Chocolate!

She is small. Her dark curly hair is matted to her head along a healing post op suture. She wakes early. She is pushed in her stroller around the big square of the unit over and over and over. Lap after lap after lap. She looks toward me when I wish her good morning, her eyes milky, blurry, unfocused and uncooperative. Her vision removed along with a tumor nestled on her brain stem. "Chocolate!" she screams in an aggressive, surprisingly commanding way. "Chocolate chocolate chocolate!!!" The girl knows what she wants.