Five days cooped up in the same bed in the same room of the same hospital gets old very quickly. How fast you realize the "this is a much needed break" attitude can only last so long before "nothing you have to do" becomes the boredom of "nothing you can do." Reading the get well cards from distant or poor friends on the table beside the bed only took a few minutes and was not interesting enough to be repeated.

By the end of five days, no matter how hopelessly useless you have been rendered by an incapacitating surgery, you just want to get out and do something. Eventually, you get used to knowing recovery was nothing but time wasted, and you suffer through it murmuringly. This time, however, I for once was blessed with the presence of an amusing time consumer also known as my best friend Christy. She normally did not hang out with me at the hospital after surgery since it was hours from our home town, but this time she did. She had coincidentally had to come down for "shopping" and decided to stop by before heading back out to the rurals. Here would be my one chance to do something.

All morning we had been lazing around the room, making fun of the food I had to eat, telling jokes, and trying not to laugh or sneeze since both hurt rather badly. It was relievingly different from the otherwise continual silence of hospital background noise. After a rather long burst of laughter from Christy, who did not have to limit her jolly self to stifled chuckles, I pulled on my best retarded expression and gestured dramatically toward the window.

"I wanna go ou'...dere," I stated, as slurred and pained as I could possibly make it sound without hurting myself. "Will you push me ou' dere?"

"Yes!" Christy agreed, leaping to her feet. "Finally we'll get out of this creepy white room. It's like an insane person place."

I hated that she had to help me into the wheelchair. Usually I could get around fairly well, and every surgery was like returning to an infant state, relearning the orientation of my body members, how to make them move again, and rebuilding the muscles most people take for granted. Of course, I did not want Christy to see the helplessness I felt, which led to the telling of jokes and impersonations of people with speech impediments. She merrily pushed my rolling transport to the bed, too occupied to notice my momentary deviation into negativity.

"Hop in," she offered, giving a helping hand to get me seated, and then taking control of the reins. We crashed into walls or medical equipment twice, purposefully, before making it safely out of the room.

After stopping at the drinking fountain for fuel, we made our way to outside. It was Christy's idea to run down the sloped sidewalk, chasing away smokers from the "Designated Smoking Area" like pigeons, shouting various things. "Make way! Handicapped girl, coming through! There's no stopping us now!" People dove and darted to the sides, mouths gaping, dropping cell phones and cigarettes in the bushes. We left the smoking area, entering the courtyard that would be our destination, and then Christy tripped.

She managed to not fall, but she lost her grip on the wheelchair, letting me go hurtling truly unstoppable into the paved circle. Directly in my path was a young man, wearing dark glasses and music headphones, obliviously not heeding the warning calls of, "Get out of the way!" By the time I realized he was not going to move, it was too late to stop.

Some classic music played through headphones into his ears, reaching his mind as a complex collection of distinct sounds. He separated the pieces—twanging electric guitar, bass drum thumping, four background singers, even the minor role instruments like the wind chime—the second-nature habit distracting his mind from the task he should have been dedicating his concentration to: finding what he had misplaced. He could be so spacey sometimes. Where had he set it aside?

He had put it down against a wall, taken only a few steps away and sat down on the ledge of a fountain. A few steps in which direction? Could he even remember? While he was busy beating himself up over how he should have paid more attention to where he put it, his mind was completely cut off from the warnings of his impending doom. He turned around to look over there and was plowed to the ground by a wheelchair I would have successfully been able to stop had he not stepped closer in turning.

I glared down at my knocked over roadblock in annoyance. He should have been able to move from my way with no problems. An average 20-something year old young man, almost six foot, with no visually apparent impediments, there was no reason he why he should not have avoided me. Now I was going to have to apologize to the short-haired blond man for something I had no control over. On the other hand, he did not seem like he would demand one.

From his new seat on the ground, he looked up at me in utter surprise. Even with the sunglasses covering half his expression, the wide, gaping mouth showed well enough he had not been expecting the attack. Earbud knocked away from one of his ears by the fall, he finally realized there was a world outside of his thoughts. Christy came running over, apologizing profusely to both of us as she pulled me back a little ways from the victim. Now frustrated, he pulled the other headphone from his ear and threw it to dangle against his shirt with the first.

"Unbelievable," he muttered softly to himself and then added for us to hear. "I normally notice when I am in the way."

"And why didn't you?" I had to ask when his first remark was so odd.

He did not accept Christy's offer of help up, lifting himself to his feet and brushing off his pants. "The fault is on this song," he excused, pulling out his iPod and wrapping up the headphones to put it away. "Every time it plays, I get so distracted. The rest of the world just...kind of...fades away."

I thought he looked pretty detached still, face pointed off into the distance to the right of Christy and over my head. "I should know better than to listen to music while actually trying to do something." Frowning, I wondered if it was possible to be such a terrible multitasker. He was worse even than my friend Tiara, and we were always teasing her for it.

It was not quite appropriate for me to say anything rude to him, though, as it had been our fault for knocking him over. Deciding to respond cordially, I said, "It's all right. I normally can stop myself from hitting people. You're an exceptional guy." As if being hit was a special privilege to cherish.

He smiled and looked down at me, as if realizing—for the first time—I was below him. There was a warmth to his smile that somehow made it seem all his impoliteness was completely unintentional. It was a little weird. I must have been missing something, or else he was very strange indeed.

"If it is not too troublesome, may I impose on you a favor for me?" He inquired, quite pleasantly. "You see, I ate my lunch at that ledge over there, but before I sat down, I happened to set something aside, and I cannot seem to find it."

Christy and I exchanged glances. There was not much better to do, and we had been looking for an activity to occupy us. I was usually pretty decent at finding things anyways. Shrugging, we both agreed. Why not?

"It's a white cane, with a red stripe along the bottom with some puncture marks where my dog gnawed through it," he described, and with that one sentence everything up to that point made more sense to us.

"Oh my!" Christy exclaimed in shock, "a cane for walking? Did knocking you over hurt you worse?" At least, I began to understand.

He smiled with a slight chuckle, embarrassed by something. Maybe it was the concerned attention. Maybe it was the thought of having to verbally reveal his true disability. Or maybe it was still just about having lost something and having to ask two girls for help.

"He's blind Christy," I corrected before she ran over to medically examine him; though, she had no experience in diagnosing problems at all. "White and red canes are for blind people."

"Oh yeah, I knew that," she stated, scolding herself as she redirected her concerned energy to searching for the missing walking aid.

"You say it so blunt and straightforward-like," he accused, scratching at his prickly blond hair like something had just made the conversation awkward on his end.

"Like you aren't even around to answer yourself," I realized, knowing I had done what I hated so much when others did to me. "I know; I'm sorry."

"No," he corrected, "I mean how most people discretely beat around saying what actually is wrong, as if they fear the word 'blind' would offend me. 'Visually impaired,' that somehow sounds worse, right? Like I am also mentally challenged. Perhaps I am only imagining it, and yet...hearing you say blind was rather refreshing."

"Okay," I agreed uncertainly. I could not seem to figure him out. Nervously he was chattering like a fool, while at the same time keeping a smooth, cool calm. He was embarrassed, and not ashamed of anything, totally off the wall and still completely down-to-earth normal. I would like him for a second, and then he would do something so distastefully weird.

"So...aren't you supposed to have, like elevated senses, to know where everything is all around you? How did you manage to lose something so important in plain sight?"

"In plain sight," he repeated. "Remember that means something different for me than for you." He did not bother to go into detail. Noticing instead I must have found it, he asked, "Where is it?"

"Leaning against the brick wall just to the left of where you ate lunch," I described—attempting to give good details but not too many—as Christy returned back with it.

"Oh yes. I recall now, leaving it there before I sat down." He drifted off thoughtfully. Then, he continued, "To answer your question: I ought to pay more attention. Because one cannot just naturally find their way around places without vision. To know where everything is, you have to focus, memorize where it all was the first time. Sometimes I have absolutely no desire to, and...that is when I get lost."

Taking the cane from Christy's hands, he held it protectively in front of his chest stating, "Thank you. Now I can shield myself from the evil lady and her bulldozer."

"I bet I could still take you," I assured. The look on his face showed that he could see through my typical response to the frustrated tone hidden beneath because it was no longer true.

"Perhaps we shall have to rematch later," he suggested, swinging the cane up behind his neck to occupy both his hands in balancing it, his smile permanently fixed upon me.

How had he noticed the tiny falter in the certainty of my words? No one else would have. It was like his senses had switched back on all of a sudden. He had changed so drastically that I had to wonder, was this how he normally acted, when not caught off guard? I found myself staring as I got lost in speculation and began to worry. Could he feel me staring?

Noticing, not my eyes upon him, but me shifting with the fear he had, that awkwardness instantly transferred to him. Assuming I was unsettled by the silence, he searched diligently for words to make it comfortable again.

His stuttering tongue failed him miserably, so I supplied, "How can we rematch if we don't know who each other are?"

"I, uh...can I see you later?" He questioned.

"Only if you get your eyes back," I teased. "Why? Are you leaving?"

"No," he answered. The question had been meant as permission and not as a farewell. Clearly, he had given the wrong impression, and he intended to correct it until something came to mind. "I mean, what time is it?"

"A little before 2," I answered.

A worried surprise came over him, wordlessly asking himself, "Already?" Returning his cane to the proper position of its use, he informed, "I do in fact have to leave now. Sorry. You cannot miss appointments in these places or it takes forever to reschedule them."

Then, he left, without another parting word.

"Well, he sure was in a hurry," Christy noted.

"Probably to get away from me," I added, pretty bummed, but mostly because I had halfway expected it to end differently for once.

"I don't think so," my friend countered, taking hold of my wheelchair once more to return us to our room. "I stayed out of the conversation because I thought he was liking you. Probably, he just forgot to ask your name."

"Yeah right, if only something that good were possible. I don't need to get my hopes up wishing some guy would take my phone number for this," I gestured to my deteriorating body and its throne. "Even someone who forgot to get my number is just wishful thinking."

"Red slug bug!" She exclaimed, punching me abruptly in the arm over a car in the parking lot.

"Hey! You can't hit the injured girl! I'm still recovering."

"On the contrary! I am the only one allowed to beat up on Kat, and you really deserved that one. You just talked to a hot guy, he liked you, and now you're being dumb."

"Even if he did like me—highly unlikely, but if—what good does it do if we'll never see each other again?"

"It's flattering. That's supposed to make a girl feel better, not worse," she concluded.

"Tiara always sends you such weird stories," Christy commented some time later and back in the room. "That was supposed to cheer you up somehow? It was more creepy than anything else. With a little card that says 'get well' with a smily."

Setting aside the excerpt I had been reading from, I replied, "I think it was more she wanted to keep me occupied and wrote the first thing that came to mind. Then, she tried to throw some cheerful things in here and there. It's not as bad if you think of it only as a story, and not related to the 'get well' card. I actually liked it."

"I guess so," she agreed, picking up a picture my other friend had sketched of some of our favorite video game characters. That was the real well-wishing hope of recovery. "It seems she really wanted to be here with you."

"She hasn't been through as many surgeries with me as you have. It still scares her."

"I'd touch his smexines," she stated, ogling over a particularly good-looking drawing.

"That's my boy!" I claimed, snatching the paper from her hands.

Unexpectedly, there was a knock at the open door to the room. We looked over to find the same boy from earlier, stepping in. "Hello girls," he greeted. "I was walking by and heard your voices. I thought, 'Them again? What a coincidence! It must be some sort of sign to cross paths twice in one day.' So I decided I better stop in, at least apologize for running off so abruptly earlier."

A pause threatened to fill the air with tension caused by my disbelief that his uncertain, cocky demeanor and polite smile were in my view a second time. Had he really sought me out, going out of his way to talk to me again? There was no way it was real. Something was wrong. It had to be a dare of some sort, or he would never have bothered. Someone with a face like his would not have to try so hard for me when they could just find another girl.

Christy, noticing I would take a moment to process, filled the gap with, "So...how was your appointment?" She saw I was shocked, but she had no idea how negative I was feeling inside.

"Truthfully, it was really someone else's appointment," he explained. "A friend of mine is a doctor here, and he often asks me to come by and visit some of his patients that go blind suddenly and have a hard time adjusting. It helps them to cope, I think."

"Goodness Kat, you tried to smash the kindest person in the world!" Christy teased.

"I would not exactly say that," he denied humbly, settling in comfortably where he stood, leaned up against the counter at the foot of my bed.

"Besides, it was you who made me crash into him," I excused. "I was not in control of the vehicle."

"Vehicle?" He repeated, curious as to the origins of the nickname we had given my means of transportation.

"It's what we decided to call my wheelchair one day forever ago. I think it's because we were walking in a place that said no pedestrians, and we decided it was okay for me because I was really in a vehicle," I explained for him.

Turning his head to the side, he inquired, "You are in a wheelchair?"

"Yeah," I stated. Had it not been obvious enough? "Did you not notice when I hit you?"

"No, I did," he assured, "but there are so many people going around in wheelchairs here just temporarily because they just came from surgery. I had no clue you were actually...disabled."

"Yep, sure am."

"May I ask what happened?"

"You sure can," I complied, but jokingly I said no more. After all, I had answered the question he asked.

He leaned further into the counter, laying his cane up there where he was bound to lose it. Having seen enough of my teasing tendencies, he knew the conversation was going to last a while. "So what happened so that you are endowed with a bulldozer rather than feet?" He questioned.

"Spina bifida," I answered, "It's a birth defect, so I've pretty much just always been handicapped."

"I see. So what are you doing here now?"

"Every so often, I need another surgery. I've gotten used to it, I guess. But it sure is a pain having to start completely over every time."

"Mmhmm, I can understand how that would be frustrating. Not that it could ever happen to me. Once you are blind, you are blind, right? No improving or worsening of your condition. Just blind. Maybe I should be grateful for that."

That pretty much ended the line of conversation. No one could think of anything else to say on that topic, nor could we come up with the next one so quickly. I decided it was really creepy the way his shaded eyes just stared at me. Maybe he could retain more information for his mental picture that way. Still, it freaked me out. Then, I began to wonder, what was he noticing?

"You are nervous," he pointed out when the lull had lasted just a bit too long for his tastes.

"You're staring," I retorted.

"I apologize. I hadn't noticed. But I cannot really feel comfortable until I have seen you," he revealed.

"Seen me? I think it will be a long time before that happens."

"I mean, seen in my way. I can form a perfect image of you in my mind. Right now, you are just a blank face with a voice, much like talking on the phone."

"Fine then. It's only fair that you get over here and feel me over."

Smiling, he walked toward the far side of the room, using the bed's foot board as a guide. Then, he turned up toward me, and Christy had to refrain from reaching out a foot to trip him from the chair along that wall. He knew exactly where to stop so that he would not be sitting too far or too close to me. After climbing on, he took off his sunglasses and set them on the bed—not knowing I had done the same with my vision glasses. I wore contacts when I was trying to impress a guy anyways.

"So, Kat, is that your name, or is it only something she calls you?" He asked, and surprisingly, his blue eyes glanced over to Christy. It was as if he could see just fine.

"Kat is fine," I answered, looking him over thoroughly as well from these new, close quarters. "It's short for Katherine, but most people call me Kat." He was not at all unappealing, his light shirt draping loosely over the waistband of his slightly-baggy blue jeans, folded at the knee by his crossed legs. Seeing his eyes for the first time as he listened to my voice with them, he looked—actually—normal.

"Well, okay Kat. My name is Eli. Let me know if I do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, and I will stop immediately."

With that disclaimer said, he raised both hands to my face. Once he had brushed the hair away, he ran his thumbs along my eyebrows. He outlined the shape of my jaw, fingered my ears, and discerned the shape of my nose. It was taking him a while, and the longer it took, the more I began to anxiously wonder what the picture he was forming of me was like.

Unable to hold in my curiosity, I inquired, "How do I look in this mental image of yours? Will you tell me?"

Eli stopped his progression, palms resting on my cheeks. "Usually I like to do it in silence. I can hear your features better. But I suppose, if you want to know, I can tell you...the full color version."

"No way!" Christy exclaimed. "How can you tell color?" She quickly made her way closer to watch the process better.

"Most of the time, color feels different," he answered. "Do you not believe me Kat? I felt that sigh that hid your scoff. Let me show you what I can tell, from the top."

As he began to describe it, his hand started over from the beginning, "You die your hair. It is naturally a dark brown color. It has been a while, though, since the point where your thick texture meets chemically treated hair is quite a ways grown out. Your eyes are...brown. With that hair, and your pale complexion, any other color would be remarkable."

"That's just deduction," I pointed out.

"True, but you wanted to know how I imagine you," he reminded. "You wear glasses. You took them off to hide it from me, but you wear them often enough that you have callouses behind your ears. And, you were surprised that I figured that out." He smiled knowingly at me. Man, I could not hide anything from him.

"You don't have to tell me my feelings," I informed. "Then, I can't deny them."

He simply continued to amaze me. "There is a freckle here, here, and there," he described, dragging his finger from my forehead, to my cheek beneath my right eye, to my other cheek. "And some other splotchy flaw next to the second one. You have two eyebrows—which is good—a down-turned nose, and some lips. Your—"

"Your eyes are beautiful," I interrupted, having been distracted from his description of me by the painting of him—Eli—before me. "They are so blue. It's really eerie the way you just stare, though."

"Oh?" He dropped his hands from my face and looked away, I guess, saddened that it had been bothering me.

Quickly, I tried to clarify what I had been trying to say. "I mean, I guess you should expect it to be that way. And it is kinda weird, but I could get used to it." The more I spoke, the more his face looked dejected and his eyes drifted off toward the floor. I should never have started my thought with the negative part because now I was mad that he was not going to be looking at me for the good part. Grabbing his chin so his eyes would be forced to face me, I growled at his frown and finished, "But what I really wanted to say is, that even though your eyes are that way most of the time, what really shocks me is when they're not! I'd never thought that sightless eyes would show so much of your emotion, and follow your thoughts wherever you direct them. You look so normal, and see so well, I have troubles remembering you're blind!"

"Because it has all been some big ploy to deceive you into liking me," he admitted, a hint of sarcasm showing in his smile as he pulled away from my grasp.

I rolled my eyes, a natural accompaniment to my own sarcasm as I played along, "Yeah, you thought I'd be more sympathetic to your case if you had your own disability."

"I cannot believe you saw through me so quickly, but then being lost at the hospital with a blind's guide staff is such an overused way to pick up girls. I suppose I should have known better than to point out your nose and lips. It was a dead giveaway. Well, since you caught me, I ought to just leave now and preserve some of my dignity."

Turing toward the oposite side of the bed from where he had climbed on, Eli swung his feet off to stand. I was mostly certain he was only faking like he would leave, having finally opened his true, joking nature to me now that he had an image of me to joke with. As he stood, however, his foot dragged against an unexpected pair of tennis shoes, and he fell on his face.

Giggles that Christy had held back, due to her position as an observer of the pretend argument, burst forth into controllable laughter at his dramatic tumble. Even as it was in my best interest not to laugh, I had no choice but to give in a little. So much for dignity. Despite his superhuman, sightless, vision abilities, he was so obviously blind. Pulling himself to a sitting position, he looked so confused and disarmed as he examined the two, small shoes that were his demise. Then, plastic and Velcro nearby caught his attention.

Holding it up over the bed, he inquired, "What is this?"

"It's my leg brace," I replied. "Since my legs didn't develop right, the blood can't circulate right, and my feet flop down lifelessly if I don't wear those to hold them in the right position. I haven't worn them since I got out of surgery, though."

Almost right away, he had gotten back up and over to my side, the brace in one hand, my covers in the other, and urgent look pasted on his face. "What are you doing Eli? It's not that important for me to wear them," I informed, wrongly assuming his goal.

"I want to understand spina bifida," he revealed as my hand held his from moving my covers. "I have not seen your whole person yet."

"Well, I don't want you to see spina bifida. Right now, you being blind to it is the..." I caught myself before spilling my guts. Only way you'll still like me, is what I felt was the truth, but I finished instead, "way I want it."

For a moment, he considered insisting on getting his way. If he could see, he would have seen it by now, and it was not right for it to be kept from him just because of his disability. Shortly thereafter, he realized this had nothing to do with his right to know what anyone else might know, but rather the personal feelings of the second party involved—me. Loosening his grip on the blanket, he stood back up, crossed his arms, and leaned back against the wall. A grumpy glare spread across his face, but it was one of those where he also refused to look at me, leaving him glaring immaturely at the blank wall.

I knew very well it was unfair. After all, I could clearly see his disability, the one that he was most self-conscious about, that posed the biggest problem for him in really getting to know someone. It must have unsettled him. It unsettled me every time I met someone new. Would there be boundaries to how far our friendship could grow if they could not get past staring at the wheelchair—at the cane? The question clearly crossed both of our minds frequently, as it did now.

The difference: I knew well his handicap, and he was locked away from mine. To him, I was nothing but a face with a wheelchair floating in the darkness of the room. Now, we both nervously hoped the relationship could surpass knowing what was broken about the other. Taking a deep breath, he broke barriers as he dared to comment on the wanderings of his mind.

"Hospitals. They always make me think of scars. You know, when I was 13, I walked right into a pole of rebar at my dad's work and impaled myself on the cut-off edge. It nicked my appendix, and thank goodness because I could have died had it caught an organ I actually needed," he related. Pulling his t-shirt up to his ribs, he revealed without reserve the right side of his abdomen much more than what was necessary. From his toned stomach muscles down to a couple inches below the top of his hip, where the jeans smugly embraced a butt I was certain a friend Becca would just be itching to cling to, were she here. There, right in the middle was a nasty-looking, round scar with jagged edges.

So the story was true...I had tons of options of ways to respond, but, spotting the grin accompanying his gesture, I decided on, "You think I'm that shallow that I fall in a blubbering trance because you showed me part of your chest? Think again."

"I showed you none of my chest," he corrected. "I showed you my abdomen, but surely we could arrange for you to see the rest." He reached a hand to the other side of his shirt, ready to remove it on anyone's cueing.

"Go Eli," Christy encouraged, forgetting for a moment to think first of her friend's interest in the rather good-looking boy. "It'll be like the gym locker before weight training class." She seemed thoroughly prepared to stare him to death.

He had raised the hem of the shirt to shoulder height, when he hesitated, eyes widening. Just as he returned his shirt to its proper place, we understood his decision to stop as a light knock came at the open door.

"Miss Hunt?" Inquired the soft voice of this shift's nurse. "How are you feeling?" She asked as she made her way over to me.

I kept her busy while Eli and Christy whispered a secret exchange behind her back. "Dude, that was close! She almost caught you," my friend informed quietly as Eli scratched at his jaw and then rubbed the back of his neck. The shock of being found guilty in the act was still wearing off.

Then, something hit him, and he replied in a hush, "I wasn't taking my shirt off for you."

"Spectator syndrome," was her excuse.

"Gross."

"Guilty," she shrugged it off. Realizing what he had actually said, though, she forgot about silence and returned loudly, "Wait...me?"

Realizing what he had actually said, Eli raised his hands in defense, "No, not you! You are cool. But that you would look at your friend's boyfriend."

"You're not her boyfriend."

"No...I'm not, but you know what I meant. That you would look at...at." Changing his mind about explaining, he stated," You know. Never mind." It was clear he had seen no way out of the conversation and decided to surrender while he still had all his parts.

"Good choice," I told him, trying not to laugh at his pathetic face, propped up on an arm resting on the windowsill.

The nurse took her leave, which prompted Christy to sigh and mention, "That's my alarm. I have to go find my pet raccoon and head back home now if I want to get to Hay Springs before her bedtime."

"Your...pet raccoon has a...bedtime?" Eli asked uncertainly.

"She means my sister," I explained, "who's off in the gift shop finding shiny objects. Christy says stuff like that sometimes."

"'Cuz I'm cool," she assured. "Right Kat?"

"Right."

He nodded, still confused, as Christy continued her farewells. "How long are you going to be here still?" She asked me, after squishing me in a hug.

"Another two days, I think, or something around that."

"Is it okay to leave you here alone with that boy over there?" She wondered suspiciously.

"I think I'll be all right," I answered trying not to laugh at her teasing attitude because I knew it was totally serious at the same time.

Turning her attention back to a boy, ill-prepared for the best-friend-battle so early, Christy warned, "You. Be safe. If I ever see you again...I'll know." With that said, she too left.

A few moments of complete silence passed. Well, not complete. The room was full of machines buzzing in a low drone and beeping every so often. People went up and down the hall, making their own noises typical of hospital background noise. To me, it was mostly quiet. For Eli, those small sounds must have been amplified by the lack of anything else.

It was hardly long at all before he questioned, "Should I be frightened?"

"Only if you plan on doing bad things to me," I replied.

He raised an eyebrow, questioning his own intentions. "What exactly are bad things?"

"Pretty much, no making me pregnant."

Looking away, it was fairly obvious he was violated by the very thought. "Did it look like I plan on doing that?"

"When you took your shirt off," I began, trying to make him nervous. "No, you didn't. She was just playing with you. But don't."

"I won't," he promised, sitting down once more at the foot of the bed. After a few moments he noted, "Your friend was a bit strange."

"I'm from a really tiny town in Nebraska. There aren't many people, so what you get for friends is what you get. She is awesome, though. You just have to know her first. Don't you have any friends that are the same way?"

He scanned his mind, looking through his list of friends. There was the doctor, with the most uncaring, rough exterior of anyone who spent his whole life dreaming of helping people. He was truly kindhearted; though, you could never see it through his attitude that lacked all sense of urgency, even when he worked in the emergency surgery ward. Plus, he was a bit sadistic, and way to intelligent for any girl—according to himself.

Then, there was Sal. Six foot four, two hundred-some pounds of pure muscle, who held his liquor like a 14 year old girl. Every time he got the slightest bit tipsy, he would start sobbing his little eyes out over how much he loved his ex-wife...even after they got back together. He was now the designated driver. His wife was fairly normal, but her sister was psychotic. She always had a gun on her hip, and she actually pulled it on people when she pms-ed. She liked football games more than any of the guys, and she always showed up wearing a shredded jersey from the opponent's team. No one knew what happened to her husband but he left her "enough money to buy the things she loved": footballs, and ammo.

Only one of his friends was blind like himself, having lost his sight in Iraq. Just the cause of his injury could explain most of his insanity, but it was not safe for him to hunt, no matter how much he insisted upon it. When autumn rolled around each year, they all had to go in and hide all his guns so he would not accidentally shoot other hunters. "Yes Chris, you can hear the exact spot where the stick cracked, and hit it dead on from so far away. But how can you know it's really an animal, and not the Vice President of the United States?" That was the joke always told to him. He had an obsession with scrabble pieces, and was the only one who ever survived a conflict with Sal's sister-in-law.

After all those memories, he replied, "Nah, they are all pretty normal."

"So you hang out with a bunch of boring people then. Do you guys do crossword puzzles and play chess?" I teased, trying to get more from him.

"I am fairly certain I have never done either one of those two things. I said normal, not nerdy."

"Well?" I prompted him to expound yet again. "What do normal people do?"

"I don't know. Stuff that everyone does."

"Eli, why are you hiding it from me? You're not the only one who can read faces, and right now it is so clear that you don't want me to know about your friends. Why is that?"

"I am hiding nothing," he retorted untruthfully, but the little bit of anger on his face was enough to hide evidence of the lie. For a while, he mind stared off in the distance, thinking of who-knows-what.

"Whatever," I interrupted the thoughts, realizing he was just going to be dumb about it, and changed the subject. "What does someone like you do for a job?"

"Pretty much anything really, other than the obvious like bus driver. As for me personally, I fix things. Like electronics, for a small company, so I could fix in one day anything from the coffee pot, to the computer that got fried again, to what they actually hired me to do, which is put together the model for whatever project they are supposedly about to build. It is all government funded, so nothing ever gets done, but we always have money to keep messing around. We built a robot once, but I had to disassemble it to fix the coffee maker.

"That's pretty neat. I would love to have a job where you don't really have to work at all," I agreed enviously. "Like if I could actually get hired to test video games, that would be awesome."

"I was never too good at video games," Eli mentioned.

"You've tried to play video games?"

"Yes, hasn't every guy? All of my friends play at times, so of course I have wanted to join in and give it a try. Someone has to tell me all the details of what I am doing and where things are, that it is really more like them playing than me, so I gave up at ever excelling at that."

"Well, how exactly did you end up with a job like that?"

"It is a division of the CIA. If I told you, I would have to kill you," he joked, pulling out a fake deep voice and looking sideways at me. Unable to keep a straight face for long, he sort of chuckled, thinking back to how he had come across it.

Colorado Springs is a mostly military city. The student council president senior year was the son of some big, high up officer in the Air Force base under the mountain up there, so his father set up some tests. The entire graduating class did all the placement exams required to see where they would wind up if they applied with the military as a recruitment tactic. That was how Chris wound up there. Eli would have too...if the Air Force accepted blind applicants. He had placed highly on a good number of the tests, and it had caught the officer's attention, who then proceeded to refer Eli to the business owned by one of his good friends.

"The dad of a boy from my high school told me about the position, so I applied," is all that he ended up telling me.

"Ooh, all your stories are super interesting," I replied, clearly sarcastic. Whenever he thought of something to tell me, it came out in paragraphs, but if I asked, he could hardly get out a sentence. It was starting to make me mad.

"I'm hungry," he announced, suddenly standing from the bed with a distant look on his face. Quickly, he smiled and offered, "Would you like me to grab you something from the cafeteria?"

"Sure," I agreed.

Turning, he walked around my bed. He did not bother to stop and grab his cane, I guess assuming he knew the way well enough. It also helped me be certain that he would be coming back, if nothing else, to get it. Crashing directly into my wheelchair, he caught himself on the handles, then tipped it over backwards, and fell over it. Almost cursing, he pulled himself back to his feet on the side closest to the door.

"That was so not there before!" He exclaimed in frustration.

"Christy had to move it when she left," I explained, trying hard not to laugh at his eternal clumsiness.

"No, things can't move," he insisted, but sounding more good natured than the instant before. Setting the wheelchair back up, he put it where he had remembered it being. "I memorize the room; it has to say the same. So no moving until I get back," he ordered me, as he faced back toward the door and left.

Once he was gone, the humor of his trip and the promise to return faded off, leaving my thoughts once again to linger on the way he avoided my questions. It really frustrated me, the way he just randomly turned off with no reason to some of the things I asked. No, it was not random. He could talk just fine about the present, but if the topic changed to his past, he would not respond. Only, when I had asked about his current friends, he had acted the same. The fact that I was not able to determine what was causing him to clam up was perhaps the most infuriating.

The topics were not even that important, which made me curious as to what serious could possibly be hiding behind the story of how he got hired. Maybe he was an illegal Mexican immigrant. Or maybe he really did not like me at all. How much could he possibly be interested in someone he was not even comfortable sharing the impersonal aspects of his life with? If he was leading me on out of sympathy, I was really going to tear into him!

Still, he had left his things here and promised to bring food back. If he did not at all like me, he could have made some excuse to leave. An appointment, something to do at home, a date—I would have believed it—so really, he left because of whatever had bothered him in the questioning. It still bugged me, but not near as much now, as I thought about how the fact that he was coming back meant he must actually have been interested in me.

Two trays in hand, Eli skillfully maneuvered through the mostly empty hospital halls. Considering there was only one turn to make to get from the room to the cafeteria or back, and any nurses that came through made plenty of noise on the vinyl tile floor, it hardly presented a challenge at all. It was simply one foot in front of the other, and count the steps to the hallway where her room is.

He did not notice the redhead approaching from in front of him. Rather, he was perfectly aware of the female's presence—though, he knew nothing of her hair color—and he had already planned their respective paths so as not to collide. What Eli did not realize was she was signaling him to get his attention. As he continued to walk by without responding, she grew more desperate to get his attention. Even flailing had no effect, however.

Eli frowned when she deviated from her path, closing in on his. It never seemed like it would cause any problems, though, until she tripped, falling into him. Juggling the food, he managed to keep it all off the floor and catch her with his elbow, not knowing she had fallen purposefully. The lady straightened back up and quickly began gesturing her introductions to him. Unaware of it all, Eli just stared curiously at her.

"What is it Miss?" He asked after he began to wonder why she was still standing there. "Is there something you need?"

At that point, she switched from ASL—which she had been hoping he would understand—to very descriptive gestures that did not require a knowledge of any sign language. The boy still did not see her hugging herself or asking for his phone number. He just stared. Finally, she realized why. Grabbing a hold of his arm, she knew he had to have one hand free to communicate with her.

Stumbling from the sudden attachment, Eli fought back against her striving for a little while. As persistently as she held on, though, he eventually balanced one tray in the crook of his other arm and freeing his hand.

"Well, you're a little bratty aren't you," he greeted, lightly brushing her face to get a vague image of the new lady. "Persistent girl," he finished, noticing that she must have been only sixteen.

She grabbed his hand from her face, positioned it right in front of herself, and began signing directly on his palm. As the symbols began to take shape in his mind, it at last dawned on Eli that she could not speak. For a moment he tried to discern what she was telling him with the little bit of sign language he knew. Obviously, it was nowhere near enough to understand.

"I am sorry, Miss. I do not speak your language," he informed gently. "Is there something the matter that you are trying to tell me?"

"No," the sign was clear in his hand. "I want." The rest he failed to figure out. "You are," stood out from what she said next. Then, finally, there was a whole sentence he grasped. "Can I talk to you again?" Her fingers had reached up to Eli's lips and then lingered there hopefully.

Assuming the request meant she normally had some computer device to help her communicate did not change the fact that Eli would refuse. Taking her wrist, he put her hand back by her side and answered, "I think you can see clearly enough I am visiting someone here. You should not be so forward with someone you do not even know."

He continued walking on, eventually returning to the room from whence he had come, only to find the girl he returned for passed out, asleep sitting up. It had, after all, been a long day for someone recuperating from a surgery. Smiling, he set the two trays down on the counter by the bed and sat down in the chair to wait for my arousal. Figuring it would be a while, he pulled his iPod back out for some tunage as he tried to figure out how he could fix his boss' camera without buying any new parts.

I was amazed when I woke up and found the person sitting in the chair to my side was not my mother as expected, but Eli. He had not only come back, but he had waited around for me, saving his food until I woke so we could share the meal together. I glanced over to the clock, wondering how long I had slept and when my mom would be back before trying to get Eli's attention from his sunglassed, music-induced daydream.

Just as he said when we first met, his headphones entirely blocked him off from the world outside him. After unsuccessfully calling his name a few times, I decided I would have to think of a better way to make him notice I was awake. Near me, I grabbed the envelope to a get well card. Folding it into a paper airplane, I tossed it directly at him. It stabbed into his chest at the heart and bounced off, giving him a good scare. Once he had almost jumped out of his skin, my companion raised his eyes to me with a smile. Finally, the both of us were ready to spend the evening together.

"So what kind of music is so interesting that you can't notice anything else?" I inquired as he put his iPod away again and joined me on the bed with out two dinners.

"Classic...rock. You know, the kind of music in Guitar Hero. Which is, by the way, a game that I can play if I hear someone else play the song on the same difficulty level first. The problem is not actually that the music is good, though. I just let my whole mind get distracted with separating the sounds, the guitar from the bass, and all the different drums. It leaves no room to focus on anything important."

"I see. I play video games for the same reason. To relax by filling my mind with the game's details instead of life's problems," I replied with a bit of my own input.

"I suppose I should ask what kind of music you like listening to."

"Oh, a bunch of stuff. Some dance music, some of the tunes from my favorite Disney movies, quite a bit of rock too, which is some classic but mostly modern." I tried to shorten the explanation a little. The list of music I had could be rather overwhelming with how large it was.

"You sound quite varied. Should I expect that from you in other areas as well?" The question came as if it were part of a survey.

"Of course!" Recalling how he had claimed to do only 'normal' things, I assured, "I plan on helping you widen out."

"Is that so? Are you moody?"

"Not as much as you are! You go through phases like a teenage girl. I mean, of course I have my moments, but usually I wait until I'm alone to let it get to me."

"Ooh, selective mood swinger. You are talented indeed," he joked, giving me a grin. Then, picking up his sandwich, he mentioned, "You are lucky they were serving cold dinner, or your food would not be hot anymore."

"It wouldn't have tasted any worse cold than hot. It's just that bad. At least the sandwich comes with a bag of chips. They can't screw up what is prepackaged," I added, pulling mine open.

"It is not that bad," Eli countered through a full mouth of bread.

"And guys will eat anything," I reminded. "Can this possibly be good for someone whose stomach is still messed up from drugs and stuff?"

"I always heard jell-o is supposed to be pretty good for stomachs."

"Look at your jell-o, and tell me that's appetizing," I said, poking his with my spork. "It's got some weird skin on it."

"A skin?" He repeated, reaching forward to feel if it was true or not. The jiggly substance was still on the rebound from my prodding, and it rippled and bounced along with his poke as well. Pinching a piece of it between two fingers, he squished it into juice and smeared the nasty skin around. "Yeah, that is not normal."

"Can I poke it again?"

"I think we should throw it at people, or put it in a bag of saline," the troublemaker side of Eli suggested.

"Nah. Saline wouldn't be fun enough. Put it in a syringe and offer to shoot people up with it. No one would accept it because it's bright green, but it would be fun."

"We could call it the cure for pain. Then, everyone would want it."

Poking the dessert once more caused a disaster. It slipped from beneath the spork, flipping the jell-o on its side, splattering it into oblivion. Eli would have flinched had he seen it coming, but as he could not, he only blinked away the shock after the green juice exploded all over his face.

"Well, look at that, it was still liquid inside," I commented, embarrassed that I had caused it and hoping he would not get too upset.

Gradually, he burst into laughter, as if it was a way to control his temper, and the more he laughed, the more he believed it was funny. "I did say...we should throw it at someone," he remembered. "I guess it actually happened."

"Here, have a napkin," I offered, now giggling myself.

He wiped himself off with it and then complained, "Well geez, I'm all sticky now. If you are finished, I can take out trays back when I go to wash my face."

Accepting, I kept my half-finished bag of potato chips and handed him back the rest. I really had lost most of my hunger after the nap anyways. With a smile that attempted to hid his disappointment over the jell-o, Eli left yet again. As he left the cafeteria and neared the bathrooms, a familiar presence greeted him. The sound of her shoes, the weight of her step, her overall size: it all told him it was the redhead again. He was wrong to hope they only met the second time in passing, for she was deliberately coming toward him.

Before she could say or do anything, Eli stopped her, saying, "You are far too young to interest me. Please do give up," and he walked away.

"Catch," Eli announced his sudden return by throwing a bag of skittles at my head. He then climbed back on the food of the bed with his own bag and explained, "Since the jell-o was inedible, we needed some other source of sugar."

"Oh my," I realized, "I forgot to tell you the jell-o is all over your shirt too. I just kinda figured you knew...somehow."

Dropping his head as if to gaze at the green splotches on his torso, he sighed. "Whatever, I will clean that later." Still, he obviously did not want to be wearing a dirty shirt, so he simply removed it, throwing it over in the corner. Leaning back on the foot board as if nothing were different, he inquired, "So, I should ask. What do you do for work?"

"Do you really expect me to just answer that? Right after you..." I paused awkwardly, gesturing in his general direction at what he had done. There he was, just like that, one leg stretched along the side of my bed like a giant arrow pointing straight at his newly uncovered chest that seemed to be basking in the fresh exposure. It was not bad to look at, from the upper firmness to the attempted, but not yet successful, toning down below where a tiny bit of flab hung on for dear life against his training. No, he was not at all unattractive. I would only have to enjoy looking for a while before I could think of his question.

"Right after what?" He prompted, cocking his head curiously at my strange loss for words.

"Right after you," I repeated, but still I could only finish with gestures. "That."

After pondering deeply what I could mean, he understood and asked, "Should I have not?"

"No!" I reassured, almost too quickly. "It's fine; it's just..." Pretty! I purred inside my head, but I shook that away before it came out my mouth. Clearing my throat, I responded, "I don't have a job because I'm currently in college, to be a medical transcriptionist. I know, boring, but I was too lazy to do anything harder; though, now that I'm in the program, it's not easy either."

"Right, because you wanted to spend your life playing video games," he added, popping a skittle into his mouth between two constantly smiling lips.

"Not my whole life," I corrected. "It would be a neat job, but it's not like it's my only hobby."

"No? What else do you like to do?" He stretched, raising his hands behind his head to support his neck. No doubt, he was comfortable with me now.

"Well, I write. I got a book published last year. And I draw pictures for my friends. And I really love taking care of my babies...my horses."

"Horses? How well does that work for you? I mean, riding without your legs."

"It's hard, and different from the way it is for most people. I just need a little help getting on, and then I just hold on with my hands harder instead of my legs. When I'm careful, it's fine." Something about the way he had posed his question had prompted me to reply in great detail, and I had no clue why until his next comment.

"Do you think it would be possible for me?" He wondered, but he quickly added, "Probably not, huh?"

"Actually, I was going to say yes," I answered thoughtfully. "Your only problem would be not seeing where you're going, right? So as long as you go someplace without cliffs, your horse will avoid the little dangers by herself. And if someone goes with you on a different horse, they could kind of lead you. So I be you could. I would teach you."

"So kind of like the video games, where I just do whatever you tell me?" He summarized, not much liking the way it sounded.

"Not exactly," I countered. "Like say we're in a meadow. I would only have to show you the edges and any big obstacles to avoid. Anywhere else you could go. It would be more like giving directions to someone who has never been somewhere before. Like the road is splitting in two, go left."

"I suppose," he conceded.

"Well, if you only do things that you don't need help with, what do you do?" I dared to brave the question again.

"Football," he answered like he had decided ahead of time it would be his answer next time I asked about it. "On Sundays we used to play football, before Sal tackled his three year old and knocked out a tooth. His wife Cameron refuses to let him play now, so we are without our defense. And he was our only hope of surviving his sister-in-law from the other team."

"You play football?" I asked, thoroughly surprised. "I hate to say this, but even though you're blind? What position do you play?"

"Quaterback."

"How exactly do you figure out where to throw the ball?"

He tapped his ear. "I know where everyone is. And my buddy Chris never fails to catch it. My best receiver and he's," Eli drifted off, his enthusiasm waning away as he continued further into the story. It was as if he chose not not to complete it and rather wrapped things up with, "He's the only other one who's blind."

Resolved to not sink back into that mood, Eli changed the subject. Tossing a skittle into the air and catching it in his mouth, he asked the first thing that came to mind. "If you could date any girl in the world, who would it be?"

"Girl? Is that your fall back when you run out of things to ask while making friends with guys? I personally don't lean that way," I assured, wondering if he had just mis-worded the sentence, or if he actually meant to ask that.

"Good to know," he replied, relieved to know I was not gay, "but you can still answer the question. I like to know what a girl thinks she needs to look like to be hot."

"I appreciate your skill in on-the-spot excuses and recoveries, but no," I said.

"Well then. I suppose I shall have to simply tell you who I find attractive." He stopped there as if thinking, when really he responded with a completely faked answer just to get my opinion. "Brittney Spears."

"Ick, no. That's disgusting. You can't like it," I ordered, wrinkling my nose.

"Lady Gaga."

"She's not even good-looking!"

"But she would have sex any day of the week," Eli pointed out, reminding me of the ever-present thought in the back of a man's mind. Before naming another worthless celebrity that he never really would like, he threw another skittle, this time at me. His cheesy follow-through accompanied the candy as it fell straight into my bra.

"Eli! That went down my shirt," I scolded, so he would know where it landed.

"Score," was his response. He had totally aimed for it! But how did he know where the neck-line of my shirt was, or where to aim? I had never let him touch me anywhere near there. As good as he could see, there was no way he could hear my shirt.

"You did that on purpose?" I asked.

"Want me to do it again to prove that I can?" He asked, a little confident. I never answered, but he still tossed another one my way. Backing out of the trajectory, I purposefully caused his aim to fail.

"Ha you missed!" I mocked.

"Next time don't move," he ordered, throwing a skittle of judgment at my head.

"Don't throw candy at me!" I exclaimed in mock-frustration, pelting him with my own.

He simply picked it off the bed—where it had landed after bouncing off his chest—and put it in his mouth and stated, "Jessica Alba."

"Too obvious," I replied.

"Angelina Jolie," he continued his list.

"Yes, I would date her," I agreed. "Well...before she married Brad and got all super skinny and sick-looking."

"Did she really?" Eli inquired like he had missed that bit of celebrity gossip. "Well, I cannot have a bony butt on my lap. Catch," he said again, tossing a skittle directly toward my mouth.

I almost caught it—not quite—before asking, "You don't really know what these girls look like, do you? I mean, without feeling them up, how could you really?"

"Only from what my friends have described to me. Which is something they like to do very much."

"Well why don't you mention someone who actually looks good like Megan Fox?" I suggested.

"The girl from Transformers? Too small."

"What do you mean?"

"She is too small. You know...her," after hesitating, he whispered the word, "breasts."

That I had to tease. He was embarrassed to say breasts. "Sorry, I couldn't hear you," I lied.

"Her breasts," he repeated, randomly deciding to see if I could catch another skittle in my mouth. "They are too small. It makes her look...disproportionate." Apparently, thinking of boobs had thrown off his aim, and it hit my glasses.

"How much do someone's looks actually matter to you?" I wondered.

"I guess, not as much as some people, right? But certain features do feel better than others."

"Like what? Do explain," I probed for more.

For a moment he thought. Then, pulling his legs beneath him, he leaned toward me and grabbed my chin with both hands. "Your jaw," he described, brushing his fingers along the edge of my face at the ear. "From what I've been told, you look like Penelope Cruz. With this hard jaw, your high hairline, your brown eyes and hair, and thick eyebrows. Even your nose is like hers. Only not your lips."

"No, there's no way that could be possible," I denied, casting my eyes away from him. His fingers lightly drifting from one place to another on my face, his warm breath as he once more described his image of me, they felt differently this time. It was more like gawking at a beautiful painting, rather than creating one.

He ran a finger across my eyelashes now resting on my cheeks and lifted my head back up. "It might not be true, but I can believe it."

Then, I realized he was not likening me to Penelope Cruz, but instead he was saying she looked like me. He knew very little of how the celebrity actually looked, only that many men found her attractive. After 'seeing' me, he found enough similarities in our images to say mine was worthy of being the image he thought of for her name as well. He was calling me hot.

I wanted to protest. It was not true; I was not at all good-looking. What kind of mistake was he making? What had he overlooked to come to a conclusion so far from the truth? Somehow, I just could not accept that he could really have that opinion of me. Even if the only thing that mattered about my looks was that someone liked them, I just kept thinking that something had to be wrong. He lingered near my face longer than he had to. I should have been enjoying the topless young man before me who looked like he was nervously considering daring to kiss me, but I was not.

My eyes widened slightly when I became aware of his intentions, and I licked my lips, worried about something I that I could not quite place. "You're scared," Eli pointed out, barely able to make a smile with his own fear. He had noticed a breath I forgot to let out for a few seconds and my heartbeat soaring through the roof. Even I could feel his hands clam up and become sticky against my face.

Was it possible for this moment to be happening?

As he closed the gap between our faces, a part of me let go of all my reservations, completely prepared for this dream to become reality when his lips touched mine. The rest of me was still incapable of believing and thus withheld me from moving in as assurance to Eli that I was in agreement. But was I even in agreement? My whole body froze, petrified, as my first kiss was about to take place in the least romantic of settings, at my personal worst. What part of this was not too good to be true?

The dorky way he tripped over everything in sight.

A small chuckle escaped my mouth in a rather unappetizing snort. As he pulled back a bit, concerned by my response to his advances, it transformed into full out laughter. He leaned back on his heals, frowning curiously at me and watching patiently as I laughed my heart out, all the while cursing my unsolicited thoughts.

"Why are you laughing?" He asked, when it took me too long to recover myself.

I could not imagine myself kissing him, but the reason was not so much his corny side as my fear. Subconsciously, I was putting up walls to protect myself from disappointment. But laughter? I scolded myself, Did it have to be laughter? Even as I began to calm, Eli became more and more upset. He was crossing his arms now, and glaring. After I considered telling him the reason for my outburst, I decided the reason would hardly make him feel better, perhaps worse.

Should I apologize? But the words would not come to my lips even if I had wanted to say them. He looked away, seeming a rejected as my response ought to have made him feel. As he slid off the bed and picked his shirt from the floor to put it back on, I searched desperately for the words—not even to resolve the issue—just to get past the spoiled moment. Idiot, Kat, you know you totally blew this one.

"I should probably head home now," he grumbled as he grabbed his cane and slung it over his shoulder. "I have kept you up too late anyways. See ya." He bid me good-bye with an extremely casual wave and left once more. This time, however, he would not be coming back.

A few seconds later, my mom came in, complaining of how much longer it had taken than she expected to do the one little errand and how she felt she had wasted her whole day. I hardly took a moment to wonder what would have been her reaction had she come in two minutes ago. Neither could I much attempt to sympathize with her complaints when I was too busy contemplating my own pitiful mistake. What stubborn, self-depriving, torturous side of me had wanted to screw up my chances so badly? There was no way to recover from it now. I even had no way to call him to make it up. I had simply ruined it.

"I can't believe I had to leave you here alone," my mother continued. "I was supposed to be back before Christy left. Did everything go all right while you were here alone?"

"Yeah, just fine," I replied, deciding she did not need to know. My voice showed my grumpy demeanor, but she just assumed I was sick of being in the hospital. I was.