2 minute read
Lydia Wilson, 10, "The Tiger"
As one might assume, it is always good to have a tiger with you at the doctor. They will calmly sit next to you while they intimidate the frightening nurses, and they will let you hold their tails during the needles. For John, a child who had been plagued by a brain tumor his whole life, it was no different. On a Sunday afternoon, sitting in the waiting room once again, John had a realization. He spent every waking moment of his life afraid. Every day he was frightened and scared, unsure of who he was or wanted to be, or rather if he was living the life that he wanted. He felt he was losing himself to his sickness which consumed him.
Three years prior to John getting his tiger, he was being wheeled in for his tumor reduction surgery, something which had been digging at his mind for a while. He couldn’t quite find the strength to wake from the anesthesia, and that one week he was in the coma, most thought he wouldn’t make it. Yet again, he was weak and helpless just lying in his rickety bed while his parents waited and cried next to him.
The tiger was John's idea. He was sitting on the crinkled, leather couch which still smelled of the fruit loops he spilled last week, and he was watching the Jungle Book when he saw Sahere Khan. To John, it didn’t matter who Sahere was, but rather what he was. He was strong and powerful, two things John couldn’t be. He looked at this tiger with hope, a feeling that was new to John.
It is always a good idea to sleep with your tiger as well. Every time you have a nightmare, they will come to sit at the foot of your bed and wait until you are sound asleep. John used to have many nightmares, and his tiger was always purring softly under his bed, just loud enough for John to hear him.
John’s father left soon after the tiger came, leaving his mother to raise her 10-yearold son alone. Although she tried to hide it, John saw her fear, the same emotion he had once felt. After his dad left, John took it upon himself to become the man of the house. Although ill, John tried his best to do all the things his father used to do, to an extent. He couldn’t reach the green shelf where the wine glasses went, even if he was standing on his tiger, but he could run a pretty mean load of laundry while his furry friend played in the piles of dirty waitress uniforms on the floor.
It was sometime later that summer when his tiger turned 5 that John had his last surgery, but John wasn’t fearful this time for he knew he would wake up when the doctors wanted him to. He counted backward from ten falling asleep with blinding lights shining into his foggy, blue eyes.
Naya Saigal, 10, Untitled
Nastassja Panos, 12, "Veil"
