Throw me shards of rose glass, paint red blossoms on my skin

2.00 to 5.00 on Friday afternoons were now spent looking listlessly out of glass paned windows. The onset of winter had been slower to come but much harder to hit, ripping the leaves off branches and swirling them against the ground with a crazed need, tearing thin veins down from the sky that seemed to be bleeding out the cold trapped within in a torrent, flowing over the remnants of the frost bitten city with street lights and Christmas tinsel to light the barren streets.

2.00 to 5.00 on Friday afternoons were now spent looking into fading brown eyes, tiny embers of hope still barely kept burning. Silent thoughts long accumulated stirred up as they turned amber eyes milky with confusion and impassiveness. Quirked up lips tugged gently at the sides, no longer moving past a few millimetres at a time as they travelled further and further away from rose, pink cheeks, further and further away from soulful laughter that filled the empty corridors. The laughter remained though, the pastel pink walls throwing back a ghost of what it once was, mocking as they reverberated around the cavernous corridor, now much too large and imposing for the single tray that was wheeled through it for the sole occupant within.

2.00 to 5.00 on Friday afternoons were now spent whispering words of hypocritical encouragement, knelt before the hunched figure curled in a wheelchair, smile fixed yet barely complete as the shards of broken glass were reflected off both pairs of eyes as they talked and laughed, as before and as always as he would say. But the laughter was always a pitch flatter than before, a few bare decibels lower and a few seconds too short as it ended beneath filtered red light through the rose glass skylights.

Vague mentions of a bespectacled boy with a dimpled smile and yellow postcard notes were mentioned, snippets from disjointed conversations, pieced together like fragile broken eggshells quietly put back together. Yet the spark was gone, that moment of sheer, unexplainable and even childlike wishful thinking snuffed as the reply went cold, the yellow postcards petering off and dredging as a second postcard never came, nor a letter to follow. Jongdae knew that a second postcard would never come, neither that nor a third or fourth.

But Lu Han didn’t know. Just as he didn’t know the havoc being wrecked within the confines of his frail frame and pale skin.

----

January passed by in a whirlwind of buds breaking open once more, medical records and tests, filling sheets of meaningless information in a dizzying array of numbers to explain a torn conscience and shattered eyes. These numbers were tucked away in subtle motions, into a back pocket, within vases and buried beneath a mound of others on my table. Still, the blood poured forth from his lips, coughed in hacks as slowly pieces of a ceramic heart left Lu Han, in between wispy breaths and gasps for air. The simple words of the truth confirming his worsening condition Jongdae refused to admit in a thick headed stubborn belief that if he could just ignore the impartial figures, ignore the bland, unflavoured truth they proffered, the slow rip in Lu Han’s patched up soul would be spun whole once more.

But he stood struck dumb and mute as the lights flickered off one by one, revealing a handful to be held in his fist to remain alit, weak and dim.

“I…I’m dying aren’t I?” A nervous laughter to break the tension to be broken yet again by shuddering coughs as Jongdae found himself holding Lu Han up once more, arms wrapped around his narrow shoulders as his body shook and the bleeding took over once more.

----

“Term breaks are in a week. The kids promised they’d be here to see you.”

“Mhm hm.” A simple nod, eyes glazed over to reflect the bare branches of trees through window panes. The singular nods and hums in agreement were now commonplace, in place of quick words and silent pauses never left empty.

Jongdae found lilting words and wind chimes ringing within his ears in an echo, sounds that had long since ended.

A sudden burst of laughter had his head snapping towards the corridors, startled but expectant of small footsteps rushed over the polished linoleum and balled fists pumping in time with pinwheeling legs. But as had been the case for the past few weeks, they were only snatches of past memories blurring the distinction and crossing over to reality. Right now, the faint silhouettes of tiny children running down around the tables, ducking and weaving their small bodies through the gaps in almost uncontrollable joy, seemed somewhat misplaced beneath the rose pink of the skylights.

Because now Jongdae’s gaze went beyond the tumbling of cyan through pink corridors. It caught on the scars along their arms where countless needles had been inserted in and it paused over the permanent marks on their small balled fists from IVF tubes and life support. It hitched, replaying how their laughter, though carefree, was strained and shuttered in with a life lost within the confines of pastel pink walls.

“Hey Jongdae? It’s better if the kids didn’t come. They should spend as much time as they can without being reminded of this place. You should ask them not to visit.” The skein of hardened and smoothed amber was still reflecting the January sun, still aimless and roving as the words were whispered as though in fear of breaking the bubble of silence that had developed.

“Sure, if you really think so. You...”

His sentence was interrupted by sounds of glass against tiles, the crack and shatter followed by a spray as chipped fragments cascaded. There was glass across the floor, glass once tinted a pale rose red now tinged with darkening black amidst shadows painting it crimson. At some point in time, whilst his eyes had been drawn to observe endless corridors and bare entrances, rain had begun pouring forth from steel gray floodgates. The steel pins driven against tempered glass had dislodged a single pane it seemed, its remnants a crystal fractal against pale beige, fanning out from the point of impact.

“Jongdae! Jondgae there’s glass in your palm, it’s bleeding.” There was a hand holding up his palm, touch brittle as it ghosted over his skin.

Almost absentmindedly, Jongdae’s gaze flickered to his palm, roused by Lu Han’s words. There was a single shard of glass just as had been mentioned, barely two centimetres in length, lodged into his palm. The pale pink glass, he noticed, was slowly darkening as the crimson pooled around it to turn a deep red.

“Yeah, yeah I guess it is. It’s fine.”

Almost belatedly, he noticed that the shard was now the colour of Lu Han’s tired lips as words stayed still on his tongue, unmoving.