My Hand Mitten

by Austin Thacker

  “My point is that if we can still warm each other’s hands, even slightly, we don’t have to worry, because we still have each other. I always look into your eyes and quietly say in silence, ‘I’m home.’ You know why? Because you’re the beauty I need and the friend I crave. I look up to God sometimes and thank him for this angel. So don’t you DARE cry for a fate that’s not yours.” Mark let out a lone tear, and Mary’s fragile eyes couldn’t handle the pressure. She began to cry. This would be the only time Mary ever saw tears on Mark’s face.

  “So from now on, if you’re ever upset, or shaking like you were, hold my hand, feel the heat blazing from my heart. We are both alive! Never have an inch of doubt! God is with us.” He kissed their hands. “And if I’m not there, call me. It doesn’t matter where I am! I will travel back to you. I will travel back to you! Your hand is worth more than every dime I’ve ever made and second I’ve spent. Because holding hands is a reminder to remind you that I’m still alive and you’re still alive, so there’s hope no matter what happens in life. Loving and caring unconditionally. You’re my Hand Mitten, cause you keep them warm, you cradle and fit in mine, and I fit in yours.” Mark’s voice cracked from the tears running down his face. “And…and you’ll always be mine, eternally. You’ll never be alone! We will take that stupid test together, every year, the same operation table. Until we realize that you’re your father’s daughter, with your mother’s warm smile.”

  She smiled and finally spoke from under her tears. “Hopefully not. I don’t want my mother kissing my boyfriend.” They both gently laughed.

  “There is it, you look better that way. Keep your gorgeous smile.” They hugged for minutes.

  Kennedy walked in at one point with a paper and a pen but unfortunately caught them in the middle. So, Kennedy did what she’d do in any scenario—quickly run out in fear of ruining the moment but casually slip on the doorstop. Ironically, the couple never noticed her tumble, her strangely silent somersault away. Kennedy stood up soon after and calmly wiped off the fall. When she came back with the documents the second time, she handed them to Mary and pointed to where she needed her father to sign. Mark picked a few forms as well, though he waited until he was eighteen and held the test costs on his own to save the expense from his parents.

  The next test was scheduled eleven months from then, and they went in together, hungry, as the test asked for no food within twenty-four hours. When they walked in, they held each other’s hands, and when given anesthesia, the doctors had to separate their grasp. Every test was the same. The doctors separated them. The doctors always, no matter what, separated them.

  Shades of Blue on the

  Yellow Canvas

  Mark ran through a PET scan and an EEG before he finally left the hospital. They studied every reading, and Kenny called in Aaron. Tom listened for a while, talked to them, but never truly got a voice in their conversation. Mark stood outside, soaking in the rays from the sun, wearing a Metallica T-shirt and a plaid pair of shorts, which Aaron had picked up from the house. There was a pale brown medical wrap around his arm from the IV and a neck brace, which he threw off when no one saw. He didn’t speak much but was still in thought, still wondering why and how everything happened, both in the past and the night before. He was anxious to return to his wife but disturbed by another thought, the thought of that boy, his cancer, his life. He could already see his wife, seeing her run into his arms outside of the hospital gate, crying out of fright that he might have died from this terrible collision.

  She loves me, I am loved, that’s all that matters. I need her. She needs me. I can’t ever leave her. If I do then my life would be over, everything I’ve done would be pointless, the promise would be broken. With that broken, there would arise a broken man. There are too many broken fools out in the world. I have to fill the spots. I must be on top. The power of wisdom is good, but the power of knowledge is great.

  Mark stood there in silence. Minutes passed. His words were none, but thoughts were many. One thought was of his wife, a very joyful memory recalled whenever in stress. It was a habit to fade toward it.

  They were young, at the beginning of their high school relationship. Mary’s mother was out of town with her husband, and Mary had the responsibility of keeping the house safe, feeding the pets, watering the plants, and everything else. But this time invited Mark over as well.

  He remembered every moment on that day, the heat from the July sun, the type of flowers he brought, the way Mary did her hair, her beautiful smile and vibrant cocoa brown eyes.

  ◆◆◆

  “Mark, I’m so glad you’re here!” Mary jumped into his arms, leaving her toes lightly grazing the ground. Mark caught her with one hand, holding flowers in the other, and kissed her head while he dropped his bag.

  “Missed you,” Mark said.

  “How was JROTC?”

  “Terrible.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you weren’t there.” Mark looked down to see her gazing up. They sealed the moment with a kiss. Mary showed him around the house. Every bit of furniture or decoration was perfectly placed, and there wasn’t a trace of dust on the floor. The living room had a lone white couch and two armchairs, symmetrical in a way that seemed almost unreal. She explained how her parents would sometimes sit there and talk for hours when they were both home at the same time, since her mother had a day job as a secretary at the city bank and her father as an international entrepreneur. Except now her mother had stopped working per Mary’s father’s request, so these moments occurred more frequently.

  Her father sold the popular Plant Pants, a special type of paper wrapped around any houseplant to supposedly give them better growing conditions. Printed out in the look of denim jeans, with cute little pockets and a zipper in the middle, it was a very good idea. Mary told Mark it was a scam, how people would believe anything if you told them like it was the truth. He never forgot that phrase and always thought of the possibility whenever he talked with Aaron or any classmates. But whenever her father was home, he’d be present physically, but mentally unavailable, since the gaps in his life were now spent also fighting for a degree in medicine, a new obsession.

  Everyone knew it was impossible. The concept of a degree was time, which he never had. Except Mary seemed to love the idea, supporting him but not minding his absence.

  “Dr. Kenny,” Mary said while laughing. “It sounds so weird. I can never see him as someone who would be in a position with so much stress,” she gleefully admitted.

  She showed Mark the kitchen. Everything was neatly placed in a special spot, with almost no trace of anyone ever occupying it. She told him almost no family meals were made, just heated in the microwave. But sometimes she’d drive over to the corner store and come home with bags and bags of groceries. Then she’d cook something wonderful to eat while her parents were out, like a batch of muffins or enchiladas.

  Lastly, Mary showed him her room. It was on the second floor. You’d run up the white wooden stairs and make an immediate right into a brightly colored room filled with paintings on the walls, ceilings, and floors, with paintbrushes tossed around canvases of paintings that all carried different colors splattered uniquely, creating beautiful images of sunsets, people, or abstract patterns. She began to talk while pacing around the room.

  “My entire life, they tried bottling me up, keeping me neat and clean like them. Always showed me how to make my bed, fold my clothes, organize my closet, and the benefit of alphabetizing darn near everything. When I was little, my parents limited me to one poster, and it couldn’t be bigger than a six-by-eleven-inch size—their words, not mine. So I chose a painting by Wassily Kandinsky, called Composition Eight. Its random, spontaneous lines amazed me that someone had an idea to draw such…such—chaos!” Mary passionately wondered. “There wasn’t a reason for each individual line and shape, there wasn’t an explanation, it was just…there. And in the end, peop
le loved it. They were drawn to the chaos and the patternless disarray like a whale to a school of krill, drawn to the artwork because of their lack of control. So I begged my parents for art lessons in first grade, and in third grade they finally allowed me, believing after a week or so I’d let it go. A year passed, and I finally got a drawing on the fridge. My parents had to buy a magnet from the store.” She chuckled. “When that happened, everything changed—they let me paint all my walls white and take out the carpet to replace it with plaster. I’ve drawn and painted over the walls for years and years, never being satisfied with what I drew, which scares me.”

  Mark looked up from admiring the work. “Why is that?”

  She quietly stared at him. “Because I might actually be their daughter.”

  Mark continued to look around until a question fell through his lips. “What inspires you to draw?”

  “My emotions,” she said without struggle. “How I feel at the moment. When I’m upset it helps me cope, but when I’m happy it helps me celebrate.” Mark looked around until he found a photo of a sick, bald woman, with a lone tear streamed down her face. The only colors used were different shades of blue. “Maybe it’s not good to look at all of my art.” She laughed nervously and took it away from his possession.

  Mark picked up another painting. It was a portrait of two young swans in the middle of a tight forest, kissing on a lake, while a sunset full of bright orange and pink rays reflected off the water from the sky, with many different animals from the dense forest never noticing either the swans or the sunset.

  “When did you draw this one?”

  Mary walked over and looked up at him.

  “When I met you.”

  ◆◆◆

  Mark continued to wait while that memory buzzed in his ears. Emotions rising. Now these were sour memories from a distant past. Tom snuck over and sat with Mark while he tapped his shoes and felt that ring through those large fingers, an item he normally fiddled with when under stress.

  “Man, they won’t stop talking,” Tom said while lying back on the bench. “They’re going to roll themselves to their graves if they continue worrying like that.”

  Mark never looked over, and this time there was no pride from the thought of Tom. He was too absorbed and responded quietly, as if his response were shameful.

  “I wonder how Tyler’s doing.”

  “Tyler?” Tom asked calmly.

  “Yeah!” Mark looks over with distraught. “It’s all my fault, Tom. If he dies, I killed him.”

  “Shut your mouth, Mark, he’s not dead,” Tom corrected while rolling his eyes. “Well, not yet. Go talk to him. Mary’s fine, she’s an independent woman and can manage herself for five measly minutes. Also, trust me, she would want you to check up on Tyler, and worrying about your wife doesn’t make her any better.” Tom patted Mark on his shoulder, then shot his arms to the sky. “Don’t think, just go!”

  Mark finally ran back into the hospital. He didn’t think just like Tom said, but Mark ran too fast, and the ring that he fiddled with slipped through his fingers onto the bench.

  “Mark! Your doughnut!” Tom yelled with hysterical laughs of joy. “I didn’t mean she wanted to be alone forever, you goof!”

  He felt pride again.

  Mark ran to the elevator, where a few were gathered, and went for the button, both were pressed. I can’t wait, he thought. So he ran to the stairs and flung the door open with emotional exaggeration. The door yelled out a loud squeak, all eyes were on him, but he didn’t care about their thoughts. Mark ran up six floors, beat the elevator by a few pointless seconds, and bumped into two doctors and a floor nurse before he spotted the room. Memories flashed through his eyes, but he ignored them and slowly walked toward the single door. He was out of breath, but there was no time to take notice; Mark shouldn’t think at all. There was a security screen that locked the door from the small waiting room and a camera. Maybe they won’t let me in because of how I look. I must look pleasant if they’ll ever allow me inside, Mark thought. These fragile, sick children are too precious. Too precious. But he heard a noise—it was the locks from the door, unlatching from both vertical ends. Mark thought he’d never hear that noise again.

  The door swung open. When the room was visible, he scanned every feature over in the first three seconds. The room, with white walls, the patterned ground of red-and-blue two-by-two-foot tiles, hurt. The nurse’s scrubs were covered with fun, exciting patterns. The smell of bleach, the cold temperature running through the air. The playroom filled with toys sterilized thousands of times to keep them sanitary, the chalk drawings on the mirrors of SpongeBob, TMNT, and other childhood role models. Alarms and lights from the isolated neighboring apartments roared for the nurse’s aide by a button pushed by a patient from inside. For whenever in pain.

  “It’s a jailhouse,” Mark whispered, and a tear ran down his cheek. Then he finally saw the nurse who promptly let him inside. An older lady with blue-green eyes opened the door, and she grinned.

  “Mark! I can’t believe you’re here!” The old woman did what she could to reach him but wasn’t fast or fit in anyway. Who is she? he thought. She must be a nurse I once knew, she must be! The nurse opened her arms. Mark accepted the hug and dug his head into her shoulder. The only other woman he’d ever hug, but he never remembered any nurses being so old and fragile. Her thin white hair and old eyes. The white-haired woman’s job was clearly to be the front desk clerk for the department, a position with far less action and skill. This was a perfect spot for an old woman whose time in the medical world had expired. There wasn’t any doubt that she was someone from his past, someone he couldn’t remember, although her face was candy to his past-driven eyes. He also saw how afterward his face was covered in tears—Why was this? He thought of how disappointing this repetitiveness of wiping off the water from his eyes was, and quickly wiped them off like they were a disease, maybe so. The woman acted as if his tears were never present, as if she were blind. The white-haired lady was far from this.

  “Why have you come to visit now? Wow, Mark, you haven’t aged at all! And I must have shrunk, because you seem much taller! Is your shoe size still a size fifteen? I bet you still lift, don’t you?”

  Mark was shocked and confused. The woman continued to speak and speak as if she didn’t expect answers. She knew Mark as well as he knew himself and looked him up and down multiple times while smiling through her rattle can of a voice, with an unnatural abundant amount of energy that didn’t seem to ever give. Although her speaking gave him peace, Mark didn’t care that he didn’t know who she was. All he knew was that she had aided him and his wife somewhere in the past. This gave him peace.

  “I actually came to see Tyler Castillo,” Mark stated with a light grin, which he fought because of the thought of Tyler. The woman with thin white hair lost her smile as quickly as she found it and stepped a foot back with one hand on her heart, tears in her eyes. Mark was also hit with shame, though hoarding it in his throat, still attempting to seem motivated. The response from the frail white-haired lady was far less talkative than her last, as all she did was point a finger to a younger nurse, and when Mark turned she quickly walked off not to be found.

  “Excuse me, miss?”

  “Yes sir, do you need help?” The young nurse turned around, not knowing of anything that was said before. He saw her face, the brown hair mixed with the young features and short height. A familiar face on a stranger. Ignore it Mark, ignore it, he thought.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m looking for Tyler Castillo’s room.” Mark found that she frowned as well. Tyler seemed to be a subject that wasn’t to be spoken of.

  “How do you know him?”

  Mark scratched his head and nervously smiled.

  “I’m a family friend, ma’am.”

  The woman wished to find the older nurse for guidance, but she was gone. Fresh from college, young with kno
wledge and rules, the small and fit woman was lost as to what action to perform in this situation. The small woman looked up at Mark and smiled anxiously.

  “He’s in ICU, sir. He can’t accept visitors,” the brunette lied.

  “When will he be out?”

  “We don’t know, maybe I can get his parents to—”

  “No. No, ma’am, that’s okay,” Mark stated frantically, and with Tyler’s name as a sensitive subject in the air, the air grew thick with glares. “I’ll just…go.”

  Mark walked through the bolted door and the blank expressions into the tiny waiting room next to the elevators and overlooking the town, thinking of the mistakes he’d made. This time the first one was Tom.

  Tom, I’m so sorry. If only I could protect you better, you’d still be alive, Mark thought. He sat in a chair and covered his face with those huge hands, peace gone and joy used up. He began to weep again. Minutes later, the frail white-haired nurse walked toward the waiting room. She sat in the chair to the left of him and didn’t speak. He thought of his decision, if this boy was worth the effort, the time. Mary was worth his time, she always was. Tom was worth his time; he was like a son. Why is this child important?