1:2

Hours were lapsing into minutes, minutes into seconds, and seconds just passed by. Lukas just stopped caring, staring at the darkened evening sky without any interest at all. He didn't have a clock anyway, so time would just pass.

Doctor Faroe was probably angry at him. So what? She was a liar anyway. Lukas had no wish to see her. And he probably wouldn't, at least anytime soon. All good news by now would be some new medicine or a notice that a suitable donor had finally beenfound - which the boy had a hard time believing in.

Speaking of medicines, a young boy, a few years older than Lukas, came once, bringing an IV with him, staying just long enough to hook the patient to it. It actually didn't feel like anything. Lukas was just vaguely surprised that he didn't notice the dripper in his arm before. The boy had dark hair and a youthful face - most probably a part-timer, if part-timers even existed at hospital wards. He would have been pretty, if it wasn't for his empty dark eyes and a large pool of moles under the left chin.

Then it was, once more, silent.

The only thing outside the small dusty-silled window was a grey wall, seemingly as tall as the sky, with yellow bushy grass at its roots. It was entirely covered with cracks, creating an intricate spiderweb. Lukas generally enjoyed such things, a welcome distraction from the colorful world he had to associate with and grew to hate, mass media screens, fake articles and fake personas; but here it was a different thing. It was terrifying, the thought of spending the rest of his life in this silent white wardroom, the only distractions being the screen of grey concrete and the monotonous tick-tock of the drop counter. It made him want to hit the wall with his head. It made him want to rip the dripper out of his forearm and scream. But all he could do was sit up, and stare out the window, and count the cracks, and hope there would be enough of them for him to pass the long months of waiting.

Lukas was at the crack number fifteen - the one running across the entire wall as if threatening to break it in half - when the door to the ward groaned unexpectedly, and gave way, with a tall blonde man walking in in long strides.

What first startled Lukas was that the man wasn't dressed in the usual uniform. There was no lab coat. Rather, he wore a wrinkled red shirt, with a small dark stain on the side, and a black necktie and baggy jeans and a CVS Pharmacy bag. His grin was so wide it didn't belong with this place, it outshone the walls, the ultraviolet hospital lamps, it outshone everything.

He could easily have passed as a clueless visitor, and Lukas would easily have believed it if it was not for one thing - he had no idea who the hell this man was.

The man closed the door carefully, and walked to Lukas's bed. How could he have not heard these ringing steps when the man was walking down the corridor, merely seconds ago? He must have really been out of it, or really in it.

Then the man dropped right on the bed's corner, with the bag falling on the floor by his legs. He looked at Lukas, his blue eyes twinkling, and gave a small wave. "Ward 2911, right? Lukas?"

Lukas nodded, warily. "...Thomassen. Who are you."

The man flashed a smile at Lukas's placid, glum expression. "Hmm? I'm Mathias Kohler. Jeremiah's Trust Hospital's staff psychologist." He mocked the official fumes of the place with just his tone. "Also a rightful guardian of all those who lashed out on their doctors. Including you."

"Doctor Faroe lied to me."

"Doctor Faroe just tends to the typical medical etiquette, it seems to me, but that's not what I wanted to talk about." Mister Kohler suddenly reached down to the floor, fishing for something in his red-and-white bag for a few short seconds, and jumped back up, sticking his find up in the air. "Here! Want a cookie?"

"What?" This conversation was getting stranger by second.

"A cookie. Everybody likes cookies, don't they? Try one. They're good."

"Can you eat cookies at the hospital?" Lukas asked quietly, his free hand reluctantly reaching over to the pack of chocolate chips offered to him.

"Yeah, sure, unless you're diabetic. Or a few other cases. But your insulin is running fine, the blood's your problem, so I guessed it was alright."

"You guessed?" Lukas almost bit the cookie but Mister Kohler's words made his hand jerk sideways. "What if I can't eat chocolate or allergic or something, have you looked that up?"

"Of course I did." Mister Kohler pouted, looking offended.

Suddenly feeling guilty, Lukas finally bit on the cookie. It was soft, and liquid chocolate spread all over his tongue. It felt like a homemade one.

"Mister Kohler…" Lukas started, all of a sudden. "When will my family come to visit?"

"Mathias. Not Mister Kohler. Mathias. And sorry, I don't know if they even will." Mathias smiled uneasily.

"What?" Lukas didn't even have the strength to be frustrated, or offended, or anything. He was just mildly surprised. "What do you mean?"

"Jeremiah's Trust is tightly guarded. It takes lots of red tape just to schedule a visit. They might visit you a few times, but I really have no idea when. I don't even think they know that you're staying here for a while yet." He didn't lie. He probably should have, just to keep Lukas in check, but he told the truth. That made Lukas feel grateful to the man.

"And you… do you know what my illness is?" Somehow, the aura Mathias was giving off helped Lukas talk. Say things he would never have said otherwise. "Anemia?"

"Yes, I do. I also know that you believe that you'll never get up, which is completely wrong." Mathias let out a snicker, which had no connection to his words, it seemed - his face calm, serious, collected, the sound of his laughter childish and merry. "That's part of the reason I'm here, by the way. I have to make you believe you'll come out alive."

Now that was rubbish.

"What's the point?"

"Well, it might have to do with statistics, you know, that you have more chances if you sincerely believe in your own survival, but honestly it's not that. Maybe I just really want you to." Mathias smiled at Lukas. "You look like the sort of person the world needs, after all."

"You talk too much."

"No, you talk too little. Another cookie?"

"...Perhaps." Lukas reached out his hand, only to have Mathias pull back the box with a mischievous smile.

"What sort of a kid are you, to say 'perhaps' when offered a cookie? You sound like Little Lord Fauntleroy."

"So what."

"Give me a straight answer. Another cookie?"

"...Yes." This time, Lukas's fingers finally grasped on the treat.

"Nice to feel I'm not the only one steering this conversation." Mathias watched, maybe a bit too closely, as Lukas ate the cookie in small bites. "I wanted to bring tea, too, but I broke my thermos and they don't seem to have a single water cooler around here."

"I prefer coffee."

Mathias whistled and took out a cookie for himself. "Weird kids these days. Let me guess, a lot of homework?"

"Yes." Lukas'd rather not go into details.

"Then let me tell you, tea with sugar works much better than coffee in those cases. You should totally try it once."

"Yes, th… Wait." Lukas slowly looked up from his cookie to Mathias's face again. "You're talking as if I'll have a chance."

"Of course I do, that's 'cause you will."

There probably wasn't any real merit to arguing that, Lukas decided, smiling weakly. Mathias suddenly looked at him with newfound interest.

"Oh, you can smile? Wow. I thought I was talking to… um…"

"A deadman?" Lukas suggested.

"Nah, I'd say a sleepwalker. But smile more often. So!" Mathias clapped his hands, almost making Lukas drop the remains of his cookie - which he immediately shoved into his mouth. "Let's talk!"

"About what?" Lukas asked, after finally swallowing down the chocolatey mass. "You have something else you must tell me?"

"Nah. Just plain old chat. You know. Axes. Royal penguins. Pets. Computer science. Russian Silver Age poetry. Ice cream flavors. Anything!" Some sort of mad laughter glittered in Mathias's eyes.

Just when Lukas decided that his new friend was a perfectly normal, plausible man.

"Of course, it's fine if you don't want to talk. But you'll need it once your chemotherapy starts kicking in. You'll need someone you can talk to. I'm being honest right now, Lukas. You won't stand a chance alone. You'll need someone without all this pain, all this burden, who can talk to you and understand you. And I'll be honored if you choose me."

Mathias wasn't a good speaker. He was brash, he spoke of things no doctor would ever tell a patient, and the words he chose were absolutely terrible. And Lukas hung onto those words.

"Tell me…" he started, quietly. "Do you believe I'll survive? Honestly? I have one chance in a million, and…"

"Lukas, I do believe you'll survive." Mathias's voice was clear and loud and confident, and it seeped into Lukas's bloodstream like chemicals. "One day, you'll get up, take out that dripper, step out there without any fears. I have known quite a few people who died in hospital wards, true." He smiled encouragingly. "And quite a few who survived. And you will survive too. Anything else you want to talk about? This is getting depressing."

Lukas kept silent for a few seconds, before muttering with complete resignation: "Anything. Just talk about yourself."

A large grin appeared on Mathias's face, only slightly contrasting with the deep worry pooling in his eyes, worry his voice didn't show at all.

"Me, huh? Well, I'm twenty-six. Mathias Kohler. Psychologist. University of Copenhagen graduate. But I've told you all that, right? I live around here somewhere, in a small flat, no kids or pets allowed but there is a synthesizer and my flatmate plays it. I think he really wanted a grand piano instead, but an electronic one was all he could afford. He hates the sound. Says it sounds ghastly. I'm thinking of…"

Lukas slowly relaxed to a steady, cheerful pace of Mathias's flowing words, completely losing track of their meanings. He glanced out the window again, at the roots of the wall, and suddenly noticed something he paid no attention to before: a small yellow flower right in the midst of another bed of thick grass. A small daisy, right in the middle of September.