Finger Exercise #3 - The Boy Who Never Left His Bed

The Boy Who Never Left His Bed

The steep view from the 19th floor break-room window was a visual buffet for the curious and voyeuristic. Workers with blank faces and monitor glazed stares, diverse motivational posters, lights on, lights off, soft lights, cubicle interior decorators creatively snazzing up their economical trappings. Two floors below and on the opposite side of the air shaft, seen in several windows, is a collection of hospital beds, some neatly preserved and unattended except for one in the corner. In this bed, lying on it's back, with a head obscured by the vantage point and with arms outside of a blanket, is what looks to be the sleeping form of a teenager. A hospital bracelet on the right wrist, sheets tucked-in outlining a slim torso which slopes into a valley of legs, only to be upraised again by feet at the bottom snugly fastened by the sheet. Day after day the man on the 19th floor would approach the window and gravely look down at the boy in the corner. Was this an infirmary where no one else ever got sick or ever used the other beds? He was sure he had never seen anyone else in any of the other beds. He knew there was a private high school in the building - was this a school nurses office, where each day this poor boy comes to school and gets into a bed and stays there all day? Was this a quarantined hospice which was only dealing with sick and infectious children, a place where they could safely relax and nap their way into heaven? What was wrong with this child? The most intriguing aspect of this situation was that the child was always lying in the same position, never moving. During his coffee-break the man looked down, the boy was still face up, lunch, face up, the fading light of an early winter night, face up...never moving, the hospital bracelet and hand always laying motionless at his side. The situation had to be dire.

Seeing the motionless boy day after day started to affect the man’s heart, weighing heavy on it like an heirloom cameo locket in a velvet bag, shoved away in a bottom drawer. He began to be nicer to people, he was sweeter to his wife and co-workers, he had a relish for his unremarkable commute and started to smile and offer his seat. Thinking about the boy in the bed who would not move, could not move, turned a light on in the man’s heart. He knew what it was like to sit at the bedside of an ailing child, watching something commit to movements alien to it’s design, or worse sit in a languid state adopting the pallor of illness. Children are supposed to run, laugh, scamper, look you straight into the eye, absorb lessons on how to behave and misbehave, the little ones are hungry for guidance, earnest with love, and their youthful innocence affords them whiteboard anger that can always be easily wiped away. He remembered this and his heart was rent by the touching spectacle of the child who knew nothing else than the frosted mini wheat texture of the ceiling tiles over his sickbed. The teenager was comatose, close to death, trapped in a New York City high-rise, and the most offensive and puzzling element of the whole heartbreaking situation was not one person ever came to check on this boy. The man never saw a nurse approach the bedside, no family members bringing stuffed animals or flowers, no vitals were ever checked, no magazines were given out, no hint of the blue-glare of a TV in the corner. What kind of care was this child being given? Possibly the only care you can give to someone who is this close to the threshold of mortality. The man stared at the teenager, day after day his thoughts crowded by the silent entreaties from the suffering boy in the bed, urging him to live his life to the fullest and be thankful for everyday he spent above ground.

Weeks later, during a fire training in which they learned how to escape the building, the man’s thoughts flew to the boy in the bed. In the event of an emergency, who would help the sick boy? How could they move him? Would it be worth it? It was then that the building manager referenced the building’s many occupants, various business offices and companies, one of which was a nursing school on the 17th floor. The poor infected near death teenager who had inspired the man to become a better person was a mannequin.