The Last Visit to Room 206

It had been three years since I last visited the hospital where my sister spent the final days of her life.

Room 206.

Even saying it felt heavy — like it carried too many memories to fit in a single breath. But last Friday, I found myself standing at the edge of the hospital parking lot, gripping the steering wheel tightly and asking myself why I had come.

Maybe it was guilt. Maybe closure. Or maybe I just needed to remember her differently.


---

My sister, Sara, was five years older than me. Brave, stubborn, loud in the best way. When we were kids, she used to defend me from bullies at school, even though I’d beg her not to. “You're my little brother,” she used to say. “It’s my job to punch people for you.”

When she was diagnosed with leukemia at 27, it felt like the universe had made a mistake.

“She’s too strong for this,” I kept telling myself. “She’ll beat it.”

And she did — for a while.

But the second time it came back, it came faster. Meaner. Her hospital stays got longer. Her voice got quieter. And slowly, her body started slipping away, even though her spirit held on until the very end.


---

Room 206.

It was the corner room on the second floor. Big window, squeaky fan, and a couch that no one ever slept well on. That room had heard her laughter and her cries. It had seen our family pray together, argue over treatments, and fall silent when the doctor entered with news we didn’t want to hear.

That room had become a second home — and the place I now feared most.


---

The receptionist looked up as I walked in.

“Can I help you?”

I cleared my throat. “I’m just… visiting. Is Room 206 still in use?”

She tapped something into her computer and nodded. “Yes. There's a patient there.”

I nodded slowly. “Thanks.”

I didn’t go up right away. Instead, I sat on the same bench outside the elevator where I had cried the night we were told she had only days left. I remembered the vending machine snacks, the smell of antiseptic, the doctor with kind eyes who never sugarcoated anything.

I sat there, letting it all come back.


---

Eventually, I went up.

The door to Room 206 was slightly ajar. A soft beeping from the monitor echoed inside. A man in his 60s was lying in the bed, pale but awake. A young woman — probably his daughter — sat beside him, reading something aloud from her phone.

She looked up when she saw me.

“Hi, can I help you?”

I froze. “I… I used to visit someone in this room. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude.”

Her expression softened. “It’s okay. It’s a good room, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “Yes. It meant a lot to me.”


---

I didn’t stay long. Just enough to stand near the window and glance at the sky outside. That same sky my sister had stared at every morning, looking for birds and pretending the clouds had faces.

She once told me, “I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid of being forgotten.”

She never would be.

Not by me. Not by anyone who knew her.

As I walked out, I left a small note with the receptionist:

> "To the person in Room 206 —
This room once held a warrior.
May it give you peace, as it once gave us comfort.
— A stranger who remembers."




---

Grief is strange. It doesn’t follow timelines. It doesn't care how strong you are. But moments like this — returning, remembering, honoring — they give you strength.

They remind you that love, even in absence, leaves behind a light.

And sometimes, all it takes is revisiting the places that once broke you to feel whole again.