Helium hearts

The dilapidated room stank of urine and hate, in the spidery crimson graffiti that scrawled the flaking walls and the mattresses stripped bare of their sheets with wounds that gaped with snowy blood.

She turned away in disgust, and made her way slowly to the tiny window by the far side of the room. It overlooked a barren lawn with shrivelled grass, figures in white lab coats drifted across slowly like death. Beyond was a solid strip of grey that stretched endlessly, the very embodiment of despair.

She suddenly understood hatred better than any dictionary definition as she whirled out of the room furiously, a resonating ‘BANG!’ slamming in her wake. Of course, she took care to avoid the figures in white, recklessly going down spirals of stairs and darkened hallways with flickering white lights.

She had no idea where she was not going nor did she care, what difference did it make in hell?

The silence had enveloped her in a firm membrane, so used to it that when the inkling of a crackle startled her.

‘Whish…..swish……whish…swish. .’

The sound of dry leaves scarping across the ground.

She turned full circle, bewildered. The walls stared back at her defiantly.

‘Whish…..swish……whish…swish. .’

“What are you doing here, deary?”

She swivelled around in shock, a pair of stone grey eyes bored down at her as the nurse smiled ostensibly. The hard glint in her eyes muted her words and she didn’t try very hard to find them again. She let herself be pulled away like a broken puppet, the nurse’s hand clamped around her arm in an iron visor.

She finally understood the emotions behind the words on her wall.

These people whom are stripped of their basic dignity, of their freedom in here, of their privacy no wonder why she could feel such intense hate and anger in her room. The mysterious sounds bothered her constantly, but she suffered through the days until she could find one where she would slip away. As day by day, the desperation suffocated her, throwing her into the abyss known as apathy.

She stood rigid, as doctors prod and fingered her in white gauze masks.

She stood rigid, as the nurses chattered like magpies as they patted her hand soothingly.

And she stood rigid, once again. Before the mysterious sound one noon staring at the walls with a glazed look in her eyes as she teetered on the precipice.

The walls suddenly seem to shift and move before her eyes, and she wondered if she had finally fallen.

A swirl of raven hair bounded with laden snow, porcelain skin and emerald eyes.

She stared back in wordless shock, a muted puppet.

A rough pull and the walls fitted shut with a soft whisper.

Inside the confines of what appears to be a small garden of various plant species, she stared at the girl in front of her in shock. A rich cascade of raven hair streamed down a bony shoulder, hands clasped nervously in front of an oversized hoodie and a pair of startling green eyes that beseeched her with an intensity none like other.

“Who are you?” She winced at her own voice, croaky from being not used.

She shook her head silently, and silently extracted a tiny pad. She wrote in elegant script, ‘I’m Myla.’

“Why am I here?” She stepped back a little, an inkling of suspicion in her voice.

Myla’s lips engaged in a dance between a smile and a grimace, instead she merely handed her a watering can nearby. ‘Help me.’ She wrote and the pad vanished inside her hoodie.

For some strange reason, Lila couldn’t find the words to doubt this girl nor the urge to understand as to why she would help her. But for the next or so hour, they worked in companionable silence. Most of the plants were dead, or dying but many, or so Myla said were once beautiful flowers and those two, came alive with her words.

White heather that sprouts off a corner like raven wings, cluster of heliotropes that scattered about in varying shades of purple, and irises that decorated the garden in a kaleidoscopic carpet.

There were days when she could not slip away to the little haven, and on those days she would dare store the few blossoms that had bloomed under their intensive care in her right shoe. The garden had given her the colour she needed, the hope that would continue to burn in this desolate place.

Though the one thing that puzzled her the most was no matter how many times she asked Lila to fend off the weeds that entangled the buds of a hydrangea bush.

On a grey afternoon as snowflakes fell from the sky in silken sparks she finally wrote down the answer, ‘Sometimes, Lila.’ And here she would pause and smile, ‘you have to let the plant fight on its own. Sometimes, it is better to let obstacles to ensnare their course for then, when they do grow. They will be stronger than they were before.’

For three days, Lila did not manage to escape the eyes that watched her and on the fourth day, she stood before the closed wall. Puzzled, and she listened for the sound of water tricking into soil. The sound of leaves that rustled in the wind, but there were none.

Frowning, she placed her hand on one of the bricks and pushed gently the wall creak its familiar tune and she stepped into the empty garden.

“Myla?” She whispered frantically, whirling around the garden in a tornado of anxiety when at last she stooped down to see a slip of white paper beside the hydrangeas.

‘You see now, don’t you?’

And as the first golden ray of spring shone through the cloudy canvas, she glanced at the first bud that had emerged from the weeds.

She did indeed understand, and for many months to come. There was not only one but many presence inside that garden of hope.