I'm Not Martin!

Hello, my name is Sean. It's the end of October and, like any other normal kid, I should be trick-or-treating with my friends, but my tonsils had to get infected on my eleventh birthday on Halloween. What luck, I mean, you're only a kid once, right?

So my parents and I followed the nurse down the hall to find my room. The halls had that scary hospital look to them, except they were decorated with orange and black streamers and paper jack-o-lanterns. "We're close to your room, Sean," said the nurse, as we saw a child being dragged away by doctors while yelling, "I'm not Martin! I'm not Martin!"

When we entered the room, my nurse showed me my bed with a clipboard on the end reading Sean Franks, then the boy came and got in his bed after getting his shot.

His clipboard said 'Martin Charles.' Great. I have him as a roommate. I asked the nurse what was wrong with him and she whispered, "He has to get his left foot amputated; he keeps trying to convince us that he's not himself, poor child."

Dinner came soon and it happened to be spaghetti and meatballs, my favorite. After I was done eating I struck conversation with Martin. "Hey Martin!" I said. "I'm not Martin!" he responded. I asked him if he liked any sports and he said, "Martin likes baseball, but I like football."

He clearly was trying to make it as believable as possible that he wasn't Martin, even though he was. "When is Martin's appointment?" I asked. He responded, "Martin is getting his foot cut off tomorrow morning," in a scared voice. I asked how old he was and he said that he was ten. My throat was hurting too much so I stopped speaking. We turned on some cartoons on the room's TV and we fell asleep.

When I was sleeping I had some strange dreams; one had me in a flowery plain with floating skeletons. Another had me in an upside down world where everyone lived in upside down houses and cars. The strangest of all is that in one dream I saw a kid replacing my clipboard with another. I also had a dream about this one girl I like, but let's not get into the details.



I was woken up and the clock said it was seven A.M. There were two doctors over my bed and the shorter one said "Let's go Martin, it's your surgery day." Confused I said "What? I'm not Martin!" And the taller doctor said "That's what they said you would say."

As the doctors dragged me away I kept telling them that I wasn't Martin, but I had no luck. Before leaving the room, I saw my changed clipboard lying on Martin's bed.

As I got a final glimpse into the hospital room, I saw a smile creep across Martin's face.