Day 0

I've been volunteering at a hospice center since January. Everyday after school, I walked to the center which is only five blocks away. My mom hated the idea of my desire to volunteer there at first.

She said to me when I suggested it over Thai food, "Renata, you're young. You should just be a kid enjoying life among the living. Not with people who have a deadline!"

My mom doesn't understand really. She still doesn't, but I told her something that day to calm her fears. "I want to be a light, mom. Even people with a deadline need a light and a reason to keep on breathing as long as they're able. Why can't that light be me?"

She let me sign up for volunteering there after I said that. I love my mom I do. So much that even though I never told her this I wish I was born from her.

However, my biological mom left me in the store in the stationary section. The store employees showed me the footage from that day because they had permission from their manager to do so. Even though I recall nothing of that day I saw myself as a baby on the footage. Sitting in a shopping cart, left in the stationary section amongst bright colored poster paper and utensils made to create.

The irony is I only know how to draw stick figures to this day. Not long after that I was transported to state services. Where my mom was at the local foster center, signing up paperwork to enter the foster program since she passed all of the background checks.

As my mom tells it, when she saw me breeze through the foster center doors, being held in the arms by a caretaker it was love at first sight. I was her foster kids for two years before I became officially adopted by her. My mom's name is Christina. My name is Renata because my mom was Hispanic. That's all I know about her. Mom told me we could always do an ancestry kit when I was an adult and see where my roots are.

I told my mom that whoever my real mom is discarded me among posters for a reason. She wanted nothing to do with me. Still, mom did make a valid point that I should find out what my roots are for medical purposes.

Of course she would say that though because she's a pharmacist working inside of the main hospital.

Anyway, the law never caught my real mom for child abandonment so that case is for the moment cold. So, I digress.

On this Monday afternoon was when I first met Kyle. He was easy to spot. Especially considering not many people in hospice are around my age and the screaming. He threw something at every volunteer who stopped by. I was told to stay away...till he simmered down. However, I'm not known for being a good listener. Which is why on that day I grabbed an empty food tray and blocked my face from his view as I came in.

As was to be expected, he pelted the empty tray with balled up socks. "Leave me alone!" he screamed.

I quickly shut the door and said, "Shut up! I'm not even supposed to be here. Do you want me to get in trouble."

"Yes because I don't care about you." I'll admit; even though he was a stranger back then his words stung.

I peaked behind the food tray and saw a kid with glossy black hair and dark brown eyes. He looked okay to me and it made no sense in my eyes why he was even at a hospice center. Until I saw a pamphlet they left on the table near his bed...from the make a wish foundation. "Cancer?" I asked him.

The remaining balls of socks in both his hands went limp and rolled on the floor. "Yes. Not that it's any of YOUR business but yes." Turned out he had an aggressive form of lung cancer. One his family didn't anticipate would manifest, but it did.

"Aren't you too young to have lung cancer?" I asked him that day.

His answer with a wistful smile was, "Absolutely, but vaping is a bitch." I didn't like his attitude at all. Most hospice people are happy to see a friendly face of any sort since some of their own family members decline to visit.

Part of me that day wanted to just tell the volunteer coordinator that I want to visit every room but his. Till he told me something that stopped me cold. "So since I'm stage four and beyond saving in the doctors eyes, I've been brought here because I have three months to live. At least my eighteenth birthday is tomorrow so I get to die as an adult."

After he told me that I shook my head and whispered, "I'm sorry," before leaving his room.

I didn't answer him back as he yelled, "Don't be!"

Kyle didn't understand then why I said I'm sorry. It wasn't out of pity. I was thinking about all the birthdays he'll miss out on. I met him in April.