If I have led you to believe that the hospital is a bad place, I must apologize. I enjoy immensely being here with the Doctor, and she seems reassured while I remain. I have no complaints about my stay. My hospital room is rather comfortable. I have a bed, a small table, and my windows are large and inviting. I even have my own bathroom. The only thing in the room I dislike is the mirror. It is full-length, and I sometimes surprise myself looking at it.

The mirror is a useless invention. I know most people love to stare at themselves in mirrors, but I wonder what is it exactly that they see? People look and then gasp and wonder: is that really me? That’s precisely why I don’t see the point of it: there is little we can do about what appears (or does not) on the other side of the mirror. I’ve been studying the mirror image carefully, and I feel that the person on the other side is not me at all. It is only my reflection, with his own peculiar eyes.

My only other concern about the room is the collection of photographs which, for the time being, I have put away in a drawer to make myself more comfortable. The Doctor pulls them out sometimes. There are pictures of her and me together, but how or when these pictures were taken, I haven’t a clue. Some of them resemble my dreams of the Doctor, but somehow the photographs are never quite the same. Pictures lose more than one dimension when they are developed. Each time I set them aside again the Doctor frowns. She adores photographs.

I’m not really a fan of photography, I confess. I’ve noticed that people take photographs of everything and everyone in their lives. They take so many, however, that they often don’t have time to enjoy what it is they’re taking pictures of in the first place. On vacation, when they should be relaxing, people continue taking pictures. They photograph landscapes, their favorite restaurant, and the people they meet. I wonder why they don’t trust their eyes to remember.

x. the end of the rainbow Instead of looking closely at the sunset, and enjoying every second, people mount their cameras on tripods and watch the shutter speed.

Instead of looking closely at the sunset, and enjoying every second, people mount their cameras on tripods and watch the shutter speed. "What a lovely photograph it will be!" they exclaim, congratulating each other. Truly they are correct – but what a beautiful moment they have missed in hopes of capturing a sunset. Maybe I’m a creature of habit, but I still try sometimes to look at things with my eyes.

The Doctor is an accomplished photographer, of course. She enjoys showing me photos of myself, both inside and out. Some of them, admittedly, are quite beautiful. She shows me one with colorful splotches that she says are inside my head.

"You see this part here?" she asks, pointing to a purple smudge that could be twilight or a penguin. "That part should be red like this part over here," she says pointing to what might be a candied-apple. "This is no good at all!" she laments.

"Yes," I agree. "It would be nicer if the colors shaped like a kaleidoscope, don’t you think?"

She looks at me in wonder. Her expression is certainly more confused than mine is. If only she could see herself in the mirror! Reader, I would have very much liked to take a picture of the expression on her face so that she could see. But as you know, I am not much of a photographer.

"We should be ready for the operation soon," she promises. "Don’t get scared now, okay?" She sounds almost tender.

"How could I be scared?" I tell her, looking at the colors inside me. "My head is full of rainbows."