There comes a point where you're there but you're not all there because you've spoken about death from memory of experience, not from the grief of ongoing experience, and you can't quite understand how you'd forgotten the harsh differences between the two. And at that point, you realise that your friends have been there for you and that they like to speak about how they've been there for you, and about how they want to be there for you and will be there for you, but they're never fucking there when their phone rings in a syncopated pattern throughout the earlier hours of the evening and the late hours of the mornings. I want company so fucking badly right now, I'm crying my heart out for it but there's nobody there. There's never anybody there. I am not grieving, there is no death, but it's coming and it can't be avoided no matter how we tiptoe across the zigzags that we refer to as the mistitled plateau of life. I don't know how to be at home after spending over a week in a hospital waiting room, clutching a black ink pen in my hand and filling in puzzle books that cost way too much, in the hopes that spending too much and thinking in code might just distract from the five hours that you wait on a surgeon to surface and to tell you the news. In such a short space of time, I became accustomed to sleeping in a room with French doors that wouldn't open and waking up to a girl with big eyes lying right along beside me, even though she'd fallen asleep on the other side of the wall the night before. I became accustomed to showering in a shower that didn't work too well and that sprayed into the toilet rather than coursing the water down your body. I got used to living from a suitcase shoved under a bed and receiving texts that asked 'How is she?' and sending quickfire replies of 'No news yet'. I got to know walking down those steps and seeing the amputees with the amputees and the cancer victims with the cancer victims, all inhaling fresh air and smoke. I got to know the women with their northern accents and the women with their English accents. The men that didn't speak because they'd fallen and hit their heads and had to be constantly reminded where they were and how they got there. The men whose eyes sagged so much that their cheeks were non-existant and the doctors and nurses that smiled and tried to be as gentle as they could. I got used to seeing her sitting up in her bed and ordering us around, and laughing and pretending that she isn't dying. And then I saw her wheeled off to surgery and she was trying not to cry. I waited 'til she was done and I packed up my things and I left because I am too weak to deal with the bandage that crosses her skull and the wires that drain the excess that lace down the length of her body. I quit.