Dear Wallabee,
Today I climbed into your bed with you, just for a tiny minute. I dove into the snowdrift of scratchy covers and burrowed in. Your skin was much too cold to be alive. Cold as a dead bone. Frozen. You were a tiny slab of ice against my body.
I tried my best to warm you, Numbuh Four. I snatched up your fingers and bathed them in my fluttery breath. I zipped up your little pajamas extra tight, and I tucked you up in the lacey comforter that usually lounges on top of my own bed. The hospital's sheets are nothing but dead skin, and they must leave you naked and freezing when the twilight creeps through your window. The thought of you shivering in the empty darkness floods me with sadness.
I wrapped you in my arms, put my cheek to yours.
Ice.
Terrible ice.
Icy cold terror that seized my throat and wrenched at my stomach. My breath trembled and suddenly froze.
I was certain that you were dead.
Living boys do not lie flat under their covers, still as entombed stones. Living boys are not ice cream sandwiches, frozen solid under eternal glaciers.
My face was suddenly a waterfall, drenched and heavy with tears. Tears sliding down my cheeks, dripping from my nose, and plopping down like rain. Out of my mouth screamed the most terrible words.
Dead.
Gone.
Lost forever.
Swallowed by the earth.
I was a sad, sticky mess.
The doctor man looked at me like I was very stupid. He showed me a most strange device, one with a long name that I can't remember now. A heart-tracking device.
Every time his heart beats, the doctor said, this machine will beep.
I heard it then, the beeping. Beep beep beep beep. A very soft beeping. The beeping of the weak flush upon your cheeks, of the soft breath between your marble lips, of the rising and falling of your chest.
Life pulsed beneath your skin, and my despair slipped away.
I hope that you won't be mad at me.
Your friend,
Numbuh Three