I hate this place. I hate the antiseptic smell that trails you through the halls like an unrelenting virus. I hate the collective smile on the staff's faces that look more and more like a grimace the longer you're around them. I hate that everywhere you looked you saw the sheen of death, and it never helps that my face mirrors everyone else.
But most of all, I hate that the only reason I am here is me, and I'm not even the one hurt. Every tick of the clock above the bed only pounds that realization further into my brain, until each breath of mine sounds like a scream to escape.
I have to stay strong for her, though. For my baby sister, only eight years old when my abandoned cigarette lit her on fire. Only eight years old when she almost died.
Only eight years old and she has days to live.
Every day is spent by her bed. Our parents don't care enough to come, and I am the only one. I sit there for hours, my heart beating steadily with hers, the clock's quiet ticks presiding over us both. The beeping machine connected to her chest remains constant, which comforts the nurses greatly. They say her heartbeat is incredibly strong for a coma patient, and that's always a sure sign of recovery. But the doctors know that no eight year old can survive the kind of flames she endured.
Finally, when I can't stand it any longer, I rip the machine from her body. Blissful silence follows, and I am grateful, so grateful. But I know the nurses will come soon, and I must hook her back up again before they arrive.
Somehow I manage to connect her again, but the beeping is painfully slow. My own heartbeat accelerates, making up for the loss she sustained. Frantically, I push her chest.
I never learned CPR.
I hear a slight commotion down the hall, and I know they are coming. They will drag me away for hurting her again, but it will not compare.
My sister's heartbeat is slowing every second, and gradually, my heartbeat slows too. The ticking pounding from the clock seem to be speeding up as our hearts both slow, mine out of stress and hers out of fire, out of death. The clock is pounding, the whole wall is vibrating, it's too fast...
In science, when two waves with similar frequencies meet at the right time, both waves are destroyed.
I lean over my sister, realizing before the machine goes silent, before her chest stops moving. My wave is destroyed. I have killed my own sister.
Slowly, as my breath begins to wheeze and my vision deteriorates, I remember that neither wave survives destructive interference.