"Matthew, meet your new doctor, Dr Stone." The hospital nurse said, introducing a cold looking figure that had entered the hospital room.
"Hello Matthew." She said, and her voice was just as bitter as the ice in her eyes.
"Hi Doctor." Matthew said; looking away from her eyes to the nurse, hoping that she saw how cold this new doctor seemed. The nurse smiled at him and just left the two in the room alone.
"Tell me Matthew, why are you in this room?" Dr Stone asked. Matthew assessed her appearance and saw that she was wearing a graphite coloured pinafore dress and her hair was tied up in a tight bun at the back of her head and her eyes showed no signs of happiness.
"Everyone thinks I'm crazy, because I hurt someone." Matthew said.
"Did you mean to hurt this person?"
"No."
"Then what made you do it?" Her voice became more and more monotonous as the meeting went on.
"I don't know." The meeting consisted of pointless questions and short answers. By the end of the session Matthew felt as though all the warmth in his heart had been sucked out of him and he was a lifeless statue living in a plain white room. The doctor left and Dr McColl walked in.
"How do you feel now?" She asked; a smile on her face and a bright spark in her eyes. She was wearing a summer dress and had flowers decorating her hair.
"I feel as though I will never smile again." Matthew sighed, dropping his head into his hands.
"Why, what's wrong?" She asked.
"That doctor makes me feel as sad as a soggy sock." Matthew sighed. Dr McColl laughed, and leaned back while doing so.
"Well, that's one way to put it." She said. Matthew looked up at her and forced a smile.
"You can't spend all day looking like a sour lemon! Let's do something fun!" She said, trying to bring a real smile onto his face.
"No." He said.
"Wow, was she really that bad?" She asked, the smile falling off her face and a look of growing concern appearing instead.
"Yes, she was. Right now, I want to be alone." Matthew said, and Dr McColl just nodded and left the room. Matthew brought out a pencil and piece of paper and thought about what he wanted to draw. Nothing came to mind.
"Draw me." A voice said, and he recognised it, but he didn't remember who it came from.
"Who are you?" He asked the sky.
"I am your father. I am who you want me to be. But I want you to draw something else for me first." Leinad said, and Matthew's heart skipped a beat. The pencil had made marks on the paper already. There was a horizontal line and an apostrophe looking thing on either side. He drew a straight horizontal line underneath and something that looked a bit like a "j" without the dot on the left and an "L" on the left.
"What is this?" Matthew asked, even though he had drawn it.
"Ask Hikari when you next see her. Tell her it's a present from you. Decorate it and make it look nice. Then you can draw me." Leinad said.
"Are you sure?" Matthew said, and even though he had been terrified of the blue alien before, he felt a feeling of familiarity in hearing Leinad's voice.
"Yes." Leinad said, and his voice sounded so father-like Matthew obliged, and decorated the rest of the page nicely. He didn't know that he had drawn the Japanese character for "Hikari" on the page but somehow he knew that Hikari would like it. He put it on the table and just thinking about Hikari and her bright happy face made him want to smile, and he had completely forgotten about the bitterness of Dr Stone.
