave her a tiny nod before she began to speak. “To me life is cut short because I can be two different people. Sometimes Carolina, my second personality, can just come out of nowhere and take over and I have no control over it, and when she takes charge it’s like I black out and when I wake up…I learned Carolina-or I- hurt people. I don’t get to live a whole life because Carolina takes up so much of it and screws it up.”
“Thank you Carrington for sharing that,” Adrian said, his voice clam and serene. “Who’s next?”
Sebastian raised his hand and spoke next.
“Life is a thin as glass, and it can break and turn bloody.”
“Life unfortunately doesn’t seem to care what we want because I was born blind,” Damon said, cold and calculating, speaking for the first time.
“And I have cancer, but we still have to live while we can. My doctors have told me I might have a year left. I’m not even eighteen yet,” I alleged, my voice strong and candor, even if I was talking and weighting the time of my death in my palm, and for the first time I finally confessed it to myself that my life was going to my cut short, I finally believed my own words, and I accepted it.
“I have a few months left,” Mary Jane gulped.
“Any day I can go now,” Juliet muttered, her hands twisted around the mental handles of her wheel chair.
“You guys may have issues but they can’t kill you like cancer can. Upstairs we talk about what happens after death, yet we are so busy contemplating what comes after we have left this world, we haven’t got to live. We can’t fear death,” I said, with sigh.
“Adrian…your fired,” Darla exclaimed, glee inked in her words.
“Excuse me?” Adrian asked his eye narrowing.
“This boy has moved me!” Darla exclaimed moving Seb’s matt of blonde curls off of her lap so she could stand. Sebastian’s head landed with a thump again the aging leather skin of the couch, and a ‘hey’ left his lips. Darla then stood in the center of the room. I couldn’t help but notice that she glowed like a star swept across the black blotted sky of heaven. She looked so golden, and I couldn’t understand why a girl blessed with such natural beauty would want to take her life, and end everything she was given.
“What’s your name Fall out Boy?”
“Patch Collins,” I said, my eyes never leaving Darla’s face
“Well Patch Collins, my name is Darla Walters, and I think you taught me the meaning of living.”
“I think this is about to get deep from a girl shallower then a kiddy pool,” Sebastian murmured.
“Shut up Seb!” shouted Darla as she whirled around to face, the boy spread out of the tiny leather couch.
“That wasn’t me,” Seb said lazily as he glanced up at his friend. “That was Alec.”
“As I was saying” Darla continued. “I’ve been in this dreadful place disobeying rules, hiding in corners and supply closets, my nose up a book, pretending I was anyone but Darla Walters because of my past. Yet, you Fall out Boy, you aren’t ashamed who you are. I think you having cancer have made you stronger.”
“Why did you try to commit suicide Darla Walter?” I asked.
She didn’t speak for a moment. She just started at me, her eyes as bright as lamp lights, and she contemplated how she should word her moment of weakness. After a minute or two, her lip twitched, and she sucked in her breath, and said, “Because I played life like a game, Patch Collins and I thought I lost.”
Darla reached feebly to the collar of her gray band tee and her fingers latched on to something. I observed Darla reel the object out of her t-shirt. She pulled out a necklace and unhooked her fingers from the tiny object so it could dangle against her cotton shirt. It was a thin silver chain with a angle hanging limply on the end of the necklace. The angle was as tiny as a penny and it was silver with a blue gem in the center of the angle’s chest. The gem, from my understanding was a sapphire, and it was a yawning midnight blue that resembled waves tumbling in the deepest oceans. The small charm seriously was breath taking as it pulsed against Darla’s chest.
“See Patch, my mother gave me a necklace before I came in here two years ago. She gave her most cherished piece of jewel, because she was so ashamed of me that her only daughter was a nut job. A loon that got sent to a mental hospital, so she said while I was in this place, I could hold this angel, and pry god for forgiveness for the sin I almost committed.”
“I think God has already forgiven you Darla Walters. He forgives all, or so I’ve heard. The bible says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
“Are you religious Fall out Boy?” Darla asked.
“No, not at all,” I said, a laugh breezing though my lips. “But I’ve been reading the bible lately because if I am going to die soon and meet God, I better touch up on his book.”
Right when I finished, the door of the therapy room opened with a ear bleeding screech. A nurse thin graying hair and liver spots on her skin entered the room. A wide mouth grin stretched across her face and she pink scrubs that resembled a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. I recognized the women as Judith, one of the nurses in the cancer ward. She was a sweet old woman that loved to sneak us lollypops and let us stay up late watching old 80’s movies in the game room. I was surprised to see her though in the gloomy interior of the mental hospital.
“Hello Adrian.” Judith said, her southern accent scraping against her words.
“Judith, how are you?”
“Just swell. I’m just here to pick up the survivors.” Judith said, (survivors meaning us cancer kids). “It’s time for their breakfast and some need to get blood drawn and take their medication before it gets too late.”
“Oh please don’t make them go,” Darla pleaded. She was still standing in the dead center of the group therapy circle, her hands glued to her side. “This is the best therapy session I’ve ever had.”
There was truth swimming in her word, but Judith just peered over at the girl, and shook her head. She probably thought the girl was a nutter, standing in the middle of the room requesting the shadowy presents of a bunch of dying kids on their last breath. Judith probably assumed Darla was making fun of us, and that’s why she herded us out our there quickly like a shepherd.
I didn’t leave right away though. I watched as Mary Jane skipping out with a little pep in her step and Bald Josh wheel Juliet out. The other cancer patients I have haven’t made acquaintance with followed but no one acknowledged the presents of the kids wearing lime green scrubs. No one uttered a ‘good bye,’ the cancer patients just left the room quietly, carrying their last days with them.
“Are you going with them?” Eddie asked me.
I just started at him, not responding, I examined the scars that were permanently itched around his eyes and his wrists. He seemed unaffected by his grotesque appearance. He didn’t mind that his skin was tarnished with ugly gashes. He was still just Eddie with or without the scars, and I would still be Patch with or without cancer. That’s just how life revolved around us, tying us together, we could climb to the top of a mountain of success or die trying; and I was okay with dying as long as I went fighting.
“Yeah, I’m leaving,” I finally said.
I stood up, my butt leaving a clear indication in the couch. I turned towards Sebastian and looked into his coal black eyes that had swallowed up his pupil. I turned towards Damon and gave him a curt nod even if he couldn’t see me. I gave Carrington a smile; in hope that her medication will aid her in getting out of this white walled nightmare. Then I turned to Darla, capturing her imagine in a mental picture so I would never forget the girl that showed me you could crack jokes and force a laugh out in the most melancholy sisuations.
“Come to my room sometime. We can listen to that new Fall out Boy album.”
“I’m not allowed to leave the ward,” Darla explained with a grimace.
“If you start behaving maybe you can visit him. He seems to be rubbing his good nature off on you,” Adrian said.
“Oh please Adrian,” Darla huffed. “No one can change or rub off on the epic Darla Walters.”
I smiled a full smile that showed all my teeth and created wrinkles beneath the curve of my lips. I then sauntered over to the wooden door and my figures curled around the base of the doorknob. I was about to open it when Darla’s voice reached my ears. It was soft and withheld thousands of emotions that blurred together like a spinning kaleidoscope.
“Patch just please don’t die before I see you again.”
“I’ll try not to,” I said, before I left and flung myself back into the life of a cancer patient.
That day I learned that the bottom floor didn’t hold a bunch for lunatics that wore straightjackets and got injected with calming drugs, but people who were so broken that you couldn’t pick up all their pieces. And even if you managed to fit some of their pieces back together again, they would never be the same, because they will always have that hole in their heart. That day Darla Walters gave me a contagious type of hope and I gave her forgiveness. A type a forgiveness that would help her get out of St. Francis’s Mental Hospital, so she could give others the hope that she had given me that day in group therapy.