Song Bird

Part 2

For the rest of the day, I couldn't get that thought out of my head. I felt so distracted, my mind floating in a haze. It was so bad that I didn't even realize when I had taken a detour home until I found myself driving in front of the hospital. As the pristine white building passed by my window, a strange feeling bubbled up inside me. I suddenly felt the overwhelming desire to go inside and see Allison once more. I hesitated, continuing to drive down the street for another two blocks before I turned around. Before I knew it, I was standing outside of her room, just out of sight, wondering what the hell I was thinking. I tried not to linger on that for too long and walked through the door anyway.

The woman in the bed near the door was awake today and openly stared as I made my way across the room. Allison didn't notice me at first. She had a small nub of a pencil in her hand and she was drawing on the back of a napkin. I couldn't see what exactly it was from this angle, but as soon as I cleared my throat to catch her attention, she flipped it right over. Her brown eyes looked at me in surprise, with a touch of confusion. I gave her a tiny awkward smile in response.

"Why are you here?" she asked bluntly, letting her hands fall away from the wheeled table she was sketching upon. Her slightly sharp tone made me nervous, but I pushed it aside with a casual shrug.

"I didn't tell you everything that was going on at school, so I decided to come back and finish my story," I told her offhandedly, taking up the uncomfortable plastic chair beside her. It wasn't exactly a lie, but it felt like the most acceptable reason I had on me at the time. She still stared at me suspiciously for a long moment before relaxing just a little bit.

"Alright then," she said slowly, bringing her hands back up to retrieve her napkin and pencil. "Tell me what you want to say."

I hid the triumphant smile the crept on my face and focused on coming up with things to talk about. It took me a little bit to get started, but I managed to find some things to tell her for at least a good twenty minutes. Just like the first time I came, Allison did something else while she listened to me. I couldn't see what she was drawing from where I was sitting, but I could see her concentration in the way her eyebrows sloped and wrinkled above her nose and the way she bent over her table a little every once in a while. Even still, I could tell that she was engaged in our conversation. She would nod her head and insert a pointed question just when I thought she was getting distracted. Her focus was quite fascinating. Her wrists were thin and fragile, but were surprisingly skilled and quick, deftly moving the tiny pencil across the uneven surface of the napkin. I watched as her blonde hair fell over her shoulder onto the table and she unconsciously reached up to tuck it behind her ear. She never once looked up, her eyes hidden from me. For a moment, I wondered if they were still just as distant as the day before.

"You stopped," she said quietly.

I blinked. "Huh?"

She lifted her eyes just barely so that I could see the hue of brown underneath her dark lashes. "You stopped talking. Is that the end of the story?"

"Oh." I shifted awkwardly, glancing out the window. "I guess so... Um... maybe we can talk about you instead?"

Her hand stopped drawing. "About me?" she repeated slowly. She turned her head up to look at me uncomfortably. "Why would you want to talk about me?"

"Why not?" I asked back. "Don't you think it's weird that we go to the same school, we're even in the same grade and we don't know each other?"

"No." Her response was flat.

I hesitated a bit. "Okay, maybe you don't, but I think I might want to get to know you better."

Allison's response was a tad slower than her last. "Why?"

I shrugged a bit, still uncertain myself. "Don't you ever wonder who the person who receives your 'Get Well' card is really like? What they like? What they don't like? What makes them happy? What their dreams are?"

Allison was staring at me now. The look she was giving me was slightly unnerving, flat and emotionless, but I noticed the way her fingers fidgeted with the edge of her napkin when I started talking about things she liked. I wondered for a moment if it was really that unusual for her to have somebody interested in knowing about the things she was interested in. She looked down after a moment, a brief look of vulnerability crossing her features as she watched her fingers tear apart the edge of the napkin.

"Okay," she said quietly. I noticed a nervous tremor in her voice. "What do you want to know?"

I didn't realize how much I had hoped for her to say yes until she did. I sat back slightly in my chair, trying to come up with the first question. "Well, let's start easy," I said. "What's your favorite color?"

I watched as her lips twitched up slightly into a quirk of a smile. "White."

"White?" I repeated.

She looked down again to begin sketching on her napkin again. "It's because white is the result of all colors being mixed together on the color spectrum of light. Why choose one color when you could choose them all?"

I laughed slightly in surprise at her complex answer. "Most girls would just say rainbow."

She met my eyes with an amused smile. "I'm not like most girls."

I smirked at that and sat up straighter in my seat. "Alright then. I'll step it up a notch. What's your favorite food?"

She gave a soft laugh and finally gave me a real smile for the first time in the two days I had spent talking to her. It was completely different from the distant, lonely expressions she had been wearing up until then. I couldn't deny the happiness I felt knowing that I had been the one to put it there.

She wasn't quite as talkative as I hoped she'd be, but she answered all the questions I asked her. She told me that she liked to sing, watch the sky and think. She named off a couple of her friends and what she liked to do with them when she wasn't in the hospital. Her favorite food was white rice and her favorite type of music was slow jazz because it helped her think. Her favorite thing to do, obviously, was draw, and she liked taking the art classes that our school offered. She mentioned that one or two of her drawings hung in the hallways near the office. I told myself that I'd stop by to see them sometime.

After her cold, uncertain outer shell had fallen some, I found that I wanted to keep talking to her. She was quiet and reserved, but her mind was broad and her ideas were different. She had a reason for liking the things she did and everything she chose to put effort into held a significance to her. I realized that she lived her life fully, even though she could only do so much from a hospital bed, and there was something about her sense of purpose that drew me in. I lost track of the time talking to her and I didn't realize visiting hours were coming to a close until I realized she was starting to grow tired. Her eyes drooped a bit and she leaned a little heavier on the table with her napkin drawing. I gave a small smile looking down at my watch when there was a lull in our conversation and quietly got up to leave. I had only made it a few steps before her head snapped up again.

"Aaron," she said quickly, catching my attention. I paused and turned slightly to look at her. She hesitated a bit, a slight color coming to her cheeks at her slightly desperate call of my name. "Ah– um... Would you come visit again?"

The question took me by surprise, but I kept that to myself. I let a smile curl up my lips instead. "Sure."

Her returning smile was just as genuine as the one I had seen earlier that night and I noticed right before she turned away in embarrassment to hide her excited expression that the lingering loneliness that I had seen in her eyes before had disappeared. I felt a small flutter in my chest at that realization before wishing her goodnight and leaving. I walked back to my car in good spirits, feeling good about myself for the first time in a long time.