I Gave Away the Birthday Chocolates, Then the Screaming Started

The lights were too bright, the air too cold, the walls too pale. Machines hummed and beeped in rhythms that sounded like a language I did not want to learn. IV bags hung like sad balloons. Tubes ran from small bodies into equipment that looked far too large.

Brandon was in the first room.

He looked tiny in the bed, swallowed by sheets, his skin the continue reading …