fir-tree, moth-eaten, sun-burst.

It was the day before the first day of classes in the winter semester, first year, Mount Sinai Hospital, 600 University Avenue, eleventh floor, room 1121. She had walked cautiously through the sterile halls, feeling nervous as she approached his room. It was the first time she had seen him since she started University, and although they kept in touch while she was at school and she knew their dynamic would not have changed, this was an unfamiliar setting for their friendship. And it terrified her. Through her last year and a half of high school, she was aware of almost everything that was going on in Peter’s life, but no story, no description, no amount of words could have ever made his life as real to her as it was in those last few steps before she reached the door to his room.

Room 1121, eleventh floor, 600 University Avenue, Mount Sinai Hospital. Hospitals were places where people came to die.

It was something she had always believed, ever since she was a little girl. No one ever came back from the hospital—not for good, anyways. And as she stood around the corner from Peter’s room, she felt like a little girl again—scared of the unknown, unwilling to move until she was sure it was safe, and stuck in the notion that this place—these walls, these halls, these rooms—was a place of no return.