Don't Drink Bees

I climbed out of the van. I held the package out in front of me with both hands. I don't remember it being a warm day, but the wrapping paper was moist and sticky beneath my fingers.

The house loomed before me. I knew it well: a big, white, two-story home that sat on top of a big, green hill. The front door was perfectly centered, and there were bushes on either side of the steps that led to it. Her older brother would jump out of those bushes and try to shoot me with one of his guns, but that was a long time ago.

My mother and I headed toward the back door, while my father and brother waited in the van. We climbed the wooden steps and opened the screen door to the porch. The family dog Pooh was outside, on her run. I didn't see the cat, Tigger. I looked around the porch, making note of the changes. The blackboard that we'd used to play school was no longer on the wall. The window above the dish-washing sink was empty. Her mother wasn't framed in it, neither was her sister - not that day.

Someone let us in. I don't remember who. I didn't see many faces that day, only legs. I clung to the package. The cookbooks her sister and I had stacked and re-stacked lay there collecting dust. We walked past.

The house was dark, or maybe it was just my mood that made it seem that way. I guess it was always dark inside, but any other day I would've laughed and shrugged my shoulders the way her mother hates and taken a peek at the noisy pet bird. I probably wouldn't have noticed the empty darkness.

Today the stairs felt larger as I climbed them. My mother was behind me. Someone showed us the way to her room, but it wasn't her room. I knew her room. We passed it by. Was the door open? Could I see inside to the open area on the smooth, wooden floor where I'd slept next to her bed that night so long ago?

I'd awakened in the middle of the night, sat up, and Pooh had scurried across the floor and positioned herself on my pillow. I couldn't get that dog to move for the longest time. I couldn't make much noise, because if I woke up her parents, we'd get in trouble for letting Pooh upstairs. We'd snuck her up. I couldn't wake my friend, because she was sleeping too deeply. I could hear her breathing.

She had always had trouble breathing ever since I'd known her. Sometimes she'd break into the worst fits of coughing. They didn't scare me, though, because I was used to them, but I hadn't seen her in a long time. It'd been ages since I'd seen her face turn red and had heard her cough. It'd been months and months since I'd really talked to her. I'd come to visit her because it had been so long. I missed her.

We passed her room. We passed the giant doll house and continued down the hall. We walked past her sister's room to another room. I didn't want to go in. There were so many people in there. They were tall and neatly dressed, adult-looking. I remember their long legs. I don't remember their faces now. I didn't really look at them. The dark strangers were standing by a low bed.

As soon as I saw it, I knew that it was a hospital bed. She was sitting up on the bed, turned away from me. There was a black oxygen mask in her hand, attached to a hose which led to a machine I didn't want to look at. I'd seen all these things before hanging in the ambulance that my father helped build. They didn't mean much to me then. It's different when your best friend can't live without them, when she's so busy trying to breathe that she can't even look at you.

I wanted to leave. I didn't want to stay in that dark room with those tall strangers and my sick friend whom I loved so much. I didn't know her this way. I feared the illness that no one had tried to explain to me, because they thought the facts would scare me more.

I stood by the bed. Someone announced our presence. She stopped breathing to turn her head and look at me. I held out the present stiffly. She took it from my outstretched hands. "Thank you," she croaked and turned away again, to the machine, to the mask.

The package dropped from her hand and was lost among the bed things. I had to understand; she had to breath. She held the mask firmly to her face and breathed in. I heard the rasping.

I glanced up at the adults. There were expectations on their faces, but I couldn't read them. I looked away from the motionless adults who only stared down on me, waiting. My mother stood by the door. I stood staring at the bedding. A pillow was there. It had rabbits on it. I'd given it to her. My mother had trapuntoed it. I looked back at the mask. "I have to go," I said. "Bye." She waved her hand at me. I left.

I don't remember much of what happened next. But five words of that day echo in my mind clearly, what my mother said as she followed me outside: "You could have stayed longer." I can still hear the accusation clearly now, and the words stab me today the same way they stabbed me back on that dark, grey day - the last day I remember seeing my friend alive.