The Pollock on the Bathroom Wall

“Maybe the messes we make aren’t sickness at all—maybe they’re just proof that we’re real.”

The smell hit me the moment I stepped through the door.

Disinfectant. Sharp and clean and so strong it burned the inside of my nose, made my eyes water just a little. Most people hated that smell—I'd seen adults wrinkle their noses at it, seen other kids complain that it made them feel sicker. But I loved it. I didn't know why. Maybe because it meant clean. Maybe because it meant safe. Maybe because it was the one thing in this place that never changed, never surprised me, never turned into something else when I wasn't looking.

The bathroom had just been scrubbed. I could tell by the way everything gleamed, the way the white tiles shone under the fluorescent lights like they were made of light themselves. The floor was still slightly damp in places, leaving darker patches that would dry to the same bright white as everything else. The whole room seemed to glow, like stepping into the inside of a star.

It was Friday afternoon. I knew because of the whiteboard in my room, where someone had written the date in cheerful blue marker with a little smiley face next to it. The smiley face felt like a joke I wasn't in on.

Mum hadn't come this morning. I'd woken up expecting her to be there—she was always there, always watching, always hovering close enough to catch me if I fell—but the chair beside my bed had been empty. The nurses said she'd called, said she'd be in later, said not to worry.

I wasn't worried. I was relieved.

For the first time in days, I could breathe without feeling her eyes on me. I could move without her hand reaching out to steady me. I could go to the bathroom without her standing outside the door, asking if I was alright, if I felt dizzy, if I needed help.

So when the feeling came—that urgent, twisting feeling in my gut—I'd made my escape. Slipped out of bed, padded across the cold floor in my hospital socks, and locked myself in the bathroom before anyone could stop me.

Freedom.

I stood just inside the door for a moment, letting the smell wash over me.

The bathroom was small, but the whiteness made it feel bigger. The walls seemed to stretch away, the corners blurring into brightness. If I squinted, I could pretend I wasn't in a hospital at all. I could pretend I was somewhere else—somewhere vast and clean and empty, where no one was sick and no one was watching and nothing bad ever happened.

The shower was in the corner, still wet from its morning scrubbing. Water droplets clung to the glass like tiny jewels, and the shower head dripped steadily—plink, plink, plink—each drop hitting the tiles with a sound that echoed in the quiet. I found myself counting them. One. Two. Three. Four. Counting the seconds, counting the minutes, counting the time I had alone before someone came looking.

My legs felt heavy as I walked to the toilet. They always felt heavy these days—though whether that was because I was sick or because of whatever kept happening during my "episodes," I couldn't say anymore. The short distance from the door seemed to stretch out forever, each step an effort, each movement requiring more concentration than it should.

But I made it. And when I lowered my pants, I felt that small thrill of rebellion that came with doing something normal, something ordinary, something that didn't require supervision or monitoring or worried glances.

Just me. Just the bathroom. Just the business at hand.

And then—

It happened fast.

A sound first—loud, echoing off the tiles like thunder in a canyon. The kind of sound that would have made Gloria laugh until she cried, that would have made the boys in the ward compete to make louder ones. But there was more than sound.

There was... everything else.

I felt it before I understood it. That rush, that release, that horrible moment of realisation that something had gone very, very wrong. Cold dread dropped into my stomach—which, given what was happening, felt deeply unfair.

I turned my head slowly. I didn't want to look. I knew I had to look.

What I saw made my breath catch in my throat.

The wall behind me—that beautiful, pristine, gleaming white wall—was no longer white.

It was... painted. That was the only word for it. Splattered and streaked with different shades of brown, some dark, some light, spread across the tiles in patterns that seemed almost deliberate. Like someone had taken a brush and flicked it, again and again, creating something that was horrible and fascinating at the same time.

I stared at it.

My brain, for some reason, thought of Gloria. Of the art book she'd shown me once, the one with the paintings by famous artists. There'd been one—a man named Pollock, she'd said—who made paintings by dripping and throwing paint at canvas. They didn't look like anything, just splashes and splatters, but people paid millions for them.

Jackson Pollock, I thought. Though I bet he never worked in this medium.

The thought was so absurd that I almost laughed. Almost. But the horror was still there, underneath the absurdity, cold and heavy. Because this wasn't a painting. This was evidence. This was proof that my body had done something it shouldn't have, something embarrassing, something that Mum would definitely count as a symptom.

I could already hear her voice in my head: He's getting worse, Doctor. He's lost control of his bowels. I told you something was wrong with him.

I tilted my head, studying the damage.

It was strange—the longer I looked, the less horrifying it seemed. The way the light caught the... texture... created shadows and highlights, almost like a real painting. And if I squinted, really squinted, I could almost see shapes in the chaos. A face, maybe. An eye here, the curve of a mouth there.

A self-portrait, I thought. Made by my body without asking permission.

The thought should have been disgusting. It was disgusting. But there was something else there too—something that felt almost like pride. My body had done this. My small, supposedly sick, supposedly failing body had created this... masterpiece of mess.

Was this how real artists felt? This weird mix of horror and amazement, shame and wonder?

For a few moments, I just stood there. Frozen. Caught between wanting to run away and wanting to keep looking, to understand how something so awful could also be so... interesting.

Then reality crashed back in.

If someone walks in—

The thought sent ice through my veins. I could see it playing out: the door opening, a nurse's face appearing, eyes going wide, mouth dropping open. The call button being pressed. More nurses arriving. Questions. Explanations. Mum being called, rushing in, her face cycling through shock and concern and that strange hungry worry that I was learning to recognise.

Another symptom, she'd say. Another sign that he's getting worse.

My hands were moving before I'd decided to move them, reaching for the toilet paper dispenser, grabbing handfuls of the thin, scratchy hospital paper. It wasn't enough—it could never be enough—but I had to try.

I started wiping.

The paper smeared more than it cleaned, turning distinct splatters into muddy streaks that somehow looked worse. It was like trying to erase a nightmare and watching it spread instead, grow bigger, take over everything. Each swipe made it worse. Each attempt to fix it created new problems.

"Good work," I whispered to myself, throwing the first handful of soiled paper into the toilet. It landed with a soft splash. "Good work, Luke."

It was the voice Gloria used when she was teaching me something—encouraging but slightly patronising, like I was doing something very hard that was actually quite simple. I grabbed more paper. Wiped again. Threw it away.

"Good work."

Again.

"Good work."

Again.

Somewhere in the middle of it—between handfuls of paper, between swipes at the wall, between whispered encouragements to myself—something shifted.

The panic faded. Not completely, but enough. And in its place came something else. A thought, strange and clear, rising up through the fear like a bubble through water.

What if this is just... normal?

I stopped wiping. Stood there with toilet paper in my hand, staring at the mess on the wall.

What if sometimes, six-year-old boys just had accidents? What if this wasn't a symptom of some mysterious illness that no test could find? What if it was just... life? Messy, unpredictable, embarrassing life, the kind that happened to everyone, not just sick kids in hospitals?

The idea felt revolutionary. Dangerous, almost. Because if this was normal—if not everything my body did was a sign of sickness—then maybe other things were normal too. Maybe the "episodes" weren't what Mum said they were. Maybe I wasn't as fragile as everyone kept telling me.

Maybe I was just a boy. A regular boy who sometimes had accidents and bad dreams and moments where his body did things he didn't expect.

The cleaning became different after that.

Not frantic anymore. Not driven by fear. Each swipe of the toilet paper felt deliberate, purposeful. I wasn't just hiding evidence—I was taking control. Doing something myself, for myself, without anyone watching or helping or telling me I couldn't.

This is just an accident, I told myself with each wipe. Not a symptom. Just life.

This is just messy and unexpected. Not death creeping closer. Just being alive.

The words became a rhythm, a mantra, something to hold onto while my hands worked. And slowly, gradually, the wall began to look like a wall again. Not perfect—if you looked closely, really closely, you could see faint streaks where my cleaning hadn't quite worked, shadows of what had been there. But good enough. Normal enough.

The cleaners would come tonight. They'd scrub everything down again, make it gleam and shine like nothing had ever happened. By morning, there'd be no trace of my accidental masterpiece.

The thought made me smile. Just a little. Just enough.

I turned to the sink.

The soap dispenser gave me a blob of pink liquid that smelled like fake strawberries—sickly sweet, completely wrong for what I'd just been doing. I scrubbed my hands under water so hot it turned my skin red, watching the suds swirl down the drain, carrying away the last evidence of my adventure.

And then—I laughed.

Actually laughed. Out loud. In the empty bathroom, surrounded by white tiles and fluorescent light, with faint brown streaks on the wall behind me that only I knew were there.

It was absurd. All of it. Here I was, supposedly dying of some mysterious illness, and my biggest worry was hiding a toilet accident like any normal kid might. No drama. No medical emergency. No nurses rushing in with monitors and worried faces.

Just a boy. Just a mess. Just life.

I dried my hands and looked at myself in the mirror.

The face that looked back was pale and thin, with dark circles under the eyes and hair that needed cutting. A sick kid's face. That's what everyone saw when they looked at me.

But right now, in this moment, I didn't see a sick kid. I saw a boy who'd had an embarrassing accident and dealt with it himself. Who'd panicked and then calmed down. Who'd cleaned up his own mess without anyone's help.

I practised my innocent face. Wide eyes, slightly confused expression, maybe a touch of not-feeling-well around the edges. It was a face I'd perfected over years of hospital stays—the face that said I don't know anything, I'm just a sick little boy, please don't ask me questions.

I'd need it if anyone noticed anything. If anyone looked too closely at the wall, or wondered why I'd been in the bathroom so long.

But I didn't think they would. The cleaners would come. The evidence would disappear. And this would be my secret—a small, silly, embarrassing secret that belonged only to me.

I reached for the door handle. The metal was cool against my palm.

One last look over my shoulder. The bathroom didn't look quite the same as when I'd walked in—there were those faint streaks, barely visible unless you knew to look for them. But it was close enough. Good enough.

Nobody will notice, I told myself. And even if they did—even if someone saw the shadows of what had been there—they wouldn't know it was me. They'd think it was anyone. Any kid on the ward. Any normal, healthy, accident-having kid.

The thought was strangely comforting.