Lizzie kept her promise to meet Mary in the nurse's office. Mary was lying down somewhere in the office when the nurse approached Lizzie, putting an arm around her. "I can't even begin to tell you what a blessing you are, young lady!" She said with soft eyes. "That girl is so lucky to have a friend like you."
Lizzie squirmed, not used to such compliments. "She's just a girl from my class, really. I don't know her all that well. I just saw she was sad and I wanted to help."
"Well, you're an angel in my eyes," the nurse smiled. "You did a wonderful thing, reaching out to a fellow student like that."
The nurse led Lizzie into a private room to ask some questions about what happened. There wasn't much that Lizzie could add to what the nurse already knew. It seemed that Mary decided to tell the nurse what happened, and her parents were contacted to pick her up to take her to the doctor for extra help. The school nurse kept thanking Lizzie and praising her, but Lizzie insisted she did what anyone else would have done.
Before leaving the nurse's office, she asked if she could say goodbye to Mary since her parents were coming to pick her up. Mary was lying on a cot in a private part of the office, where kids would normally lie when they had a fever at school. She turned her head and smiled at Lizzie when she entered the room. "Hi, Lizzie," she said, softly.
"Hi, Mary." Lizzie shyly walked over to her, hands behind her back. "I just wanted to say I'm really glad I was able to give you a hug when you needed it."
"Sometimes a hug makes all the difference." Mary smiled again, a little tear escaping the corner of her eye. She blinked, and she stared at the ceiling, looking deep in thought for a moment. "It was like..." She paused.
"Like... what?"
Mary looked at her again, another tear following the trail of the first one down the side of her face. "When you hugged me and started singing that little song, I felt like I was being brought back to life." She looked away. "I guess that sounds really weird, doesn't it?"
"No," Lizzie stepped closer. "It doesn't feel weird at all." She walked the rest of the way and sat on the edge of the cot. "To be honest, I've felt like that before too. Did you know my dad died?"
Mary propped herself up a bit with her elbows. "No, I'm sorry. I didn't know that."
"It was about a year ago, but it still feels like yesterday. I was starting to wonder if the pain I was feeling inside would ever go away."
"Is it starting to go away?"
"Well, to be honest I don't think I'll ever stop missing my dad... but I guess I'm not supposed to stop missing him anyway. Sometimes I guess life just sucks. It's okay to be sad about things. What's important is not staying in that dark place. We just have to..." Lizzie stared, deep in thought. "We just have to find the light again -- even if it's just a small piece of light. The only thing that kills the darkness is the light."
Mary lay back down. "Wow, Lizzie, that's beautiful."
Lizzie snapped herself out of the trance, blushing. "I get a little too philosophical sometimes, I guess."
Mary smiled at her. "Even so... I'll have to write those words down when I get home and put it up in my room: The only thing that kills the darkness is the light. I love that."
Lizzie chuckled and stood. "Well, I guess my work here is done! Off to save another!"
The girls laughed.
As Lizzie opened the door to leave, she turned to wave. "Bye, Mary. I'll see you later, okay?"
"Yeah," Mary smiled, another little tear coming down. "I promise."
YOU ARE READING
Somewhere In-Between ~ An Adventure in the Afterlife
Paranormal"You're not dead, Max. Your body is dead." Max's guardian angel tells him as he is embraced in warm light. After a deadly car accident, fourteen-year-old Max Fletcher finds himself in the confusing afterlife, waiting for his kid sister who is in cr...
