October 15

The girl whose unluckiness is her face's name is Meghan. I figured it was time to learn it, so today I went over and visited her.

She's so normal that it's crazy. She acts like I did before he died. She watches TV and is on a first-name basis with all of the doctors, and they bring snacks to her room occasionally just so they have an excuse to talk with her. I think everyone realizes her name was picked by Arceus for the worst thing.

She wasn't afraid to tell me about it, and I think that was very brave of her. She told me that it was a birth defect. She came out of her mother's womb this way; with one eye on her cheek and her nose too low and skin pulled in all places.

She's had ten plastic surgeries, which is ten too many in my opinion, but only ten to her. She says she looked even worse before.

I don't understand how she could be so aloof. It's as if her name was never drawn. But I guess to her, that's who she is. Her right eye has always been on her cheek, and her nose has always been too low, and her skin always has been pulled in all places. And she will continue to look like that.

But if you look past her unlucky face, there are two gorgeous blue eyes that make me forget the unluckiness, and envy her instead of feel bad for her.

October 16

Emily and I are the closest out of all of us, so when I expressed how I wanted to get to know the others, now that I've officially met Meghan, she was excited to help.

After breakfast today, she dragged me into the boy with the bright green eyes' room and made us formally introduce ourselves. I said, I'm Ronnie, and he said, I'm Brian, and that was it. The three of us sat on his bed together and I nodded along to the more social people's conversation as I tried to analyze why Brian was in this hospital with us. Thankfully, when we left for me to meet the redhead, Emily told me. All pawns were against him. He was molested as a child, his parents were murdered, and now he has every mental disorder in the book. I can sympathize with him, although my pain is nothing compared to his.

The redhead's name is Carmen. There isn't even anything wrong with her. But she's been an orphan since she was two. There isn't an orphanage in the whole region, so she and her siblings got sent here, just like how people with mental and physical problems alike are treated here. It's because uneducated help is better than no help at all.

I know these people even better now. I've met them. And I know with even more confidence that they don't deserve this.

October 17

It just hit me. I made it the farthest out of all of us. I almost kept my disabilities from winning. I went on my Pokémon journey. I was undefeated. I was even working with scientists to give Pokémon the ability to speak through telepathy. It even worked. But I got shot down like the rest of the patients when the flames appeared. Then his life ended with the headpiece for telepathy still on him.

It haunts me still. I won't ever stop hearing him asking for my help as the flames wrapped around him, and then his voice cutting off as his life ended.

I may have made it the farthest, but I ended up just the same as the others. Just another fragile hospital patient.

October 18

Today was really rough for me. Emily got rushed to the emergency room because her heart nearly stopped. I was in the room with her. The doctors came in to check her pulse and blood pressure, etc., and I stepped to the side. She kept talking to me, but as soon as they saw the numbers, they rushed her out of the room. I hurried out into the hall after them, trying to catch up, but they were running too fast. They were long gone before I could even round the corner.

They won't even let me visit her until tomorrow. She's in critical condition. One second, she's smiling back at me and then she's gone.

Just like Shai.

October 19

She looks even worse when she's attached to an IV. I keep thinking of fragile Emily, and forgetting about kind, friendly Emily. I can't help it. The doctors are constantly giving her fluids through the IV, and she's going to gain water weight until her heart is better. Eventually, she'll be back to the weight she was before she became anorexic. But they haven't told her that. Because she'll freak out if she finds out the weight she didn't want on has reappeared against her will, and her condition is so critical that any added stress could mean the difference between life and death for her.

I'm scared. Just when I make a new friend that can help me move on from Shai, she starts knocking on death's door as well. I'm scared that everyone I know will die and it will be my fault.

October 20

Meghan, Carmen, and I went outside today. They don't have anything holding them back from going out like the sick ones, and technically I don't either, so I accompanied them.

It's pretty obvious to them that I've been taking Emily's hospitalization to heart. So they tried to get to know me better, which I appreciated since not too many people have shown interest in me throughout my whole life, let alone the few weeks I've spent here.

I told them everything. Once I started, I kept going. I told them that Shai and I had been together a year, and we defeated every gym, just the two of us, although we decided together that he wouldn't evolve, and he held an Everstone wherever we went. Then I was approached one day by a man in a large trench coat. He told me that he and his team of scientists working for him had a goal to create an apparatus for Pokémon to use telepathy to communicate with humans. He wanted help, and was asking random people on the streets to provide it. I figured that nothing could go wrong from this. I was so wrong.

One day, he called us to his laboratory and showed us his creation. He told us it was only a prototype, but he wanted to see how well it worked, so we strapped it up to Shai, and suddenly there was his voice in my head. He kept saying, 'Ronnie, can you hear me?' I started crying, because as long as this machine existed, my best friend could finally speak to me properly and I'd understand him.

We returned the next week, because they had made what they hoped to be the final copy of the machine. They strapped Shai up to it just like the last time, but something happened. All of a sudden, the fire alarm went off, and as did the sprinkler system.

All hell broke loose. Machines blew up into sparks, people screamed, scared for their lives, and hurried to evacuate. Fire was everywhere from the explosions, and there Shai was, with the machine on him, still operating, but not letting him move since it was attached to the large mothering machine.

I was trapped in place on the ground, because I couldn't process what was happening, frozen in fear. And then Shai said what would haunt me forever and ever.

'Ronnie. I can't move,' he cried out, struggling against the cords. 'Ronnie.'

Someone grabbed me by the shoulders and hoisted me up. When they realized I wasn't going to leave without Shai, they grabbed me in their arms, taking advantage of my small build. 'Ronnie?' Shai called out as they dragged me out of the room, and then the building. 'RONNIE!' he called out desperately as I bawled because I couldn't help him. And then: 'RON--'

The explosion.

Meghan and Carmen just stared at me. Because I had bursted their bubble. I look like I've been healing. I look like I'm getting better. Like maybe the suffering is over for her and she's going to make it out like we aren't able to. She's going to make it out.

But just because the bags under my eyes are gone doesn't mean I never had them, and just because I stopped seeing the delusions doesn't mean they're not there.

They're always going to be there, as long as Shai isn't.

October 21

I spent the day with Liam and Brian, because we haven't been talking much since I arrived, and I didn't want to neglect the other side of the hall.

Liam and Brian are best friends, and they joke around like they don't live in a hospital. Liam may be physically incapable of many things, and Brian may be emotionally incapable, but they compensate for each other.

The boys are especially interesting, because they threaten each other, like how Brian says he's going to turn Liam's oxygen tank off, or how Liam says he's going to lock him in a tiny room with no light because of Brian's fear of both the dark and closed spaces. But they act like it's nothing. It's so cute. It's good to know that two guys can have a bromance, even when they're locked up in a hospital.