2025 Short Story & Essay Contest: Second Place, High School Short Story Contest
By Hana Sor
Isabella Lovestory woke up on a hospital bed, her head leaning against a window. She opened her eyes. They felt glued shut to her like Scotch tape. She did not know for how long she had slept. Edith Piaf’s La Vie en Rose filtered in from the hallway, and a strong scent of antiseptic hit her nose, making her eyes close once again.
She was sitting on this hospital bed, a fruit cup to her right and an odd stuffed bunny sitting atop her knees. It was a white bunny with red eyes that looked at her curiously. Its fur stuck up a bit, and she reached out to feel its ears. They were long and flat against her skin. Amid all the sickness that was no doubt outside of this room, she felt that this bunny was quite nice, almost sweetly encouraging her to get better. She wasn’t ill, or so she had thought when she first came to the emergency room. She had called her only friend Marjorie, because quite frankly, she felt alone. She told her that she had had a fever for a few days and that she needed a ride. Now, she found herself in a hospital room with a window that was so stained that the only thing visible was the cedar tree that would sway every now and then when the wind blew.
Marjorie agreed to her request to be taken to a place that wasn’t so isolating, and now, sunlight was streaming in through the window of a white room she had never been in before. She turned 78 yesterday. She had just remembered this, and saw a note on her lap that said Happy Birthday Isabella! With a Biscoff on top of a napkin. Days of food were left uneaten on the table next to her, and Marjorie had fallen asleep on the spare chair, a crossword puzzle slipping from her hands. She turned around. C’est lui pour moi, moi pour lui dans la vie, Edith sang. She wanted to get closer. She would remember the song playing on the radio when she was a child, the soft hum of the fan her parents brought out in the summer all coming back to her. This was the sound that held her in her arms, that sound that permeated the air and made her big heart swell.
