This isn’t going to win me any prizes. Some think writing an essay means taking the easy way out. Anyone can write. But that’s exactly why I chose to use words. Everyone can write, so writing a creative piece is just going to mean I’m going to have to be extra creative for the words to jump out of the page and illustrate to you just what I mean. Being creative doesn’t always mean doing something that nobody else in the world has done before. Sometimes it means doing something that everyone else in the world can do, but differently. This is going to be something like a diary entry. Something like a movie trailer. Something big, something small, something like a small rant to the universe, a shout-out to the stars, just checking if anyone’s listening… This is going to be a lot of things, but you can bet that it’s the truth.

So there was a girl.

And there was me.

I’m in a hospital in Kuala Lumpur, the sunny humid city of colours from which I come, and I am barely sixteen years old. I’m not there as a patient. I’m there as an angel.

Purple dress, glittery sequined wings, shining wand, aluminium foil halo. We’re visiting the pediatric oncology ward today, and we’re doing a short sketch later. I’ve arrived there in character, with a couple of clowns, a few random vegetables and a tiger.

The ward is just as they said it was going to be. Crowded. Depressing. It’s a closed ward – there are no windows to look out of. It’s dimly lit, and there are beds stacked around each other there like pieces of a mosaic, or one of those mind puzzles where you’re meant to reorder some rectangles without passing them through each other. They’re packed like sardines, and their parents or carers sit barefoot and cross-legged on tiny sleeping bags or camp beds beside them. I’m seized with the desire to go out and check if I’ve come to the right place. This is not a hospital. This is a refugee camp. They’re running away from the government of reality, seeking absolution here in the house of healing, hoping for a better future, all the while with cancer cells behind them in hot pursuit.

Will they escape?

Like it is with any escape, like it is with any war, some survive, but others will fail. But you can’t quit just because you know failure is a possibility. You can’t quit just because you know it’s all going to end. You’re brought into this world with nothing but your five senses and your body to work on. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Fortune seems to come on a checklist. They tick you off. Head. Yes. Eyes. Yes. Nose. Yes.

And here I am in a ward where all the patients had some boxes unchecked, either right from the start, or later on.

It’s hard to believe. It makes it hard to believe inside here.

I’m fundraising for the hospital, and I make a mental note to make sure some of the money goes into renovating this ward.

They are children, but the eyes that belong to a seven year old are staring at me with wisdom that transcends the constraints of time as we know it. He has lived a hundred years with all the pain and suffering he has gone through. I stare back at him. Then I become aware of hundreds of eyes on me.

They are looking at me. Why?

I look down at my hands. Oh. It must be the outfit. My head turns slowly along its axis, and I realize they’re looking at me, not just out of curiosity, but out of expectation. They know perfectly well that I am only human. They know absolutely well that I’m just a tiny girl, walking into their ward, wearing an angel outfit. Completely ordinary. But it doesn’t stop them from hoping for a miracle.

Maybe, maybe this time, it’ll be different.

Whatever they say about apathy, whatever they say about the world being jaded and hooked onto commercialism, making up new fads to run after, chasing new trains of thought, stopping at nonexistent stations… Whatever it is that they say, there is no larger force of nature than dying that makes people remember to believe.

I am standing there, in the middle of the room, and my wand is made of plastic. I have nothing to give them. I cannot pull away those tumours that have ravaged their bodies. I cannot get rid of the metastasized cells that have poisoned them, infected them, mutilated them.

I’ve let them down.

I start to blush, partly out of embarrassment and partly because I am chiding myself for not having foreseen this. Who am I to give them false hope, after all? I have no right.

Then there is a tug on my dress.

She stands there next to me, dragging her drip stand behind her, carrying a little raggedly soft toy dog. “Please,” she whispers. “Please, may I hold your wand?”

She looks no older than six, with an adorable heart shaped face, and a sweet smile. I kneel down to catch her eye, and tell her that yes, she can hold the wand, and in fact, I brought some colouring books that she could amuse herself with too..

It turns out to be a happy afternoon, with all our events a success, and the children clapping and playing along. Somewhere along the line I look up and survey the scene and see the tubes and drip bags disappear. We are all a bunch of kids having a good time. We are all the same. The little girl is sitting on my lap, and, wand held proudly in her hand, singing along to “Old Macdonald”.

The time comes to go home, and I regretfully take my wand back from her, because it is rented, and I have to return it by six p.m. I leave the ward, and the nurses smile benevolently at my team and I, and we go home.

I can’t stop thinking about the little girl. Two days later I take a trip down to Toys R Us and I purchase a Barbie doll magic wand just like the one that she liked, and I take the train to the hospital after school. I go into the ward, and they don’t recognize me without the purple dress and wings. They don’t stare this time.

“Where is the little girl?” I ask the nurses, quietly.

They look upset.

“Has she become very ill?” I ask again, worriedly.

Sometimes when it is bad news, you know before you hear it. Sometimes you know the answer but you ask anyway. Sometimes you’re expecting it, but you still ask the question that will shock you to the core.

“She’s passed away. I’m sorry.”

This is not a soap opera. This is not the moment when the wand drops in slow motion from my hand to the floor. This is when I grasp the wand extra tightly before giving it to the nurses, not trusting myself to speak. They know what to do. They put it in their little play-box, with all the toys generously donated to the ward by other little children who hadn’t had to lose their hair to chemotherapy, who have a future to look forward to. Children who are healthy, for now.

It is with regret that I realize that she had two little ponytails sticking out from behind both her ears because the chemotherapy hadn’t worked and they had given up on it.

I look around the ward and realize that there are a lot of new faces in that sea of crowded beds. There are candles burning for all of us, all at varying lengths. Which of these beautifully suffering children was burning out? Who would be sleeping on that bed tomorrow?

So this is why I won’t win a prize on this. There was no added creativity on my part. Not even a story. It is a truth about a girl, a truth about myself, a truth of life exposed. Because, believe it or not, life’s dramatic enough on its own without us thinking up some more confetti to add to the fireworks. And the smallest things can suddenly become gargantuan. Emotions do strange things to us, and we do strange things to emotions. Nothing lasts.

But, that said, though the human body is transient, people are forever.

For as long as I tell people her story, and have her face in my mind, she lives with dignity – in a place higher than here.