Is the title cool now or does anyone have a suggestion?
She’s sitting in a cot in a cold, white box. Everything here is white – even her own hands, pale and spidery, which rest on her white coverlet as she stares out the window at the world of color she once knew. She sighs. Here, every day is colorless and the same.
A knock sounds at the door. She waits. The orderlies always knock, as if it matters, but they come in whether she answers or not. Sure enough, the door clicks open, but the voice that says hello is unfamiliar, so she looks.
A man stands in the doorway, smiling at her. He’s not very tall, and his hair is so raven-dark, his eyes such a bright blue, that he could be her brother. But he isn’t. He’s a stranger.
He tells a joke, but it’s lame and she doesn’t laugh. Grinning, he shrugs and admits that it was no good. An unwilling smile creeps across her face. It grows wider as he tells another joke, less lame. Then he reaches into his pocket and produces four balls, dazzling her with color. All the colors that for the past month have only existed outside her window light up the room: Tree green, sky blue, red as the petunias growing in the window boxes, gold like the dandelions and the sun and her lost freedom.
The man begins to juggle slowly, only the green and blue balls. They swing into the air in a graceful arc, lazy at first, then faster. The green and blue blur together in an oceanic whirl. The woman watches, entranced, as he adds the red ball and tosses the balls higher and faster. Faster and faster and faster still, so fast that she doesn’t see when he adds the last ball, just sees the flash of gold like the color of freedom. She watches for a long time, until finally he pulls a goofy face and sends the balls tumbling down on his head.
She knows it was planned, but she can’t help it: She starts to laugh. The man’s face splits into a gap-toothed grin. He joins in, adding explosions of deep belly laughter to her long, merry peals. They laugh for a long, long time, the first time she’s laughed in years, it feels like. Finally he picks up the colored balls, tips them into her lap, and bows, sweeping an imaginary hat from his head. Then he says goodbye and heads on to the next patient.
She smiles down at the colors in her lap, tree green, sky blue, petunia red, and gold, the color of freedom, until an orderly enters and asks, How do you feel today?
Good, she replies, surprised; How else should I feel?
The orderly says, …the cancer.
And suddenly she’s back in a white box, four cold walls and a metal cot, because she remembers.
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