She had wonderfully light blonde hair that seemed to float joyously in the breeze.

They were light as feathers; just like her light-hearted nature. Now her blonde hair was gloriously golden as usual, but they lay limply by her side like strands of lifeless creatures, spread around herself, obligatory bound to the white bed. Her sandy hair werent the way they used to be; they used to flounce slowly in the air like puffs of dandelion feathers blown from its stalk, as she stands smiling on a grassy little hill, waiting for us to catch up with her. The hair would dance ever so slowly, having been lifted up from the motion of the recent run shed taken to get ahead, and waft around celestially mid-air. The sun behind her would shine so brightly that the thin, white strands almost appeared transparent they would orbit around her smiling little face like a glowing halo. Her large grin looked so happy and sincere, they seemed to radiate the light source that we lived under, rather than the majestic sun himself. That joyous smile was no longer here. As I entered the room, my eyes were immediately drawn to her moving chest. Although the breaths were dangerously shallow, their minute presence was enough to shower me down with immense relief, like washing down a cold drink on a scorching summer day. A scalding hot dread that had crept up from the back of my neck when mum had told me of the news earlier were finally subdued, but now they were simply a mere tingling that was ready to spread out, as I watched her condition myself. The windows of the room were cleared to allow streams of white light to descend through. The lights fall softly down and merged with the clean bed to look like transparent screens of muslin. This intangible blind surrounded her small, fragile body that laid immobile in the middle of the mattress. Although she looked snug underneath the blanket, the way her same old black, expressive eyes fixed distantly at the wall frightened me. Something signalled to me that despite the usual surface, she was no longer there.

On some summer days, the sun would be so high up in the sky that everything around us was blindingly white. Although the brightness was painfully glaring, the nice warm weather would eventually lure us out for our usual walks with mum. The radiant sun would shower down on her little head like buckets of snowy bleach, so that her small face and hair were drenched in white. Apart from having to squint her eyes a little, the strong sunlight never seemed to deter her. Rather, she seemed to enjoy its warm rays on her skin, turning her face up to the sky, to welcome it with a smug smile on her face. She absorbed this light energy and immediately added them as the vigour to her steps, she skipping ahead of mum and I. Every now and then, she would peer up at me or mum against the glare of the sun, and give a bright smile to show how much she was enjoying herself. Underneath her long, flowing hair was pure white, and this fabric of hair draped over her shoulders and all-white outfit like a silky shawl. Hair and cloth would merge into one, and

from the distant, especially under the glare of the sun, one could easily mistake her for a glowing little white spirit, with hair blowing ethereally behind her in the wind. She would only be made mortal through the black shapes and dots that glimmered in and out; her mouth and eyes, like buoys bobbing up and down in a snow-littered lake. Almost every time a passer-by would stop momentarily in their track, affected by her striking feature. They would exclaim in an adoring tone, Oh, look her! What a lovely girl! Her natural beauty was something mum had always beamed about; long blonde hair, curiously distinct from mums dark locks, dainty little face that leaves her well apart from the rest, like a rare diamond amongst rusted silver, and the large black eyes with curvy, long golden lashes that seemed to be peering from a page of a fairy tale book. These features rests comfortably on her pale face, that exuded femininity and demure gentleness. Despite her princess-like refined looks, shed energetically deliver beaming smiles to anyone who was in her sight. Shed rush up to complete strangers and indiscriminately deliver her distinctive eye-squinting, stretched-lipped smile; pure, honest smiles, completely uninfluenced by any hidden intentions. Those smiles were the type of things unaffected by any of the impure blemishes of the world, and one of those things that budges at the hidden bud of tenderness within a person, until those buds opened up into flowers of kindness that spread through their veins, and finally a successive smile would form on the persons lips, like springs first bloom and return hers; like a scalded canvas, long stowed away and hidden, finally restored with a luscious brush of paint.

Those cheerfulness thats been so vivid and alive were completely stripped off, and left her as only a solid mass of softly breathing body. With every quiet and weak breaths, her diminishing spirit little by little, sucked away the unseen energy force, that has fuelled the house with laughter, usually over the silly little things shed do. The white light came in through the window and shone beautifully on her, they made her serene face twinkled unreal radiance. I watched tiny little fragments of dust particles dancing around from the top of the path of light slowly and effortlessly floating down and disappearing into the blanket on top of her; like small microscopic angels blessing her. With this thought, I felt a lump forming at the back of my throat. I edged in closer to her, but each foot hovered ever so slowly above the ground, like creeping across the floors of a funeral house. Finally, I made it to stand beside her and took a long look at her still, calm face that was completely oblivious of my presence. Her eyes were clear like polished black pearls, and face beautiful as always. I sat down and slowly reached across to lay a hand on her soft, little body. The quiet, small-voiced sigh brought me unavoidably to tears. The first few round fluids rolled down my cheeks and were trapped within the jarring gaps of the white knitted top mum made. Soon, more tears joined those gathered droplets as I uncontrollably shook. Each wave of cruel reality struck like a splash of freezing water. Although the unjust fate of her

condition was directed to her not me, the fact that she was too young to even realize that the destiny of her short life has been severed, hurt even more. There was no one to explain to her what this thing was and why its happening. The bitterness of the morbid truth chilled into my bones, sunk like merciless carnivorous teeth. The more I realized this reality cannot be rewind, the harder I cried.

At the hospital, wrapped in a blanket, she began to breathe heavily. Shed always hated coming here. Although I knew deep down that she wouldnt survive the night without any support, I couldnt help but imagine that she could keep holding on and onto it, back home. Was the hospital causing her deterioration? It was as if its stark, unfriendly environment was suffocating her. All the while thinking this, I stroked her through the blanket, wishing with all my might that with these two useless hands, the ailments could be miraculously drawn up, and her breathing bettered. However, knowingly, all I could do was to hopefully soothe away some portion of her discomfort and fear, that was making her shivering so convulsively. Her breathing worsened into disruptive wheezing patterns, and her entire entity was shivering; her face shook, her stretched out, straining limbs shook. A dark, muggy mixture of fear enveloped me in thick slather of dreads that depressed me and drew every strengths from my muscles and form; I feared to think of that true, dreaded cause behind her severe shivering, I wanted to throw that inevitably looming blackness out of my mind, that certain something that was out of all our control. I imagined it as a dark menacing figure like a visiting monster in story books with horns and evil yellow eyes. It comes out from the closet whenever you least expect it and destroys your very spirit with the unbearable nail scratches noises on the wooden door. It peers out from the edge of the closet door, and just its glares are enough to weaken you to your knees. I found myself unconsciously glancing at the wooden door of our hospital room left ajar to find nothing but medical personnel rushing about the white hall. Then I nearly doubled over, grew sick thinking ahead about that very moment where Id witness a writhing, living life, passing away; disappearing forever before my very eyes. It could simply evaporate like vapour over a thick, cold slab of ice, or struggle and fight as its last breath of air is drawn out in a tumultuous tug of war, but the pain that would surely come with it gripped me with fear. I held onto her thin little white arms that shook uncontrollably like an overheating machine, I squeezed them tight but they still wouldnt stop. Once again, I wished I could somehow transfer a bit of life and heat in my hands into her dwindling one. She was laid on top of that hard, metal table bed, with the same old blanket was draped over her body. My heart cried with sympathy for her discomfort. As her eyes began to roll in, my skin felt hotly scalded with a sense of urgency and dread. I shuddered with sickness.

The silver haired doctor returned with a couple of nurses, they flung the door opened and let in this gush of grave air. I felt a surge of anger as I felt the gush of air had obliterated even more, the minute life energy remaining in the air. Nevertheless, the doctor swooped in at us and threw medical facts out that were like large and heavy white boards scribbled in black marks that said Inevitable and No Hope. Whilst he tried to engage us in those medical information with stabbing blue eyes, I felt restless about the cold air gushing down from the metal ventilator above. The air was blowing down on my sisters shivering little body. I wanted to rush to her side but there was a tornado between us; my head was in a whirlwind of big whiteboards with illustrations of her spinal injury diagrams on them, and everything in that room was cold and hard; the doctors stern face, the sharp corners of the room, the stark whiteness and Its been caused by the way she was running down paddings between the spine paralysis spreading to her lungs nothing to do inevitable. Suddenly, the nurses moved in and blocked her out of my view like huge, white mountains. I immediately rushed in between them, and the first thing I saw was the long, metal needle being inserted into one of her bony arms. The liquid in the syringe was fluorescent blue, and it looked muggy, thick and dangerous. The nurse drew up a tiny amount of her blood which mixed in with the blue liquid within the plastic casing. Her blood swivelled vigorously as it was suddenly sucked into the syringe, it floated around leisurely in a tissue-like, intact appearance, before the blue liquid soon surrounded it and seemed to engulf it, or taken it apart so it completely disappeared. As I watched this small scene of a couple of seconds, my heart beat loudly in my ears. I felt as if the blood had represented her and the whirling blue substance had engulfed her, like an evil fairy creature. The nurse moved out and everyone immediately arranged about her on the table bed. This all happened once again, within a couple of minutes; after the blue liquid had gone in, her eyes softened, her disruptive breathing quietened. My brother was stroking her hair and my mother was on the other side of the room. I looked straight into her eyes the whole time. They looked black, soft and relaxed until that moment, shortly after the last little sigh, when her chest suddenly stopped moving. It was hard to notice any difference; the gleam in her eyes were still there, and so was her expression, but now they were frozen, no longer responsive. She laid still, unblinking as I moved my hand around her face and stroked her hair, after my brother had walked away. I touched her limp hand that was now like a dolls, and her warm body that still felt like a sleeping persons. When her soul had left her body, she gave out one last sigh. It sounded like the noise she used to make when she lost at a game or when I wouldnt give her something she wanted. Before we left, I gave her one last kiss, on her warm cheeks and warm lips, dampening her face once again with tears.

My one last look of her was through the patient room that was left ajar. Underneath the bright light bulbs and through the tears that quickly filled my eyes, I could hardly make her out. I saw blonde hair, a small, blanketed body, and she looked to me, more like a glowing little angel.