I did not feel better

I watched the boy move across the waiting room. I guessed he was about 10 yrs old.
He had lost a leg at the hip but it did not slow him down at all. Radiation had taken his hair but he didn't need it to be a handsome young lad. As I watched him from across the room, I thought that he had been forced to grow up much too soon. He spoke to his parents not as their child but as an elder. There was no shine in his eyes and his actions were only for the present. No thoughts of the future or whatever may have been before. I felt my heart growing heavy and I looked away. When I glanced back, his eyes met mine and he smiled. "Don't worry about me," he said.
"I don't have it so bad."