Running

I was keeping company with a group of teenagers. We were carousing around rebelliously, drinking, fighting, and stealing. One particular night a group of us had been out partying and I had been with a friend when we got into a fight. My friend had fought a boy and had beaten him up. He then grabbed a knife and tore open the beaten foe’s pants at the crotch. I asked what he was going to do and he said that he was going to cut the guys jewels. I was a bit freaked and left but I stayed in the general area.

Two women friends and I were out partying and had gone into a store and were causing what trouble we thought we could. We got to a cafeteria area and as we stood there I mentioned to the women that what we had been getting into lately was a bit crazy. About that time one of the girls was working at her pocket where she seemed to have something she wanted to get out. Conspiratorially, as she reached in her pockets and struggled to bring out what was there , she was telling the other woman that she wanted her to hold on to these items and let no one know she had them. It was that she thought she would get caught and did not want to take a chance of losing the possessions. As she was pulling out items from her pocket I could see a small white paper bag that had writing on it and what seemed to be some small boxes inside; for all the world it looked like a pharmacy bag. I started to grab for the boxes and this turn of events totally freaked the women out. She grabbed the bag and took off running. Her friend followed.

I ran after them feeling desperate to find them but instead I had lost them. It was dusk out and I had followed them out to a deserted road. To my right and on the ground playing with something was a young boy about 7 or 8 that said to me, “I know where she’s at, she is over in that valley,” and he pointed to a horizon to our right. I took off in that direction but it was even darker now and I had dangerously come to the edge of a cliff. I was still feeling the desperate need to find the girls however and was trying to negotiate a way through the terrain. The young boy was at the bottom of the hill to where I was and told me how to go if I needed to go.

Using his guidance I finally found my way into a building that we had to maneuver through by going through staff areas and small hallways and back areas. I stumbled on to a group of boys in a room and quickly continued on. I could hear them talking about the fact that I was one of the ones that was in the fight with the boy earlier in the night when he got cut up. I got to one room where there were two men in lab coats and machinery and one of the men asked me if I knew what was so important to the women that had gone by. I acknowledged that I was uncertain. The man went on to tell me that the women had cancer. He went on to explain that her condition was not at all good, that it had a number of 44 which was a high and risky number. He told me that she thought she would die soon.

I could feel that the women was slipping away and that she would not be around again, that she had run away for the last time. I was desperate to speak with her. I continued on a ways further and came to a hall with a fellow guarding a door. I knew that my friend had gone that way. I asked him to ask my friend to talk to me and pleaded my case. He walked down the hall and came back with a very hesitant, scared women. I began to weep and plead telling the women that the doctor thought he had a new treatment that could keep her alive and knock out the cancer. I pleaded with her to come back and that if the treatment did not work to let I and her family and friends say goodbye to her in a good way, in a loving way.