The Rebellion Record

Chapter Two: The Red Devil and the Camera Lens

The morning arrived not with a sunrise, but with the sharp, rhythmic click-clack of nursing clogs in the hallway. Sunlight filtered through the hospital blinds in thin, dusty stripes, illuminating the microscopic particles of lint dancing in the air.

My stomach rolled before I even opened my eyes. It was a phantom nausea, the kind that lives in your mind before it hits your blood. I knew today’s schedule by heart. Pre-meds at 7:30 AM. Fluids at 8:00 AM. And then, the arrival of the big guns.

The door pushed open, and Mom walked in. She was already in her scrubs navy blue, crisply ironed with her stethoscope draped around her neck like a silver noose. She looked like Nurse Sarah today, her hair pulled back into a tight, sensible bun, but her eyes were all Mom.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” she whispered, setting a tray of ice chips and ginger ale on my bedside table. “How are we feeling? Scale of one to ten?”

“A solid four,” I lied.

“Maybe a five if we don’t talk about the ‘Red Devil’ yet.”

Mom’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. She reached for my chart, her fingers hovering over the data.

“I talked to the night shift. You didn’t sleep much. Brenda said she saw your light on until two.”

“I was drawing,” I said, glancing at my sketchbook on the tray. I had tucked the drawing of the “Mayor” under the back cover, a secret kept from the clinical gaze of the ward.

“Well,” Mom said, checking the site of my PICC line with practiced, gentle fingers.

“The ‘Board Meeting’ is still on. Liam was at the nurse’s station five minutes ago asking if ‘The Constituent’ was awake yet. I told him he had to wait until after your anti-emetics.”

She squeezed my hand a quick, desperate press of skin against skin before her pager buzzed.

Duty called. She had three other kids on this wing whose lives depended on her being a nurse first and a mother second. “I’ll be back to hang the first bag, okay? I love you.”

The Arrival of the Poison

A few hours later, the room felt smaller. The “Red Devil”—Adriamycin—is a drug so toxic that the nurses have to wear protective gowns and double-gloves just to handle the syringe. It’s a brilliant, terrifying shade of cherry red.

As the infusion began, the world turned metallic. I could taste it a sharp, copper tang at the back of my throat that made me want to gag. My skin felt too tight for my bones.

“Just breathe, Em,” the floor nurse, a cheerful woman named Elena, said as she adjusted the drip. “Heard you met our Mayor yesterday.”

I nodded weakly, leaning my head back against the pillow. “He said he’s been here a long time."

“Since he was fifteen,” Elena sighed, her voice dropping. “Osteosarcoma is a stubborn beast. But Liam? He’s the heart of this place. He brings those old disposable cameras in and takes pictures of everyone. He says phones make people look ‘fake-happy.’ He wants the ‘real-life’ stuff the messy hair, the hospital gowns, the grit.”

I closed my eyes, picturing him. The Society of the Still-Kicking.

The Light in the Courtyard

By 2:00 PM, the worst of the first-wave nausea had settled into a dull, heavy ache. I felt like a hollowed-out tree. Slowly, dragging my IV pole with me like a skeletal dance partner, I made my way to the window.

The courtyard below was a patch of green in a world of white. And there he was.

Liam was standing under the old oak tree. He was wearing his oversized hoodie, his crutch leaned against the bench. He was talking to a younger boyToby from Room 310 who was clutching a stuffed bear. Liam held an old Fujifilm disposable camera, crouched down to Toby’s level, making the kid laugh so hard his little shoulders shook.

Liam looked up then. It was like he had a radar for me.

He didn’t wave at first. He just looked at me through the glass, his expression unreadable and intense. Then, he raised the camera. He pointed it straight at my window, framed my pale, tired face in the plastic lens, and click.

A flash of light bounced off the glass.

He lowered the camera and gave me a lopsided grin, the kind that promised trouble and poetry in equal measure. He pointed toward the elevator and then toward the roof, mouthed the word Ten, and vanished back toward the ward entrance.

I stood there for a long time, my fingers touching the cold glass where his gaze had been. The “Red Devil” was still circulating in my veins, trying to kill the bad parts of me, but Liam’s smile... that was doing something for the good parts.

I went back to my bed and opened my sketchbook. I didn’t draw the tree this time. I drew a camera lens. And inside the reflection of the lens, I drew two people standing on a roof, looking at the stars.

The beeping of the monitor didn’t sound like a warning anymore. It sounded like a heartbeat.