Window Washing

*sprits**sprits*, *wipe*
Window number 65
*sprits**sprits*, *wipe*
Window number 66

On the other side of window 66, a girl, a teenager, sits in her hospital bed, alone. Just as the window washer is about to move on, a fairly large group of people file into the girl's room, catching his eye. The girl's eyes dart around the room, clearly troubled by the large group of doctors standing at the foot of her bed, all looking rather grim. The glass was thin, so much so that the man could hear everyone in the room.

"Emily, how are you feeling this morning?"

"Same as yesterday, why?"

The doctor in question, a man in his mid thirties, with dark brown hair and broad shoulders, began to shift uncomfortably, unsure of what to say. Another doctor stepped forward.

"Emily, you remember those tests we performed yesterday, right?"

The girl nodded.

"Well, we have the results..."

The girl's entire body stiffened. She had been waiting for the past 16 hours for this. She hadn't slept, thinking that she could catch up on sleep when she was dead, troubled by the question of when that would be.

"Emily, we're so sorry... you have Hodgkin Lymphoma."

The girl let out a shaky breath. Suddenly everything started to spin, and she fell back onto the bed, and fell unconscious. The group of doctors rushed to her bedside to help her. The window washer grew still. His wiper and washing fluid were both in his hands, and they slipped, and fell down to the sidewalk several stories below. The man's memories came flooding back to him.

He had been sitting with his wife in the hospital room, talking about packing up finally and moving once she was admitted from the hospital, when a group of doctors, not unlike the doctors who gave that girl the bad news, entered his wife's room. He remembered the look in their eyes, when they weren't looking around the room trying to avoid his gaze, that is. The window washer's wife died of Hodgkin Lymphoma some 10 years earlier, in that very hospital. The man's gaze fell upon the door of the teenager's room. "Room 229". It was the same room, the very same room where his wife had died 10 years earlier.

******

Two weeks later, the window washer was sitting on a bench in front of the hospital, waiting for the bus to take him home. He turned, and locked eyes with the girl who he had seen, two weeks earlier, being given the worst news of her life. The man stood, and approached her.

"Excuse me, miss..."

"Yes?"

"I wash the windows here, and.... and two weeks ago, I saw you."

The girl gave him a look of confusion, unsure of what he meant. The man then said,

"I lost my wife to it, and all my prayers are for you."

The girl began to cry. The man, unsure of what to do, fished a tissue out of his pocket and reached out to give it to her. As he extended his arm the girl lunged forward and wrapped her arms around the window washer, sobbing uncontrollably. The man pulled the girl close, and the two spent several moments in that position, in front of the hospital.

******

The two stayed in touch afterwards. One year, seven months and six days later, Emily died of Hodgkin Lymphoma.

THE END

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