Chapter 1

The crowd rushed through the skinny sidewalk, overflowing onto the industrious streets, walking side by side with the mechanical beasts. The crowd of people seemed endless from one observing from the towering buildings above them, like grains of sand in a scorching desert, flung across the ground in random locations.  Never staying the same, but scattering themselves along their fellow members of society. All having so many differences, and yet so many similarities. All going to a location, all having a simple objective: To get to their destination. The thought is but a simple concept, making others look hard and tedious. However, as you can imagine, a crowd does not work like this, but instead, works like newton’s cradle. The more spheres you add to the cradle, the more they interfere with each other. The spheres lose energy as it goes along the chain, until finally it releases all of that energy, soaring through the air, until it crashes back to reality, and affects the spheres around it. This is much like the crowd, all interconnected, all trying to perform a simple task, and yet it is interfered by others desires in the crowd.

            Life is much like a crowd, everyone trying to perform a simple task: To be happy, and yet others prevent some people from fulfilling this wish, although on the surface, this may seem like a simple task, as some figure out, is a difficult objective, affected by many factors in a person’s environment, from something as simple as getting to work on time, to more serious influences, such as a death, or an injury. All of these things can affect a person’s decisions, which will affect his environment even more.

            Back to the crowd again, a man, about 6 foot tall and to the name of John, shuffled along through the crowd. He had brown hair, going across his face until it blocked his area of view, to which he would usually wipe to the side, just for it to fall back to its former location. His jeans, torn and faded through overuse, sagged about two inches below the hip, showing a strip of his old and worn out boxers. His shirt, an old black tee shirt, was stained with a various assortment of things, from ketchup, all the way to a fine blue paint.

            John walked along the crowd, trying to blend in as nicely as possible, and not draw attention to himself. He knew that it was hard to keep in a crowd of businessmen when he was unemployed, and trying to get a minimum wage job to support himself. Life was difficult, and it held many obstacles. One of the main ones was to survive in this cold and bitter world. The only thing that he could do is to keep on going too fast food restaurants, and hoping that they would take him in as one of their own, and not judge him on the amount of money that he had, or the clothes that he wore.

            John’s phone went off, sounding a sound similar to that of a door bell. He shoved his hand deep into his pocket, searching for it in the loads of junk that he had in his pocket. He felt through his pocket, feeling all of the pencils and change that he had found on the ground on his way to McDonald's to apply for a job. He finally got a hold of his phone, and gently lifted it from his pocket, careful not to pull anything else out that he might need for later. He answered the phone quickly and unhesitating, not even waiting to see whom it was.

            “Hello, Mr. Harris speaking.” John said, trying to sound sophisticated and well bread, in case it was anyone to real importance.

            “Hello, son.” A voice replied back to him with much less enthusiasm

“Dad!” John said, now feeling embarrassed to what he had just said to his own dad. “What’s going on? Is something wrong?” Discern flooded through John’s system, uneasing him to the point where he slowed down a tad bit.

“Son, we have to talk, all of us do. Just meet me at the hospital down on the intersection of Rain St. and Edgar Dr. Just get here as fast as you can, because there is something you’re your mother and I need to tell you.” John felt very concerned, for never in his life that he could remember had there been a time that his father’s voice had been so strict and stern. As far as he was concerned, his father’s voice had always been very calm and mellow.

“Sure Dad… Is something the matter?” John asked with a genuine curiosity.

“Son, just get here as fast as you can, this is very important.” This time, his voice was not so much stern, rather sympathetic. This worried John, for this was not the father that he had known for so many years, but instead a completely different man. He knew that something was very, very wrong.

John rushed through the crowd, eager to see his father that he had not seen for so very long. It had only been two years since he had saw his father, but it felt like a life time. His father was an elderly man, into his mid forty’s. He had been born and raised in the Deep South, and had carried many things from the south to New York City. He refused to eat anything that was not deep fried or homemade. He had a very thick, southern accent, even for where he had been raised at. He had gray, smooth, hair, nicely cut and groomed. His skin was in excellent condition, about as many wrinkles and creases as of a thirty year old. He looked like a very healthy man at first inspection, but as one went deeper in there observation, one would find the exact opposite.

            John’s dad had awful eating habits. As his wife, Cairn, always said: “He would eat a car if you could fit it into a frying pan.” Because of his origins, he had taken the old traditions of the south, including the unhealthy eating habits. He had not had a meal in his life, it had seemed, that something was not fried. His motto in life had always been: “If it is not fried, it is not food.”

John maneuvered through the crowd, receiving many insults and comments as he pushed people out of his way in attempt to get to the hospital. McDonalds could wait, what he needed to do now was get to the hospital. His heart pounded as all the thoughts and emotions raced through his head: “What if he has pneumonia, and is going to die… What if…” He tried to get his mind of the topic, but all attempts failed, every time he tried to forget, always resulted in him relating it to something that his dad and him used to do. 

For the next thirty minutes John raced towards the hospital, shoving through the endless crowd of pedestrians filling the skinny sidewalks. What felt like years, was only but minutes of suffering emotional stress. Life up to this point in his life had been easy going, a very normal life as an unemployed citizen, getting free welfare every month, not having a care in the world. But today, all of that was going to change. His life’s foundation would be shattered, forcing him to put the pieces back together.

He arrived at the hospital at about 1 a ’clock in the afternoon. The sun had disappeared, and instead, took the form of rain clouds. Tiny freckles of light peaked through these clouds for mere seconds, only to be devoured by the monstrous clouds. Each time this occurred, a new beam of light would shine through, creating an endless cycle of light and darkness.

The doors swung open, startling him, for he had not expected it. This was the first time coming here since he was at the age of nine years old, when he had an infected cut. My parents did not believe in doctors, for they thought that anything a doctor could do, they could do as equally well. It was only after many months of pestering and begging did I persuade them to bring me to a real hospital. At that point and time, the infection had gone to a critical state, almost entering John’s blood, which would hold lethal consequences.

The hospital doors were not the only thing that had changed around the hospital. The old, grounded cement had been replaced with a fresh new layer. Also, they had replaced the old, withered flowers with artificial plastic flowers that were obviously not taken care of. The flowers had a fine, leveled layer of dirt that the tulip was supposed to be.

John stepped through the door, walking into a crowded small room, the lobby. People shuffled through the room, shifting every time that someone stood up from there seat, only to be replaced with another person from the crowd. Others stood at the receptionist table, Yelling and crying at the person manning the desk. It would be a while before John would be able to get up there, so he simply tried to wait it out. Time cranked by, roughly and uneasily as minutes seemed to turn into hours, which then began to turn into years. His mind then began to trail off into space, finding itself into the current situation. He immediately shrugged it off, looking at the clock on the wall. His jaw dropped as he saw the dial had only moved 30 minutes. This had come to a major shock to him. Had it only been 30 minutes, what seemed like millenniums, had only been a matter of minutes. This was not acceptable, for the anticipation had been lurking all this morning, and this could not possibly stop him from getting to the one thing in his life that had ever mattered. He realized, at this moment, that this was the first time in his life, that fear haunted him.

 All of his life, whenever he had a single fright; his parents had always been there to fix it. That even at his toughest times, they had always been there.  From looking under the bed for monsters, to getting him out of debt, no matter the cost, they had always shielded him from the real world and the reality of the situation. They could always comfort him and calm him.

A tear ran down his cheek as he thought of all the times that his parents had been there. He wiped the tear away as reality melted into John. It had been two hours since he had been at the hospital, and the line was reduced to one person in front of him. This shocked John, for he had expected time to crawl like before, and slowly creep by.

He heard the woman at the desk say:” Thank you, and come again!” as the man walked away from the counter. The receptionist, a woman in her mid-thirty’s stood behind the desk, with a warm smile. Her hair was a mixture of blonde and grey. The color was evenly distributed through her scalp, all in a small bun. She wore a pair of white clean scrubs that reflected a beam of light into John eyes. 

“Sir, are you ok?” She said as John stood there, contemplating all of the possibility’s. This snapped John, out of his mind, and he replied in a depressed and melancholy voice.

“Yes, I’m here to see Jared Harris. I’m his son, and I heard that he was here, is that correct?”

“Let me check for you sir.” She said cheerfully, disregarding John’s depression and sorrow.

She typed on the old keyboard, punching each key in individually, and taking her time to get the correct key strokes. The smile on her face faded, and her expression became grave. Her age began to show, with wrinkles showing in her face, and tightening.

“Yes sir, he is here, follow me, sir.”

She dragged from behind the desk, shuffling her feet, and going into the doorway that lead into the hospital halls.

“Follow me, sir.” She mumbled as she entered into the hallway. John trailed after, now more afraid than ever. The hallways had doors sprinkled all across the walls, each having a number above them, and on the door itself. Lights seemed blinding as confusion leapt through John’s body as he took each grieving step. Men and woman of all ages roamed the seemingly endless hallways, like shattered glass they covered the hallways in random assortments, mixing together into one form, merging and dividing as they casually walked the halls. The walls themselves were covered in a clover green coat of paint, pealing from the years of improper cleaning and use.

The halls seamed to widen as less and less people began to overflow the hallways, making navigation through the elaborate labyrinth that much easier. After about five minutes of searching through the now desolate hallways, the nurse pulled out a king ring with enough keys too stack all the way up to the ceiling. Somehow she was able to pick the correct key almost instantly, barely even giving the ring a glance as she effortlessly unlocked the doors.

A blast of rot and decay escaped through the open door, acting like a punch to the face. John gagged, nearly throwing up, when he was stopped by his parents, sitting casually in the room, or at least it seemed. On closer inspection, both had eyes that were bloodshot. Their skin matched the white of their eyes nearly perfectly, making it difficult to distinguish where their skin dug into their eye sockets, and where their eyes bulged out.

 The wooden planks wined as the nurse shifted her body weight onto the wooden planks of the morbid room. She beckoned John in, welcoming me into the room with the sway of her arm. John hesitantly entered the room, trembling more and more with each step forward. Through the door, he could not believe what he saw. Previously blocked by the wall, and now in plain sight, was a huge machine that that was wired into John’s dad. About fifteen cords went into him, all connecting to the one machine. After looking at it closer, John concluded that it was not one machine, but three, all on a cart, and stacked up to where they looked like they were about to crash to the ground. All sorts of switches and buttons protruded from all around the machines, making it look like a panel that belonged in a plane.

“Well, son, take a seat.” John’s dad murmured tiredly. It looked as if it had pained him to say those words, so simple, and yet it had taken all of his conserved effort to say it. John did as his father taking a seat at the right corner of the room. The room itself had five chairs, four at which rested peacefully in the corners of the room. The other chair, however, sat in front of the bed, most likely for the doctor to speak to the patient without worrying about the person spraining there neck by looking to the side. Against the back wall, in the very center laid the bed. At the foot of the bed, laid a control panel used for adjusting, what looked like, every aspect from the bed, from temperature, to the springiness of the mattress. All of the seats were available, with the exception of the one in the far right corner of the room, which was occupied by Johns Mom.

Just as John began to sit down, the door swung open, slamming the door into the wall behind it. In the doors place, stood a man, who appeared to be in his mid-forties. He wore some dark green scrubs, matching the shade of an evergreen tree. Over this, was a white lab coat that had a pocket over his right breast. The pocket was overflowing with pens, making it look as if he was a business man who would most defiantly need a pen to take advantage of some poor sap on the street who needed a few bucks. His hair was a milky white, covered with the occasional grey hair. His hair was straight, came up to his upper eyebrow, where it abruptly stopped. His face bore the sight of many years, and was expressed through a number of wrinkle entangling his face, seeming to hold it together as it wound around the man’s face.

In his hand, was a brown clipboard, with a stack of papers filling the surface of it. What appeared to be many charts and data were thrown upon the papers, making it almost meaningless to John. The man looked out of breath, almost as if he had just jogged around the town. His breathes were sharp and irregular, coming out in large bursts as he stood at the doorway.

“Harris, the reports have come in… I’m sorry, I don’t believe that we have met, my names Dr. Jones.” He entered the room, not breaking eye contact until he finally shook hands with John.

            “Now,” he said as he sat down in the chair at the middle of the room.  “Your test results have come in. We are very sorry to inform you, that, after many test, we have come to the undeniable conclusion, that you have prostate cancer…” Those words ricocheted through Johns head as he began to register the truth. A pain in his temple began to emerge, until it felt as if his skull was going to implode on itself. A ringing sound also started to affect John, causing him to miss everything that the doctor was saying. Lights began to come from all directions, closing in on John as he sat down. The ringing was now so intense that he could no longer hear anyone in the room. He tried to speak, but try as he might, he could not hear his own voice. During all of this chaos, a very distinct taste of iron entered his mouth, making him gag. Blackness engulfed him, and he completely collapsed into the chair.

            John gradually began to gain consciousness, as light slid into his squinted pupils, and exposing a brown orb in which was engulfed by whiteness. As John became aware of his surroundings, he noticed that he was on a hospital bed, which he found weird since he had not been to a hospital recently. He was finally able to shield his eyes and open them fully. He found that he was in a recovery bed. No one was to be seen, except for Dr. Jones, who stood at the foot of the bed.

            Memories began to rush back, as he remembered everything from the hospital. The room, the doctor, the awful news. He remembered it all very detailed, and he began to cry. He cried as if all of his problems would be soaked in by his tears. Minutes turned into hours as he let everything balled up inside of him. Emotions churned inside of him, turning his sadness into anger. Why had he not been informed? Why had they waited until know to tell me that something is wrong, he thought as he laid, mopping at the situation. He was sure at one thing, however. He was sure that his life would never be the same after this day. From now on, he would stand, depressed as he waited to heat from his dying dad, or at least he thought. “Mr. Harris, I believe that it is time for you to leave.” He turned around as he heard Dr. Jones. “There’s technically nothing wrong with you physically, but if I were you, I would get a cab. You've just been through a traumatic event, and it isn't safe to operate large machinery.”

            “Can I at least say goodbye to my family before I leave? It would mean the world to me.” John said, attempting to hold back the tears.”

            I’m sorry, Mr. Harris, but your father is asleep, and your mom left. Visiting hours are over, it’s already twelve a clock in the morning.”

            John looked to the wall, surprised to find that it was indeed twelve a clock.

            “Thank you doctor.” John said under his breath as he slowly began to get up, and try to navigate through the hospital. Finally, he managed to find the correct way, and went outside into the blistering cold. 

Reviews

[David Moreland]

I read the entire piece and I am going to be graceful, but honest. Firstly, grammar, spelling, punctuation; the basics of writing, need to be checked. For example, "sophisticated and well bread in case it was anyone to real importance..." Bred, not bread. That's something you eat. Also: “Dad!” John said, now feeling embarrassed to what he had just said to his own dad. Embarrassed 'of' not 'to'. And why would he be embarrassed in the first case? What did he say that was so embarrassing? "...because there is something you’re your mother and I need to tell you.” Here as well, you're and your. "Thank you, and come again!" - is this something a receptionist at a hospital would say?

"...like shattered glass they covered the hallways in random assortments...," beautifully imagery for people at a hospital. I like this.

Is this is a first draft? Writing is more rewriting and rewriting than writing. Serious editing is needed on this piece. And most importantly, my suggestion would be for you to write on subject matters you are familiar with, simpler to handle.

[Tesla23]

Thank you for reviewing. I did not realize that it needed this much work. From now on, I'll try to edit better afterward.

[Tesla23]

Please guys, like I said, review. I need to know how I am doing.