A Chance Meeting

Part 1

The bomb exploded.

A loud ringing sound was the only thing Sara remembered afterward, but every now and again, she got flashes of memories, brief tidbits where the memory was so vivid, it was as if it were happening all over again: the sound; the bright flash that came mere milliseconds before the metal embedded itself into her skin; the doctors yelling and screaming as she came to, pointing and gesturing before she was put under again; the memory where she was told she could never leave the hospital again.

Sara had good days and bad days. On the good days, she was in a coma-like state, sleeping so deeply that the pain was no longer felt and she could have peaceful dreams, where white, fluffy-tailed bunnies hopped through green meadows and vibrantly colored butterflies flittered from rose to violet to daisy.

And then there were the bad days where she was awake and could feel every scar the shrapnel had caused, every piece that was still embedded in her thumping heart.

It was on one of those days, the days where she was wide awake and even the drugs pumping into her veins couldn't begin to numb the pain, that a strange boy stumbled into her hospital room.

His mouth moved, but she couldn't understand him. Her ears had long since stopped working. She had gotten better at reading lips and understood a few of the words he'd said, but not most of them.

"I'm sorry," she said after he was done, feeling her vocal cords move but unable to hear her words. " But I am quite deaf and was unable to hear a word you just said. There's paper and a pen on the desk over here if you would like to repeat yourself. If not, have a good day."

Her unblemished blue eyes peered into his own striking green ones as he appeared to think. Then, slowly, he walked forward, the bright hospital light highlighting glimmers of light brown in his cropped dark brown hair. She smiled as he grabbed a well-worn clipboard and a pen.

He shifted the ben to his left hand and began to write. Sara watched his face set a little bit as he wrote, but a tiny grin tugged at the corners of his mouth as he watched her read.

You don't have to apologize, he wrote. I stumbled into your room while looking for my sister. She must have the room next to yours.

Sara let a small smile cross her face as she responded, glancing up into his eyes before looking shyly back down at her hands. She didn't get a lot of strange visitors in her room anymore. "Oh. Well, it was nice to meet you."

But the boy shook his head, gently teasing the paper out of her hands, and then started to write, the pen gliding furiously across the page. Eventually, he handed the paper back to her, and the grin widened a little bit as her eyes narrowed.

Oh, don't pout, he wrote. She could practically hear his voice, which was probably deep and laced with arrogance and teasing. I'm sure someone will come visit you soon enough. After all, who can resist a beautiful girl?

She looked up at him, this time meeting his gaze and holding it. Before he could turn around to leave, she blurted, "Are you real?"

The questioning look on his face prompted her to add, "Or are you just another dream?"

One corner of his mouth raised again, and this time the heartrate monitor spiked, indicating an increased beating of Sara's heart. He smirked, turned around, and left her wondering if somehow her imagination had somehow gotten very creative.