My Cardboard Balcony

My Stomach by Belinda Roddie My stomach was in knots as I boarded the plane to Portugal. My family had said goodbye and planted me with red and soggy kisses as I took my leave of them. I landed in Lisbon and found myself hearing words I didn't yet know, yet I would grow familiar with. A pound or so of fear weighed on me. "Here I go," I thought to myself, walking down the ramp and seeing my girlfriend holding a sign her brown face lit with a huge smile. I clamped down on my suitcase handle. She was mine at last - our first encounter in a land I would grow to love, while holding her hand.

I wanted to believe that everything was going to be okay. I wanted to believe that Wayne would wake up from his coma; that my mother would stop drinking long enough to see straight when she visited him in the hospital; that my father, as arthritic and hunched over as he was, could get away from both the physical and emotional pain. At this point, however, that sort of hope had gotten away from me. It was like trying to catch sunlight and keep it in a jar. In the meantime, I stayed by Wayne's side and listened to the beeps and whirs of the machines that kept him breathing and his heart rate steady; I didn't want to be anywhere else.