I don’t know how these doctors stand on their feet for so long. I once had a surgery that lasted ten hours. I once tried to stand on my feet for that long too, to see if I could do it, but I only lasted three hours.
“How is she, Doctor?” the dad said, racing towards the doctor.
The doctor took his scrub cap off. They always do at times like these. It’s like a sign of respect or something, I don’t know.
“She made it through the surgery.”
“She’s okay?” The man asked, in tears now.
“Can we talk for a while?” the doctor said. Oh no, that did not sound good.
And the man could sense it too, I think, because he suddenly started asking what was wrong.
The doctor said that he wanted to talk to him and explain a few things. The dad looked back at the sleeping boy and asked if there was somewhere else they could go. I guess he didn’t want to wake up his son, who was sleeping really peacefully now. You usually sleep peacefully after something traumatic happens to you—well, in my experience, anyway. Or maybe you sleep because you want to forget the traumatic thing. Perhaps that’s why you sleep so much. I sleep a lot in the hospital. I stuck my head around the corner more and watched the doctor and the father walk up the corridor and then disappear into another small waiting room. I looked up the other side of the corridor to make sure Sister Esther wasn’t watching and then, when the coast was clear, I realized that this was probably my only chance to give this note to the boy. I had to go now. Now or never. My heart thumped in my chest, not like it thumps in my chest before they stick a needle in my arm or before I have to have surgery. That’s a scared thump. This was an excited thump, and I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt an excited thump like this. I crept out and walked across the passage, on my tiptoes so I didn’t make a noise, and when I was close to the sleeping boy, I stopped and held my breath. I was scared he was going to hear me breathing. Or maybe even hear my heart thumping in my chest. I reached down to put the card on the chair next to him. I was concentrating so hard on watching the card and making sure that it didn’t hit the chair with a noise that I hadn’t noticed that he’d opened his eyes. And by the time I noticed, it was too late to make any kind of a getaway. Suddenly, he was sitting up in the chair. I gasped and fell backwards, shocked and terrified that he’d seen me. I stared as he shook his head a little, rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands, and then, he saw the card next to him. I tried to scramble to my feet as he picked it up and opened it. But my stupid slippery slippers on the shiny hospital floors didn’t allow for that.
Finally, I managed to pull myself up, using one of the chairs in the waiting area, and as soon as I was up, I made a dash for my room. Only something stopped me. I looked behind me to see what it was. The boy had grabbed my hand and was holding it tightly in his. I looked at his hand. He looked at mine, and then at the same time, as if someone had told us to, big breaths came out of our mouths. I felt my whole body relax as I slowly raised my eyes and looked at him. It was hard to tell what his eyes really looked like. They were red and swollen from crying. I stood there, looking down at him as he looked up at me, both of us holding each other’s hand. This was the first time in my life I’d ever held hands with a boy, and it was rather exciting, but also really scary. It made my heart beat faster in another kind of way.
I heard a voice behind me. It was Sister Esther. She was walking back to the nurses’ station. I looked back at the boy, and then at my hand, and then I pulled it away and ran back into my room, closing the door behind me. I sat with my back to