It is hard to survive when you’re expected to die at any moment. And I don’t mean just to live, I mean to enjoy living, enjoying what you are doing, every single day. It is hard for me to enjoy what I do every day because the only place I’ve known and the only things that I remember clearly have happened in this place. It normally makes me feel detached from everything around me, and I have to remind myself that I am here for a reason: to be kept safe until the scientists in their white suits can find a cure. If the cure failed, I wouldn’t be able to come in contact with anything my body didn’t know about or it would make my internal systems shut down. I’m lucky I’m not dead right now, but I was at least lucky enough to have gotten quarantined quickly.

At the moment, I am sitting in my room, ruling over what I know. I was born with a possibly fatal condition. It is, as of yet, incurable. I have not been outside in years. I must be kept away from anything harmful to my system, including people. This room is all that I have known for fourteen years. That is what I know. Now, for what I don’t. Where are my parents? What is happening in the outside world? Am I the only one like me?

I have a question for everything, but none of those questions are ever answered. I live here in solitude, in a bleached white room, eating my food that is sent down the chute in the corner, running down the track that an anonymous voice reminds me of every day. It is a very dull way of living, but one thing drives me forward: I need to find out what else is out there. What kind of people, what kind of animals, the world, the cities. I am told everything, but only in small amounts. I know what animals are, but what different kinds are there? I know what a city is, but just how large are they? I know what people are, but what motivates them every day?

The sound of a woman talking interrupts my thoughts. There is no visible opening for the sound to come through the white, white walls, but nevertheless, I can still hear the woman saying, “Richard, it is 10:00. Time for your exercise.” I get up, stretch, and walk through a door opposite the food chute. At the other side is a larger room shaped like a large rounded rectangle, with a line running all the way around it a couple yards away from the wall. As the sound of a buzzer rings through the room, I start off at a light jog.

After running a few laps, the buzzer signals the start of the daily routine consisting of stretches, weight lifting, and cardio. Even though it makes me ache and sweat and stink, this is the part of the day that I enjoy the most, because it puts me to work and doesn’t let my mind stray to anything else. After an hour, the buzzer again sounds, signaling the end of my exercises. I begin to get ready for my virtual class, but instead the woman’s voice rings through the gym.

“Today, you have a break in schedule. Instead of having your classes today, Richard, you have a visitor.”

For a second, I’m confused. I do have a visitor every month to help with the solitude of living here, but that day is still two weeks away. I’m beginning to wonder if somehow I heard her wrong when the woman says, “Head to the visitor room after you change.”

A mixed sense of excitement and dread fill me as I collect my clothes. On one hand, this could be the day that I have been waiting for for all these long years, somebody coming and telling me that I can finally go out into the world without a fear of dropping dead.

But on the other hand, this could also be the day that I hoped would never come, when the men with clean suits tell me, expressionless and uncaring, that there is no cure, that I have to live out my entire life, or what’s left of it, never being able to see anything but the inside of my enclosure.

I go through my room, pass a door next to my bed, and walk into a room with a pane of glass dividing the room in half. There are two chairs, each placed exactly opposite one another from the glass. I was expecting someone to already be in the chair on the other side of the glass, but as I walk in, I see that I am the only one in the room.

I hear the woman’s voice again. “Be patient, your visitor will be with you shortly.”

I sit down in the chair, my unease growing with every second that passes. Finally, after ten minutes of waiting, a man and woman walk into the room. I spring up instantly, wide-eyed with shock.

“Mom! Dad!” I don’t believe my eyes until Mom, with tears in her eyes, walks up to the glass, pressing her palm against the smooth surface. Dad stands behind her with his hands on her shoulders, a smile pushing up the corners of his mouth. I press my hand on the glass next to Mom’s, imagining that I could feel her hand against mine.

“What are you two doing here?” I ask. “What’s the the news?”

“You’re leaving,” Mom replied, trying to keep back her tears. “You’re coming home.”

“They finally found a cure, after all these years,” Dad said. “We’ll take you into the research center, where they have the final tests, and there you’ll take the medicine.”

“And they’re sure that it’ll cure me,” I state, a question lingering behind the statement.

“Yes. Yes, they’re sure,” Mom replies, nodding fiercely, tears still threatening to break through.

“Mom, it’s okay,” I tell her. “I’m coming home, they found a cure, it’s okay if you cry.”

She let the tears flow freely, “I know,” she says, struggling to speak between breaths. “. . it’s just. . . you’ve been gone for so long. . . that I’ve been afraid that you wouldn’t. . . be able to come back home at all. . . But now you can, and we’re so happy that everything. . . that everything can finally turn out how it should’ve been.”

“When am I going to leave?” I ask.

Dad pats Mom’s back reassuringly and answers. “They said that your lunch would be waiting for you when you got back, and after you finished eating, we’ll come in and get you.”

“And we’re getting the medicine immediately after?”

“Yes, we are. And then we’re all going to go home. Now, go eat, and we’ll all be together soon.”

“Richard,” Mom says, looking up, tears spilling over her cheeks.

“Yes, Mom?”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

I walk through the door, holding back tears of my own, and into my room, where I see a tray sitting on my bed, steam wafting off of the food. Seeing the tray was another surprise; I rarely got fresh, hot food. It was usually fruit or flavored noodles, or something of the sort. I sat down on the bed and ate the food as quickly as I could.

It is hard to describe what I am feeling. It is beyond joy, beyond happiness. I feel like my brain is going to explode from all of the emotion running through me. I haven’t seen my parents for years, and now they show up out of the blue, telling me the words that I’ve longed to hear for years. No words can, or ever will, describe how I feel.

I finish my food and eagerly walk to the door, but as I reached for the knob, sudden doubt grew within my joy. A voice in the back of my head asked, What if the medication doesn’t work? What if it does more harm that good? Maybe it’ll seem like it works, but then, when nobody expects it, the condition pops back into my system, and I drop dead in front of my family.

All of a sudden, I bursted into tears. It’s too much. Staying in solitude for so long, and finally find out that there is a cure, that I can be with my family, only to wonder if it’ll work. Despair consumes me, and I fall to the floor, my legs unable to carry the weight of my body, unable to carry the weight of my sadness. Why did it have to be me! Why did it have to be anyone! Why couldn’t I just live a normal life, instead of constantly worrying about what is going to happen to me if I so much as step outside.

I lay on the floor, without the strength to get up, to do anything but shake, even after the tears stop. I lay still in the fetal position until darkness begins creeping up on me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I wake up in an unfamiliar room, nestled underneath a blanket. As I sit up, my vision dims and pain flashes through my head. I wait, and after a moment, clarity returns and the pain goes away. I take in the room I’m in. It is so unlike my confines from before that I almost can’t process what is around me.

The bed I am on is against the wall with a large, squat dresser next to it, on my left. Against the wall on the other side of the room is a large, black screen with cords coming out of the back of it. To the right of me is an easel with a half-finished painting on it. All along the walls are posters, drawings, and paintings of various sizes. I find it strange to see pictures hanging on the wall like that, but I already know that there are many things the outside world will surprise me with. The only light in the room came from above the dresser from behind tightly drawn curtains. Curious, I get up and walk over to the elaborately decorated cloth and pull them apart.

I am blinded at first from the bright light suddenly pouring into the room. I wait for a few seconds, allowing my vision to adjust and the spots disappear from my eyes. I look out the window again, and I’m instantly mesmerized by what I see. The sun is shining brightly on green, green ground. Tall, straight trees with wide branches stand high over everything else around them, blooming with yellow, pink, and orange. A road cuts through a large field far to my right. The sky is blue, blue as far as I can see, with a few white clouds floating up in the emptiness. The sun sits above the treeline in the distance, shining down on everything underneath.

I continue to stare at the amazing sight - catching a glimpse of the occasional deer to the front and left of me, or of a flock of birds flying overhead - until I lose track of time. I must have been there for half an hour when I hear someone behind me.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

I turn and see a boy maybe a year or two younger than me staring out of the window.

“Yes, it is. I haven’t seen anything like it.”

“I’m, ah, Jason, by the way.” I can tell his voice is hesitant, unsure of this stranger suddenly popping into his life. I can’t blame him; I don’t necessarily know what to think either.

“Richard.”

The boy walks up next to me and leans on his elbows against the dresser, coughing uncomfortably. “So, um. . . how are you doing, ah, after all of that?”

“I don’t know yet, I haven’t been awake for long. What happened?”

“They want to tell you when you get in there. It’s pretty important to them.”

“Mom and Dad? They’re here?”

“Yeah, they’re in there cookin’ dinner,” Jason said, jabbing a finger over his shoulder.

I go into the hallway, and that’s when the smell hits me. I don’t know what it is, but I have to get to the source of it. I run the rest of the way into the kitchen, but I can’t figure out where the smell is coming from. Mom is putting a large pot of water on the stove, which I know cooks food.

Mom looks over at me and smiles. “Hey! You’re finally awake.”

I eagerly look around for the source of the aroma, but still can’t find it.

“Where’s that coming from!?” I ask her.

“Hmm? Oh, I’m cooking meatloaf for supper. It’s in the oven.”

She puts corn in the water.

“Where’s Dad?” I ask as Jason walks in.

“He had to go to the store. Just needed some more groceries.”

“How much longer is it goin’ to take?” Jason asks and peeks into the oven.

Mom smacks his hand lightly and says, “It would go quicker if you’d help.”

Jason sighs and says, “Alright, I’ll help. What can I do?”

“Mash some potatoes. Make sure you peel ‘em first.”

I watched as they peeled and mashed potatoes and put them in a pot with milk and butter. After they finished, Dad walked in, laden with bags.

“Hey, there ‘e is. Never thought you’d wake up!”

“Don’t tease him! He’s been through a lot,” Mom tells him as he sets the bags on the table.

“Aww. . . I’m just messen’ with ‘em,” Dad said, but Mom stared at him. “Ooh, alright, I’ll go easy on him.” Dad looks over and winks at me.

“I saw that!” Mom points a spoon threateningly at him, but it only made him smile bigger.

Mom put her hands on her hips, but I can tell she is trying not to smile. “Stop it! I can’t be angry at you if you’re smilin’ like a fool!” Dad embraces her, and the smile finally breaks through.

“See, you can’t help it,” Dad says softly as he leans in and kisses her.

Mom pushes away after a moment and says, “I got to finish cookin’, and you gotta put up the groceries.”

“Oooh, okay.”

Jason turns to me with a disgusted look, but I love what happened and even found it funny. It is everything that I was hoping to get after being cured. About twenty minutes later, Mom says that dinner was ready. She pulls out a steaming pan of meat from the oven and put it on the table. I take a deep breath of the meatloaf. Mom put the mashed potatoes on the table and Dad put the corn on a large platter and set it on the table. Everyone else sits down at the table, and we all get our portion of food. I can’t hold myself back, and I end up with a mountain of food on my plate.

“Woah there! Leave some for the rest of us!” Jason said.

“Don’t eat too much, or you’ll throw up,” Mom says.

I nod around my bite of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. The flavor bursts in my mouth, and I have to hold back to keep from overfilling my mouth. As I swallow I remember something.

“What happened after I passed out?”

Mom looks at Dad, and he says, “Well we found you in the room after someone unlocked the door to let us through. They told us that the cure would still work if you were still asleep, so we went ahead and took you to the lab, where they gave you the medicine. They exposed you to light amounts of different things, like food, sunlight, and pollen. That took over an hour, and they assured us that it was safe to take you outside. From there we took you home and put you in your brother’s room.”

I nodded, expecting the response. “So I’m good? Foreign substances aren’t going to cause my system to shut down?”

Mom said “Yes,” but Dad overrides her, saying, “As far as we know, you aren’t sick anymore, but the doctors said that there are many things still that might activate it again, so we need to look out.”

I nod again. It was more than I had hoped, so the news doesn’t upset me. I look around at my family, finally, truly, happy, for the first time in a while. Smiling, I take another mouthful of meatloaf, savoring the flavor as much as I could before having to take another bite.