When I woke up, I wasn´t either sad, angry or anything else. I just felt strangely empty and weird. I sat up in my bed, turned around and leaned against the wall. I hugged my knees, and rested my chin against them.

I heard the others were down in the kitchen , but I couldn´t hear what they were talking about. Then I heard someone coming up the stairs, and the door to my room opened. Carole came in, carrying a tray, I turned around, and pushed myself towards the head off the bed. I crossed my legs. Carole sat down on the bed, and put the tray between us. She lifted up a cup of hot chocolate and reached it to me, herself she lifted up a cup of tea from the tray.

"Are you okay Lex?" She asked me, I shrugged.

"Yeah I guess." I blew on the hot chocolate.

"I brought your breakfast up here."

"I am not hungry." Carole reached her hand towards me, stroke away the bangs and felt my forehead. I pulled away from her.

"I´m not sick, I´m just not hungry."

"Lex, you got to eat." To silent her, I took the bowl with yoghurt and cereal, I took a spoon, and mechanically chewed.

"Carole?" I said

"Yes?"

"Do you remember the night that I was born?" Carole nodded.

"As if it was yesterday."

"Why were you coming home from work at like, two, three in the morning?"

"There is actually a long story behind that, do you want to know the whole story, or should I just take the part right before I drove home that night?"

"The whole story."

"Okay. I was a new- examined nurse, I started working at the hospital in Lima in March in 2000, left Finn, then six years old at school, and then did my best to be able to pay for day- care. It wasn´t any problems until in July the same year, the day- care was closed for a couple of days, I had to work, I couldn´t pay for a nanny, and my friends were either on vacation, or they were doing something else. I had to bring Finn to work, I left him in the staff lounge, he had brought a bag with toys so I wasn´t really that cruel." Carole smiled. "I also went to check on him at least twice an hour…. In the beginning, then there was a major accident in Lima, and we got in about six or seven critical patients at once. At last, four of them died, and with all the work, I hadn´t had the time to check on Finn for almost two hours. I hurried back to the lounge, and was scared to death when Finn wasn´t there." I fingered on the sandwich Carole had brought up, trying to decide if I would eat it or not.

"I told a colleague about it, and then I ran around the apartments trying to find him. At last, I found him in the playroom at the children´s oncology apartment, you know what that is right?"

"Kind of…"

"Kind of?"

"No."

"The cancer apartment. Anyway, he was sitting playing with a boy named Isaac Joslin." Carole got a very special tone in her voice, almost like it was on its way to break when she mentioned Isaac.

"Isaac, already then he was… pretty much dying of Neuroblastoma. I had seen him at the ER before, but never really knew who he was. However, he and Finn had made really good friends." Carole had gotten tears in her eyes while speaking.

"I let Finn and Isaac play, and when I came back." Carole sighed slightly. "Finn was comforting Isaac, who was at that moment, throwing up, due to chemotherapy. Isaac, wouldn´t let either me, his parents or any nurses near, so I sat down to talk to his parents. Turned out Isaac was a foster-child, they seemed all right. I thought they cared about Isaac really much but… in August, they left Isaac at ours with only a letter that claimed that they couldn´t watch him suffer anymore. They asked me to take care of him, make the best of his last time. I never heard from them again."

"How cruel." I spat. "What jerks." Carole nodded slightly.

"During the next few months, I let Isaac stay with us. He and Finn stayed good friends, Finn couldn´t go to school, due to the risk of infections that could pass on Isaac. And even though Isaac many days were too weak to even get out of bed, I could always find them playing. I worked about two or three days a week, to still work and make money, and anyway be there as much as possible for Finn and Isaac. Sometime in October that year, I asked Isaac, what his biggest dream was, do you know what he answered me?" I shrugged.

"Be on TV." I gave Carole a guess she shook her head.

"Meet his real mum, and have a big birthday- party at his birthday, October the fifteenth. It turned out he had grew up with people that didn´t like him, he´d never had a real birthday- party. So with the few days I had left to plan, I fixed the biggest birthday- party he could have imagined. Finding his mum was harder. I did my best…"

"Did you find her?"

"Yes and no, I found her. She had died of an overdose years ago. But also, when I found her, Isaac wasn´t with us anymore."

"He died didn´t he?" Carole nodded, she had tears in her eyes and slowly streaming down her cheeks.

"Isaac had always been very positive and happy, even though he didn´t feel good. But about two weeks after his birthday. It became clear that the cancer was taking the best of him. He slept more and more, vomited more and more, and there was nothing that really could have been done. I didn´t want Finn to see it so I let him stay at either his friends or my friends for a couple of weeks, while I stayed with Isaac every part of the day. Isaac wanted to die in our house, in his own bed. So I brought home some medicines, thought I could help him. I could do it, until November the fourteenth. I had went just to take a bit of food, when Isaac just had fallen asleep again. After almost five minutes of dry heaving and crying. I sat down by the table, and I must have fallen asleep, because almost an hour later, I woke up, from the sound of Isaac vomiting and crying. I rushed to his room, and the vision that met me there, I will remember for the rest of my life." Carole took a deep breath again, for every word she said, it was clear, that she struggled more and more to keep on speaking. I had stopped eating, after not even half the breakfast.

"He was vomiting blood, and then, he collapsed in my arms. I panicked, and threw myself on the phone calling for an ambulance. During the whole time until we reached the hospital, I held him. Then the doctors and nurses took him, and there was nothing I could do but to sit down and wait. It´s not needed to go into any details here, but when they came back, they told me that Isaac would not be out of the hospital more, and that he would most likely be gone within forty eight hours. I asked my friend, who was then watching Finn that them both would go and get Isaac´s things, and then come there with them. For the next two days I sat with Isaac. At eleven thirty P.M. At November the sixteenth, every equipment had been taken away from him. I wrapped him and his favorite teddy in a blanket and then held him in my arms. At eleven forty six, Isaac took his very last breath. I sat with him for more than two hours. Rocking Isaac in my arms, and after a while, I started questioning why I ever decided to become a nurse. At last I decided to resign, as soon as I´d fixed with the paper- work and the funeral for Isaac. At last, one of the nurses talked me into driving home, I took the car and started to drive home. That´s when I only barely saw your mum in all that snow."

"And she was in labor!" I said. Carole nodded.

"I realized that I would have no time to get you two to the hospital. I helped your mother through your birth. Then your mother collapsed, I folded the blanket I´d had for Isaac in the car, that I´d forgotten to bring into the hospital. I folded it and wrapped you in it, and then opened my jacket and held you under it. I rocked you with one arm while calling for an ambulance. And somewhere there, I was reminded of why I became a nurse."

"Why?"

"To work with life. And death´s just a natural part of it." I smiled, I´d already lifted the tray up on my bedside table, and then leaned against Carole.

"Do you wanna see any pictures of Isaac?" Carole asked after a while. I nodded, and took the tray, I threw the rest of the food in the bin and put it all in the dishes and then walked to the living room. Where Carole was just pulling out some photos from an envelope. She picked out three of them.

The first was of only Isaac, probably a photo from a real photographer, he was bald, pale and really skinny, but had got a really cute smile on his face, showing a big glug after his front teeth.

The second photo was of Finn and Isaac, I could see that Isaac was almost screaming of laughter, with a huge, kind of goofy smile on his face.

In the last photo, it was on Carole and Isaac. Carole sat in a rocking chair, with Isaac, wrapped in a blanket in her arms, she was looking down on his face, and even though it was actually nothing special, it was one of the most beautiful photos I´d ever seen.

So, that´s it. Do you think it´s a good storyline, or have I gone completely mad.

There are two important notes on the top of my profile. Just so you know.