DDOlympics Storytelling Part 2

(After discussing in PMs, my opponent and I have decided that judges should only cast votes in the argument and S&G categories. Thank you! To my opponent - this is 184 characters).The Window I hate overcrowded hospitals. Patients should have rooms to themselves, yet here I am, saddled with some stranger. I have the misfortune of lying eternally on my back. They said I can't sit up for at least another few weeks. She, at least, gets to sit for an hour a day. The doctors said something about needing to drain fluids from her lungs. Her bed sat next to the only window. If I was alone, I could see the free world. Now I'm forced to have it relayed to me. It's a humiliating experience, almost as bad as needing the nurses' help to urinate. A dark, nearly opaque curtain divided the room. That struck me as odd for a hospital, but it didn't really matter. The woman and I got to know each other without the bias of appearances. Her name was Laura. I learned that she married an ex-army man, that she worked as an art teacher but was an aspiring author, and that she loved listening to classical music. We never talked about how we got here. Like prison, it was an unwritten rule. We discussed the outside. She had an unobstructed view for that one blissful hour while her lungs drained, and I demanded every detail. She complied happily. I lived for that hour, for the sheer beauty many people take for granted. That hour brightened my entire life. If only I could see it for myself. We lived in this utopian hell for weeks. Time lost importance in the hospital. The past ceased to matter. Nobody visited us. There was no one left in my life. If Laura mourned her lack of visitors, she never showed it. Everything from the outside came in a one-hour time frame from a rectangular hole in the wall.Laura said the window overlooked a park with a lovely lake. She described ducks and swans engaging in graceful ballads, as though moving to the piano music she loved. A careless piece of litter interrupted their song, transforming their sweet choreography into a maddening frenzy. Gradually, however, the procession returned to normal. It made me think of life. We all have those periods of chaos, that shiny trash that throws our beauty into disarray. Only sometimes life doesn't return to normal. Lovers walked hand-in-hand, sometimes crossing the small bridge spanning the lake, other times lingering in the beautiful flowers blooming sporadically throughout the park. Laura laughed when she told me that it had looked as though a child had had too much fun with a coloring book. She talked about children racing model boats on the lake to see which was faster. So innocent, so ignorant - children. But then those concepts are always wedded. I asked her once about the children. Laura paused and then described the gorgeous skyline. It may have been distant and unreachable, but it was there. She could relay, in exquisite detail, the shapes of the cotton clouds drifting across the sky. Sometimes she lamented missing the sun rise and set, and though I agreed, I resented her. At least she could see the outside. I couldn't, and my jealousy burned as brightly as the golden sun she described. Why should Laura be the one to see the world? It wasn't fair!I considered that idea for a long time. The hand life dealt me had sucked ever since I stepped out of childhood. Mom dead. Sickness. Father telling me it was my fault, that if I hadn't gone to college, we could have afforded treatments. Dropping out in my second year. Cold alley streets. There is a point, in winter, lying on the snowy alleyways, where the snow starts feeling like a blanket. My job as a waitress with a 'hands-on' manager. The discovery of alcohol under the counter. The blurry car drive. Now this. The days passed and nothing changed. She still explained everything in that one divine hour, and though I loved it, I hated it. I hated her. One night, as I studied the invisible ceiling, I heard coughing. It rose like an orchestra, a trumpeting horn, a brass wind wheezing its staccato symphony, the cough building to a crescendo under the conductor's wand. Laura fumbled about, searching for the button to call in the nurse. I never moved. I could have pushed my button easily. One movement, and the nurses would swarm in like bees. My finger hovered over the button when another thought slunk across my mind. Why should I? The world never did anything for me. That was how it operated. Every woman for herself. For the first time in my life, I controlled something. And Laura - what did she know of suffering? She was married, she taught children, and she even had dreams! She was living; I was surviving. Not anymore. I wanted it all. The window and the dreams. After a few moments, the coughing stopped. The next morning, a nurse discovered Laura's body. Her reaction seemed coldly professional. But then, I suppose anyone working in a hospital becomes desensitized to death. She called an attendant to wheel the body away. A fresh pair of sheets and another ordinary day. Despite my shameful joy, I shivered. As soon as I felt it appropriate, however, I launched my question. "Can I be moved to the other side of the room - where Laura was?" "Absolutely." The nurse smiled. Apparently she reserved her emotions for the living. She made the switch and ensured I was comfortable. I assured her I was, warring to focus on her. "Okay, then," she said, smiling again. "If you need anything, just call." With that, she left, easing the door shut. Liberated, I began the rigorous process of propping myself up. I shifted an elbow to support my body. Oh, it hurt, but the pain encouraged me. Once I was up, I began the no-less painful process of turning my head. My neck battled me the whole way but at long last, I made it! Finally, finally, I would see heaven itself! Eagerly, I looked toward the area where Laura described Eden and saw - a wall. I called the nurse back in. Had I switched rooms? No, that was impossible. Laura lied to me! Why? Why would she do that? "Laura," she told me, "loved to make other people feel better. That's why she became an art teacher. The poor girl didn't deserve this." Her words unlocked a vault within my chest. "What do you mean?" The nurse said nothing. "Please," I begged. For once, the desperation didn't burn. I had to know. "There was a crash," the nurse explained. "Police are still looking into the details, but they think one of the drivers was drunk. Laura's husband died and so did -" she stopped suddenly. The silence in the room seemed, impossibly, louder than it had last night. "Who else died?" "You'll have to excuse me," the nurse said, escaping the room. Left alone, I rewound my conversations with Laura. She had answered every question I asked her...save one. The one about children. Oh my God. I shatter into countless shards. I destroyed her. Why? For a non-existent window? For hopes intangible as sunbeams? Was it because she made me happy? Is it happiness to love and hate simultaneously? If so, why did I destroy it? Because I've never known anything but darkness. I reacted, perhaps, in the only way I was capable of doing. And I destroyed a light I never thought could have existed. I killed a dream. I don't deserve to have any. The world truly was not a fair place. If it were, Laura and her family would still be here, and I would have died in the crash. At least then the flames might have cleansed me somehow. But it's only now, when my body is as filthy and fragmented as my soul, that I feel my heartbeat. It's only now, when I am beyond salvation, that I feel each teardrop burn with acidic guilt, feel a yearning beyond the reach of dictionaries. It is only now, when I am the most broken, that I wonder if I have a chance of becoming whole again. I know I'm unworthy of Laura's forgiveness, and what really tears me apart, more than anything else, is the knowledge that she would forgive me anyway.