I am Andrei. I will be 9 soon and I’ve chosen this place to tell you my story. I wish I could tell you I am an ordinary boy who likes playing with his elder brother and the small dog our parents gave us, who goes to school because he has to and, then, forgets the deed and enjoy every moment with his classmates, who likes to play at the computer and complains when the piano teacher is asking him to repeat the same parts endlessly…
Well, I could say all that couple of months ago but my life was about to change and all I can say now is that I am a mountain of wishes cemented with hope.
My troubles started on a Friday, when I felt this pain in my chest. I told my parents and they took me to this hospital for children in my hometown. I did not like going there as my brother told me it wasn’t nice. He knew what he was talking as he had to spend some time there because of a broken leg.
It was the first time I started to see that look on the doctors’ faces. You know, that look a grownup has when we, children, ask something and he does not know the answer.

I was glad we were leaving that hospital, though being there did not help at all with my pain. But the joy was to be short as my parents told me we had to go to a bigger hospital, not far from the first one.
There was where I saw the twinkling glimmer, which I love so much and which was there every time I needed it, in my mother’s eyes fading when the doctors told my parents that they had to take me without delay to a special hospital in our Capital City.
Before that Friday, a trip to the big city meant fun; that is when me and my brother were part of it. But this time it was only me and it came out to be different.
I spent a week in that place, I was in pain and all scared. At the end, they made a small cut in my chest, there, where the pain was.
My mother looked as if she was sick too, though she kept smiling and assured me everything’s going to be all right. But the glimmer kept fading.
One day, the doctors told my parents they could take me home. I was happy and the pain did not matter that much especially when I was remembering the hospital tortures. They called them procedures but I guess it is just another word for tortures.
I spent two weeks at home and everything seemed to go back to normal again. Mother started to look less sick and even the glimmer seemed to get healthier.
Then it came what I call the telephone day. The day when my mother’s smile disappeared; the day when my father’s suits started to grow larger on him; the day when my brother stopped kicking me when I was messing with his things; the day when mother and father started to whisper every time they were alone in the room.
We had to go to the big city again. This time, I was terrified they would submit me to “procedures” again. I was right, I met the strange machineries again. There is something about them as this time even father got sick when he had to stay by my side.
But, with all machineries and doctors, the pain was not going away.
Mother and father had to go almost every day now to the big city.
One evening, after returning from the big city I heard them whispering again. I came, quietly, closer to the room where they were and I heard my mother crying, “Oh, God, but we do not have all that money!” The bitterness in her voice almost hurt me so, I entered the room and I told them that it did not matter if they couldn’t buy my computer soon because I saved a good deal of money myself and it will not be long till I have it all and, anyway, my brother allows me to play on the computer more often now.
The days were passing by and I was not feeling any better.
I started to feel hopeless.
One day my mother told me that we were going to see this lady who trades courage.
How can anyone trade courage? I asked.
You’ll see, my mother answered.
When we met the lady I realized that she was actually trading magical things. My mother asked her if she had any courage for children in her stock. She did not say anything but she went to a drawer and came back with a marble. If you keep this with you at all times, she said while giving me the marble, it will give you energy and courage. It’s magical, you know.
It was really magical and as I touched it I felt like I was full of energy and hope again.
Then, it came the day when I had to go to this other hospital in the big city, the forth one by now.
When we got there I read the big inscription at the entrance, The Oncology Institute. I thought, good, this is not a hospital like the others which were called Pediatric Hospital . Though, I did not dare asking mother what Oncology meant.
Well, it was a hospital. And there were children in it too. My hopes faded again, especially when I saw that some of the children there looked sicker that everybody I had met in the other hospitals.
However, the doctors there seemed to be nicer than the ones from the other hospitals who were acting as they were very important and serious people yet not very communicative.
They told me they had to pour some wonder potion in my body, something that will help me with the pain. I would stay there for three days in the beginning, then I will go back home for a while and, then, again in the hospital and so on and so forth until the pain goes away.
I found that encouraging and, besides, I had my magical marble with me. I wasn’t alone there, mother was with me, and father promised to come every day to see how we’re doing.
One of the boys there who had been in the hospital for quite a while asked me what was wrong with me. I told him I didn’t know but I had this pain in my chest.
It must be a tumor, he said. A thing that enjoys eating flesh and bones, he added.
I told him it cannot be a tumor because I do not feel anything moving inside.
Then all of a sudden he seemed to be distracted by something and left me without saying anything else.
Mother came with one of the ladies dressed in white, those who seemed to be there only to please the doctors.
She inserted a tiny plastic tube in one of my arms. It did not hurt much, but I did not mind either. I started to get used with the hospital stuff. Anyway pain was overcome by amazement when I saw how much of that tube they inserted in my arm. I did not know my arm was that empty. Then they attached a bottle to the tube. It was the bottle with the wonder potion.
I do not recall much about what happened afterwards, apart from the unbearable sickness and the feeling that it will never end.
Then, I realized that just one marble is not enough. And I was in such a great need for that glimmer in mother’s eyes.