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 the door, pushing all my weight into it so he wouldn’t be able to open it if he tried. Only he never did open it. Because when I looked out the door after about ten minutes, he was gone. He was gone, my card was gone, and I never saw him again.
CHAPTER 72
“What’s going on? I don’t un-understand? Why do you have this? How do you . . . ?” I scratched my head like I was trying to order my thoughts in a way that I was able to understand and process what was going on.
“You . . .” He pointed to the card in my hand. “You made that!” It was a statement, not a question. I looked down at the card in my hand, at the drawings on the front of it: butterflies and rainbows and a crudely drawn lion. I opened it again, looking at the signature lightning bolt, just to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. I looked back at the bed, almost imagining that I would see my sleeping body back in it and this was all a dream. Because if this wasnota dream, if this was actually real, then this was perhaps the most serendipitous thing that had ever happened in my life. Perhaps even in anyone’s life.
“I made this,” I said flatly, almost to myself. “I made this card years ago. On Christmas Eve. In hospital.” I was still trying to convince myself that this was real. If I said it out loud enough times, maybe I would actually start believing it, even though it seemed completely unbelievable.
“And you gave it to me.” Noah stepped forward and held up the card I’d given him last night, and then pointed back at my card. “The signatures are identical. You made that and you gave it to me all those years ago in the hospital on the worst night of my life . . . you gave that to me and I’ve been carrying it around with me in my wallet ever since.”
I shook my head. “Really?” I’d had no idea that the note I’d written all those years ago would have become imbued with such meaning, that it would have been kept like this.
Noah walked all the way up to me. “We met twenty years ago, in the hospital that night, and you gave me this card and you held my hand.”
Tears prickled in my eyes. “You were the boy covered in blood. And that’s why you hate Christmas,” I said.
“I was the boy covered in blood,” he repeated. I looked into Noah’s eyes. They were shining, his lower lids twitching, as if he was fighting back tears. “I was the boy covered in blood and you were the girl who made me feel just a little better in that moment. One of the worst, most terrifying moments in my life.”
“Like you did, in the ambulance,” I whispered.
“You know, I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve pulled this card out and read it when I’m having a bad day. If I lose someone at work, or I just don’t feel great, I read your card over and over again. I must have read it thousands of times. That card changed my life.”
And now a tear did escape my eyes. It trickled over my nose and dropped onto my chin. Noah wiped it away with his thumb, but instead of taking it away, he left it there. He stepped even closer to me, bringing his face almost all the way up to mine.
“Do you know how many times over the years I’ve thought about you? The girl in the hospital gown who gave me that card and held my hand. I wanted to find you so badly. I used to dream about finding you one day and telling you how much that card changed my life. When I was older, I went back to the hospital, but obviously they wouldn’t give out your information. I even thought of creating a Facebook page and posting the card on social media in the hope that you would come forward so I could tell you how much it had meant to me. And now I can.”
I nodded, feeling so overwhelmed with emotion.
“It wasn’t an accident at all in that elevator. It wasn’t an accident that you landed up on my doorstep at two in the morning.”
“But how?” I asked.
He smiled. “I have no idea. I have no idea how the universe works, or why. I just know that you are the girl that held my hand and gave me this card and now you are standing in front of me.”
Another tear escaped my eyes. “This was the first card I ever made.” I clutched the card in my hands. “Since this one, I’ve made hundreds. I’ve given them, anonymously, to hundreds of people. But this was the one that started it all.”
“Why do you make them?”
“It’s been my only way of reaching out and trying to connect with people. Connecting without having to connect in person, because I’ve been too scared of doing that. It was always safer to communicate through a card. Not in person.”
He nodded. “But you don’t need to do that anymore.”
He leaned in and kissed me. It was slow and soft and gentle, like it was last night. “You have me now,” he said. “You’ve had me for twenty years, I just didn’t know it was you.”
“I have?” I asked.
He nodded, his face still pressed into mine. His lips dragged against mine as his head moved up and down. “You’ve been on my mind and in my dreams since that day you gave me this card. You’ve had me for longer than I think you know.”
I let out a small sigh, and then wrapped my arms around his shoulders, the card still in my hands. I looked at the card and I couldn’t believe it had come back to me like this. All those years ago, I’d sent that card out into the world, given it to a boy who needed it, and that card and that boy—man—had come right back to me. Like a perfect circle, curling around and completing itself.
Completing me.
CHAPTER 73
