Charlie Day

2024 9th - 12th Grade Prose Honorable Mention

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an

infinite expectation of the dawn” –Henry David Thoreau

     I carefully held the warm but motionless bundle in my arms. The white and blue cloth
was folded so carefully around the baby like he was a present. My aunt's warm gaze looked
down upon me, filled with a sweet sadness, and my little sister stared at me, patiently waiting for
her turn to hold our brother, Charlie, while a nurse lurked in the corner with an artificial—or was
it sympathetic?— smile plastered onto her face. I was so confused. As I stared down at the tiny
baby, who seemed so at peace and contently asleep, I couldn’t understand why the room just
seeped with sorrow.

     “He just has trouble breathing,” my mom tried to explain over the phone the day before,
but I knew there was more to it. “Body stalk syndrome,” a doctor whispered to a nurse outside the
door, still in my little ear’s reach. These big words just floated over my six-year-old head in
innocent ignorance, but somehow I still knew something was going to happen. But nothing has
come yet? Why do people seem so happy yet sad at the same time? Isn’t the birth of my newborn
brother a good thing? These were the types of thoughts that ran in circles inside of my head, so
fast that it made me feel faint.

     When we were first driving to the hospital, I had felt a weird, unidentifiable feeling in my
stomach. I remember tracing the outline of the buildings we passed with my finger along the
leather car seat. We drove away from our apartment, building after building, and I felt sicker and
sicker to my stomach. My aunt was driving the car, and my 4-year-old sister Ria and I were
sitting in dead silence in the backseat. Having lived down South her whole life, our aunt had
never driven in New York City before. After driving over a bridge, which couldn’t have been
right, my ears perked up at Aunt Joy’s flustered confusion. We were lost. We had gone over a
bridge we weren’t supposed to, and we were now in New Jersey; but, after a long phone call with
a series of directions, we were soon on our way to the hospital.

     I remember the strong feeling of aversion I felt as soon as we stepped into the hospital.
H-O-S-P-I-T-A-L. I had learned to spell that word in class only a month before. “Squeak
squeak,” the shiny floor said, as I walked down the barren hallways with my purple light-up
sneakers. The hospital smelled the way you would expect it to, bitter and artificial, and I couldn’t
imagine how any kind of good or beauty could come from such a horrid-smelling place.

     After holding my brother Charlie, I went to grab a snack with Daddy from the vending
machine. I came back, with my mouth stuffed with Chips Ahoy cookies, to be met with a
glowing sight. The entire back wall of the hospital room was one large window pane, and as I
looked at the expansive glass window, my eyes were blinded. Once I adjusted to the brightness, I
saw a majestic sight: It was as if the sun had exploded behind a cloud, and its shattered beams
were descending from the skies in eternal golden rays. I saw life and beauty amidst a daunting
cloud of sorrow hanging above my family's heads. I felt engulfed in the vast sky that was before
my eyes. The hospital room and all its gadgets and material things melted away, vanishing from
my mind as I saw the possibility in the world that was laid out before me.

     When Charlie was put down in a crib, Aunt Joy, Ria, Daddy, and I all gathered around a
small table by Mom’s bed, where she was connected to tubes and strange-looking hospital
devices. A chocolate cake with electric blue icing, decked in candles, lay on the table for Charlie.
My aunt stooped down with a match to light the candles. A nurse, who stood in the doorway,
dimmed the lights and turned away, as if to pretend she didn’t see us lighting the candles.
Creating any sort of fire was “prohibited,” my mom later explained, so it was special that the
nurses allowed us to do so. At the time, I couldn’t understand why they were being so nice. The
cake glowed against the gloom as we sang “Happy Birthday” to my baby brother. My sister and
I eagerly leaned over the cake to blow out the forbidden candles as our brother was unable to.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a tear rolling down my Aunt’s cheek. When Ria was
born, we didn’t give her a cake in the hospital room or even sing happy birthday. When Charlie
was born, everything was different.

     Nine years later, I am in the car with Ria, my brother Benedict, who was born two years
after Charlie, and my new baby sister, Poppy. Charlie had died within only 24 hours after our
celebration in the hospital room, but this was so many years ago, and I haven’t thought about that
day in a while. The fast food smell of salty fries fills the car as we pull out of the McDonald's
drive-thru. After a long week of school in the city, I am eager to eat junk food and listen to music
on the drive to the countryside. I put in my headphones and tune out the rest of the world. I am
about to fall asleep when I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn to Ria to see why she is bothering
me, and look out the window to where she is pointing. Out the trunk window, the sky looks the
same as it did on that melancholy day: November 7th, 2013.

     It's a “Charlie Day,” Ria says. I can see the magnificence through the window. The sun's
beams penetrate the clouds in a glowing bliss. I smile to myself as I can now see how much I
have learned. Looking into the future, not back, I can see the beauty and life through what was
once a burden of suffering. That first sky nine years ago was beautiful, but that day was filled
with pain, and when the sky glows as it did then, we say, it’s a “Charlie Day,” with smiles on our
faces and bittersweet tears in our eyes.