The angels are what first caught my eye.

            From the darkness of the hallway where I stood, they seemed to glow like stars. Their luminosity only served to highlight the emptiness that filled the room.

            They sat silently with their hands stretching out towards nothing, their backs as bare as a human’s, if not more so. Each of their tiny faces was frozen in a mask of cherubic melancholy, lamenting their earthbound state. It seemed odd to me at the time, that out of all those angels, not one could fly. Later on, I learned that was how the girl intended it to be. She was only human after all; she couldn’t risk them flying away and leaving her like everyone else had.

            I paused and stepped closer to the thin strip of window in the door. The girl was there, still as the pictures around her. She sat on the floor, looking up through the window to the infinite outside world. Her back was to me, and her shadow stretched languidly across the tile, the opposite of the aching stiffness throughout her body. Everything had been colored a shade of winter’s-day-grey solitude by the moonlight. I felt myself weakening, my interest in the girl become stronger by the second. There were no words the save me. There had been plenty earlier while I was in the in the operating room. In the wake of such a commotion, the silence screamed at me, mocked me. I resigned myself to my curiosity and stepped into the room.

            The loneliness shrunk a bit.

            I worked my way over to her side (the sadness and the memories crowded around me, making it difficult to walk) and painstakingly lowered my aching body next to hers. I looked down at my new companion, taking in her stubborn mouth, lemon wedge eyes, and wiry hair. Her arms were folded and her hands were jammed into her armpits in an attempt to keep them from shaking. She was nervous.

            Eighteen minutes later, a nurse came bustling in, all sympathetic business and matronly confidence. My companion didn’t move.

            The nurse hovered over us; her large bosom and derrière making her seem like some strange, human-sized flightless bird. She twittered about for a moment, building up the courage to deliver the news my companion had been waiting for.

            No, her friend couldn’t play with her anymore.

            Why? Well, she needed her rest. They both did, as a matter of fact.

            It was too late to see her right now, but maybe in the morning she’d be allowed to visit. Operations were very hard on the body.

            It was all lies, and all three of us knew it. Despite the obviousness, the nurse-bird plowed right on with her spiel to the very end. It was almost admirable, in a pathetic kind of way. She was like a captain, sinking slowly into the bottomless depths with his beloved ship, bass-heavy instrumental roaring in the background.  

            After murmuring more worthless assurances, she left. I looked back down. The mouth quivered, and the eyes squeezed themselves into slits and began leaking big, fat droplets. The only thing that hadn’t changed was her quivering in her hands. But she wasn’t nervous anymore.

            It made her mad to think that the nurse thought she could lie to her. It was worthless now and it would be worthless in the morning when she would ask to see her friend. The girl bitterly wondered why they felt they had to dance around the subject in such way. Maybe they thought death would bother her.

            It wouldn’t.

            They’d be lying about her soon enough.

            I watched these thoughts play out on her face before they settled and hardened into a flawless mask. It covered everything but the look of resignation in her eyes. I was surprised. Not many people, let alone children, accept that they are going to die so easily.

            The old little girl stood and stiffly made her way over and onto the bed. She her side and lay down, and began to think about little things to distract herself. She wanted to believe that it would hurt less if she didn’t think about it.

            It was 2006.

            She was almost eleven.

            Her best friend was dead.

            She pressed her hands over her eyes and shook.

            I wanted to reach out, take her hands into mine, and tell her that I was sorry. That her friend was with me and I would take good care of her. I wanted to, truly. However, it’s forbidden. I was forced to leave her to her cancerous thoughts and that horrible aloneness.

            As I walked away, the soul I carried in my arms grew heavier with each pearlescent tear that dropped from her face. She was still wearing the operating gown they’d given her and her hairless soul shook with the absence of her body’s warmth.

            She was so heavy, but the young ones always are. They have the biggest dreams after all.

***

            Later on, I came to associate the old little girl with that terrible, shaking loneliness. It followed her wherever she went, even after she met the boy. I suppose that was why I remembered her all those days later.

            Like me, she never truly belonged to this world.