ESSAY MEGAN MANOWITZ
16
I feel like an orphan in a movie when I’m at the hospital. I can feel the eyes of all the old, cancer-ridden adults, wondering why I’m here and if I’m here alone and if they could adopt me. The guy next to me gets off the phone with whom I can assume is his daughter (“Just wanted to make sure you got to Katie’s safely!” Only fifteen year old girls are named Katie) and out of the corner of my eye I see him hesitate whether or not he should say something to me. He looks up and back down, leans forward then readjusts. I like being in this role. It makes me feel like the “Earth’s Child” instead of the reality of the situation, which is that my parents work too much and I want to pretend to be an adult and handle doctor’s appointments on my own. It doesn’t help that I look twelve years old and when I sit, it’s with my arms wrapped up around my knees and my head buried between my legs. Being at a cancer hospital means you don’t have to wonder what’s wrong, just how bad it is. It’s at least a little bad, probably worse. I see an adult couple embracing in front of the elevator and I cry. I text a person and tell them I miss them and they respond, “Please stop.” I need someone to take care of me. I am in hell and act like a child. I stop crying two hours later, after I’m taken into a small private room to prepare for my PET scan. I stupidly sob into my oversized velvet sweater as the nurse tries and fails to find a vein in my arm for the IV. There is no parent or loved one there to soothe me and tell me to relax and to let him do his job, no one next to me to shush me and pet my head. The way children are similar to domestic creatures and need attention and their heads rubbed and ears scratched and someone to feed them, I am the same. No one is there to fulfill this role so I just cry in front of him, he never stops because he has a job to do but does say, “I’m sorry I’m so so sorry” under his breath. I am your worst nightmare. He finally finds a vein in my hand and leaves, and I sit in a room by myself for one hour and cry into the lens of a security camera.