nearly 7.

There is a while remaining. You haven't left yet, and I am half a month short of my 14th birthday. The sequence of events isn't clear in my head, and it's probably unclear in her's as well. I wouldn't want to bother her with the trivialities in my mind anyway, she has enough demons of her own. So half a month short of my 14th. I divide my time between the hospital and home. I don't really want to be there, and I don't quite understand a dying man's need to see his children. I'm strangely aloof. Not old enough to know what it means to be above it all, and even if I was, not above it anyway. Just not there. There's a garden near the conference center, around a housing unit of sorts. In that garden are swings. We play there, 13, 10 and 3. He forgets our names sometimes. You can tell by the look in his eyes, it's vacant but trying to place us, he knows but not quite. 3, she's the hardest to remember, she hasn't been there long enough. She is the most cherished, with her honey colored hair that glows red in the sun and her little teeth and infectious smile. Too young to lose that twinkle in her eyes. She's the beautiful one, I wonder if he thinks he's imagining her. I do. Sometimes I'll get bored waiting and make a few phone calls to no one important. A few months later you will be gone and after that I will be in love and suffering from a malady I will never quite be able to cure in myself. A month and a half later I'll be sitting in the balcony I often stand in alone, in the middle of the night and watch the cars going round and round and round the roundabout. Everything is a blur. But then a sudden 3 am wake up, and in the morning there's rain, and then in the night you're gone. Between today and tomorrow you cease to be.
Another hospital. I hold your dying hand. You're breathing but gone. I shed a few tears, and no more after that. Not for a while anyway.
She's asking doctors if there's any way to save you, they say no. Do you want to hook him up to life support? There is no point, 80% organ failure. There is twenty percent of you left, neatly divided. Which part of you remains?
She signs the papers that will allow the twenty to join the rest of you. Her hand is shaking, but composure hasn't been lost. There are tears, oh there are more than tears. Seventeen years gone. You gone. She holds the pen and stares at it, then sinks down against a wall.