The Wanderer

Chapter Six

Chapter Six

         After speech therapy and after I went back into my room my family was waiting there. Mommy wasn’t there though, my dad said she had to work, but something in his voice told me that she hadn’t know they were coming. He said he wanted me to have alone time with Josh, which I know my mom wouldn’t have approved of, so he and Joe went off to somewhere and left Josh and I alone; as soon as the door Josh began to speak.
         “Hello, how are things going?” He said just to see if I really could talk yet, I didn’t try.
         “You know Joe hadn’t said a word since we left here; the grown-ups think that he was just making random sounds but I know better then that. I think he’ll only talk around you, until you can talk. I don’t know why, but I guess that the just the way things work sometimes. Are you even trying to talk? Although I know I’ll sound selfish if I say I want to here you talk first, I do. It’s the only thing you need to do to get out of here, you know that, right? So can you please talk, for me, for Joe?”
         Wow, that’s a lot of stuff for Josh to say; usually he doesn’t talk a whole lot. And I thought that the doctors had to finish their tests before I left or did Josh not know about all those. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe they’re just waiting to see that I can talk and that nothing permanently wrong had happen before they let me leave. I also didn’t know that about Joe, if I start talking would he follow?
         I extended my hand, most people would have taking this gesture to mean that I wanted him to hold it, but he knew better, after all, we were the ones who came up with a method of communication when we couldn’t speak out loud in a current situation. He stuck his hand out fingers slightly curled with his and relaxed, I, putting my hand in the same position as his was kinda locked with his so it would look like to unknowing eyes like we were holding hand, and slowly tapped with my middle finger short-short-space-short-long-long-long-long-short-space-short-short-short-space-space-long-space-short-long-short-space-long-short-long-long.
         “Thanks,” he said simply. “Do you want me to help? I’d feel better knowing that I was helping somehow.”
         I nodded, unsure how he could help, but Josh is very smart, so I figured he would be able to work it out somehow.
         “Okay, I want you to try as hard as you can to form your lips like mine, and make the same sounds with your throat.”
         I nodded, trying my best at the various sounds Josh had me try to form. It didn’t take very long to be able to make them; then finally string them together in a word. Josh looked pleased, which he should have because he was the one who had finally gotten me to talk; I on the other hand was not pleased at all. I thought of Kori, only a memory now.
         “Now, I got a question, when should I start talking? Should I start in speech therapy, or in normal therapy, or when Dad and Joe get back, or what?” I asked Josh, almost with out error.
         “Why don’t you just say ‘hi’ to Dad and Joe when they get back; they’ll probably get all excited and tell everyone and then you won’t have to tell anyone or anything and then they would release you.”
         “But Josh,” I protested. “I would have to like talk to them, and they might expected me to tell them why I couldn’t talk in the first place, and I don’t really know, and I don’t know anything about anything about what they would want to and, and,” I didn’t know what to say, I, I, I, I just didn’t know. I couldn’t help it, I bust into tears.
         “Breathe, it’s okay, well it’s going to be okay, remember the doctors don’t know anything about you, for all they know you are just a normal five year old,”
         “That can play chess, and have “normal” conversations with a 17-year-old, yeah right.” I interrupted.
         “Let me finish; you can just pretend you are a normal five year old, you can do it, I know you can. And at home, you know Mom and Dad won’t bring it up, so yeah.”
         I sighed; I knew he was right, now all we have to do to start the chain reaction is wait for my dad to come back, and then I can say something to him. It had already been over an hour, so he should be here soon, but the exact time is impossible to tell, especially with dads. Dads can say that they’ll be there in a minute, but then an hour later they still won’t be there. It’s very confusing, but then that’s men, a confusing breed they are.
         “Hey Josh,” I said basically overusing my renewly-found skill. “Do you wanna play tic-tac-toe?”
         “Suar, sistar.” He answered, making me giggle.
         We played tic-tac-toe for the remaining time we had left alone. After a while my dad came back with Joe in his arms.
         “Hi Dad,” said Josh.
         “Hi Dad,” I said copying Josh.
         My dad almost dropped Joe; in fact he probably would have if Josh hadn’t ran up and grabbed him. Josh set Joe on the bed next to me; I assumed that he wanted me to talk to Joe, so that Joe might talk back.
         “Hi Joe, what’s shaken?” I asked Joe.
         “Hi! Krithsy!” Joe basically screamed in my ear.
         “Ow,” I cried playfully.
         “Sowy”
         I looked at Joe, then I looked at Josh, then I looked at Dad. Joe grinned playfully at me, Josh and I exchanged identical glances that were surprised at the smartness of this very small nine month old child, while my dad didn’t even notice me looking at him and just looked stunned at the fact that his son spoke.
         “W-w-well,” my dad said weakly “It’s time for us to go, Josh, well you get Joe? Kristi, we’ll be back soon, bye.”
         “Bye, Dad, Josh, and Joe” I said.
         “Bye,” said Josh.
         “Buh” said Joe.
         Then the three of them left, and if Josh was right they would go straight to the nurse station to tell them I could talk. I knew that this might take a while because it would take some explaining, and then they would want to know details, and that would take sometime too, but after everything gets sorted out lots of nurses and doctors would all come around this bed and talk to me about who know what, but for now I can sit in peace for a few minutes before the craze comes on, and I can enjoy this minute and know that another one may not come for a while, so I should enjoy it to the fullest.


         It was just as I suspected; it was only quiet for about five minutes, and then the nurses started to pour in. Every nurse that had ever been with me was suddenly in the room. Josh must have been right about my dad going right to the nurse station. I didn’t even know that all those nurses were even on duty, free, you would think that some other patient might need some help, but apparently not. There were so many people it kinda made me dizzy. Although that might have been because they were all saying things and I just didn’t know what to do, and all the voices swirled all up in my brain. Lucky for me though when my dad had gotten Josh to got home relatively late, so there wasn’t much time for them to surround me before I had to go to bed, but then nurses don’t really care about stuff like that, they’ll wake you up in the middle of the night randomly to do something to you. I switched my attention back to the hordes of people.
         “You will never be in my office again!” Irene said leaning way over my bed in my face.
         Then someone else came to take her place to tell me something to my unlistening ears. I thought it was kind of amusing because I haven’t said anything yet to them; they were to busy talking to me to listen to me. I didn’t mind this at all, because I could just ignore them, now if they actually expected me to talk then I would have to listen so I could provide an intelligent answer, so I preferred this.
         “I think that we should give Kristi some dinner and then she can go to bed so she will be well rested for tomorrow when she will be going home.” said a random voice.
         “Thank you,” I replied.
         While the person who I assumed said about dinner left all the other people came closer and started clapping, which I guessed it was because I had finally said something, but I honesty had no clue.
         “This is a hospital, not a circus, there are people trying to get some rest and heal, and it is being much harder with everyone yelling.” I said to earsplitting laughter.
         “The child is right, we should go.” Said one nurse
         Then everyone just kind of left, just like that, I didn’t understand it, but there are a lot of things in life I don’t understand. Maybe there is some special nurse rule to all leave at the same time or something, I wouldn’t know because I’m not a nurse.
         “Here you go child,”
         I jumped like a foot in the air. Then I looked up at the nurse that had left the room before. She had really pretty red hair, and it was tied up in a pony-tail. Her skin was very pale, but had lots of freckles. I could tell she was Irish.
         “Sorry, I got you dinner.” She said.
         “It’s okay, thank you.”
         “I know it’s not the best food in the world but tomorrow you’ll be going home.”
         “Thanks,”
         She went out the door her red pony-tail bouncing along behind her. I switched my attention to the tray she had left for me on the tray that goes right over the hospital bed. The food didn’t look very appetizing, but then none of the meals that the hospital had served have been mouth-watering, or even tempting; however I ate it.
         After I finished my food all of the sudden I got really tired. My eyelids got very droopy and I could hardly keep them open. I didn’t try to stop myself from going to sleep, I knew I would have a busy day in the morning.
         That night when I fell asleep I had a dream about Kori, but it was not like the dream I had before about her, it was a nice dream. We were at her house and we were having a sleepover. She was wearing her favorite outfit jeans and a fancy shirt that had a butterfly on it. We were just sitting on her bed and talking, like how we used to. When I woke up from that dream I knew that Kori didn’t kill herself, I would have known; it was something else. I didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t her. I would find out what it was, even if it killed me. Then I went back to sleep, looking forward to the morning.


         After I woke up for the second time it was morning. The sun was almost done rising. A nurse was in my room looking at me. I really didn’t like that, it makes me feel really uncomfortable knowing that someone was watching my while I slept.
         “As soon as Irene, and David come in, you can go and say good-bye to them. You’re going to go home today.” The nurse said.
         “But what about all of the rest of the tests?” I couldn’t help but ask. “There was so many tests to do, and now there’s not?”
         “David explained that to us, as soon as you could talk you could go; all of this was from the trauma of Kori’s death.”
         “She didn’t kill herself.” I mumbled.
         “What was that?”
         "Nothing.”
         “I’ll be back later, but Teri will come in a few minutes so you can walk around some, and get used to being back on your feet.” She said as she went out the door.
         I’d thought that I had been on my feet, because I had never been incapable of walking, but oh well, that’s the way things work sometimes. After all I did need to practice walking. Over the past few days I hadn’t walked much, only to therapy stuff, and that’s not very much. So I was grateful for some guided practice.
         Then I switched my thoughts to Kori’s death again. I did what any detective did, or at least what I thought every detective did. First you need suspects, and I didn’t have any. Kori didn’t have any enemies, there were a few people at school who teased her, but according to her there isn’t a single person who has never been teased at school; she also she said that they just probably liked her. I couldn’t think of a single person who had had a grudge against her, not one. So then I moved on to motive. I didn’t know why anyone would want to kill her either. So a dead end there too. The only thing I could think of was the ring. Kori had had on that ring on in my dream, and I had this feeling that it was evil too, so what if some how the ring’s evilness killed her. I didn’t know how it was possible, but then again people used to think the world was flat, so who knows.
         “Kori?”
         I jumped which was no surprise, at Teri’s grandmothery tone. I do wish that one day I would learn how to be jerked out of my thoughts with out the jerking.
         “Yes, Teri,” I said like I had no clue why she was here.
         “We’re going on a walk to go get some food, okay?”
         “Sure,” I replied.
         I got up around the bars to go and meet her by the door; then started off on a slow walk to the cafeteria.
         “We’re not going to go on the direct route to the cafeteria; we’re going to walk all around the hospital first, so you can stretch your legs some from lying down so long.”
         “Okay,”
         So maybe we weren’t going on a slow walk right to the cafeteria, but we’d get there eventually.
         I didn’t mind the walk through the halls of the hospital, Teri and I didn’t exchange one word after that though, but it gave me time to think more about Kori. After all I had to figure this out, who would want to kill her? I don’t get it; it doesn’t make sense. I hate not knowing things; it makes me get all frustrated and mad. If only I could figure that out; then I might be able to stop it from happening again.
         After what seemed like a long while of walking I was really tired. I knew it hadn’t been that long because Josh still hadn’t taken back his watch and it had only shown that ten minutes had passed. I knew ten minutes was not a long time so I wondered why I was so tired; I guess that's why the Teri had wanted me to walk around a bunch, to get used to this method of getting around. After all, people walk all the time.
         Teri noticed my weakness and asked “Are you tired? Do you want to stop for a little while?”
         “Yeah, sure, we can stop for a minute, thanks.” I said as I sat in an unoccupied wheelchair.
         Teri was very nice; I would miss her after I left the hospital. But then lots of the nurses are nice; it’s kinda in the job of a nurse, but not really because not all nurses are nice.
         "Am I going to see Amy again?" I asked in the stillness "Or David and Irene?" I added as an after thought.
         "Yes, of course. After you eat lunch we were going to go down to see David and Irene, and it's during Amy's session so you would get to say good bye to Amy too."
         "Oh, thanks."
         I was glad that I would see Amy again. Maybe we could exchange phone numbers or something. She looked like she needed a friend. She needed a friend; I needed a friend, sounds like a match to me. She seemed really nice, like someone I would hang out with, the only thing was if she wanted to hang out with me. She might not, and that would be fine with me. Well maybe it wouldn't be fine, but I could deal, especially after Kori's death.
         “Do you feel like you can walk some more now?” Teri asked me.
         I was so proud of myself for not jumping I almost forgot to answer the question. “Ummm, yeah, sure, we can walk more.” I finally got out.
         “Okay then, let’s be on our way.”
         I stumbled out of the wheelchair, still in shock about not jumping. Maybe I was finally learning how not to jump when someone jerks me out of my thoughts. That would actually be quite surprising because I had done it so many times I thought that it wasn’t possible, but it very well might be, and anyways it was possible because I had just done it.
         My thoughts jumped to Amy again. I wondered if Amy would want to by my friend. Lots of times older children, especially ones in high school think that children my age are like, well not fun to be with. Maybe most of them are boring. I wouldn’t' know, because like I said before my mommy isolates me from other people my age, so I don’t' know what they are like.
         "Kristi," Teri said making me jump. "We're at the cafeteria; it's time to eat."
         "Oh, yeah, sure." I answered. I was mad that she has scared me out of my thoughts, but I figured that it was just a once in a lifetime thing to not be startled out of my thoughts.
         Teri and I walked to the cafe counter to get my food. There went many choices, and they all looked just as gross as the food I had been served before. I thought that it was quite sickening that they serve food this gross at a hospital.
         "And what you like?" a smiling old lunch lady asked me.
         "Ummmm,"
         To buy time I looked at the blackboard which held the menu, and out of the corner of my eye watched the lunch lady for signs of stuff that would make her happy if I get. Her gray hair was darker then Teri's was and stuffed under a hair net; while her eyes were dull gray, and were watering. Her name tag read Roberta, and I felt a little sorry for her because she had had a life, and now here she was spooning out lumpy things that came dehydrated in a box and then all you had to do was 'just add water'.
         Roberta’s patient eyes kept looking over at a full container of mush that had the label 'potatoes and chili'. It was clear why it was full, but I figured that if she was paying so much attention to it, then she might have made it, and it was full, so I decided that that was what I was going to get.
         "I'll have some potatoes and chili."
         I had apparently said the right thing because Roberta’s face split into a wide smile.
         "With or without bread?" She asked.
         "With please,"
         She went over to get a styrofoam bowl and scooped two big ladles full, (yes, she did use a ladle) then she stuck the plate on a tray. She grabbed a cup and filled it with water and put it on the tray too. Then she started heading over to where Teri and I waited, when she had almost gotten over to where we were she reached out her hand to a bread basket, that was apparently set there for her convenience, and set a piece of bread on the potatoes and chili. After only a few seconds more she reached the counter and set down the food tray. "Here you go, potatoes and chili."
         "Merci, thank you." I said.
         "You know French?" she asked with sudden excitement. I thought that she might have a heart attack if she got any more excited.
         "Une pue; I know very, very, little. My friend," I winced as remembered the hours Kori and I had spent studying her French "took French and I, I, watched her and she kinda taught me a little. I just know the very basics."
         "Oh," she said looking a tiny bit disappointed; which grew steadily into more and more disappointment until she looked disgusted. Then she started on what sounded like ranting in very fast French.
         "Ummm," I said taking my food thinking that there was a reason Roberta was a hospital food server "See you around," I said untruthfully.
         Roberta didn't even look up from her ranting in French; instead it was getting faster and faster. While when she first started I could pick a few words like mal, which means bad; now I couldn’t' pick out anything. Although I did feel bad for the next customer, because he or she would put their arms on a 'just been washed' (or covered in spit) table.
         "So where do you want to sit?" Teri's question made me almost loses my lunch.
         "I don't care, you can pick somewhere."
         Teri walked over to an empty table. Most of the tables were empty, but not all of them. There were a few people eating in the cafeteria; mostly what looked liked patient's families, but there was also an occasional nurse or doctor that was apparently on a break and spent it getting food. I felt bad for the doctors who had to eat here everyday as I began to eat. I knew the food was the same as what I've had before when I was in my room, but somehow, now that I knew mad Roberta had been the one to create the masterpiece somehow made it worse. I was glad that this was my last meal here at the hospital; I didn't think I could eat anymore of this food.
         When I finished eating Teri stood up and escorted me to the trash can where I dumped the styrofoam bowl, cup, and tray, along with the plastic fork. I knew that none of these things were good to eat off of. I knew styrofoam leached into foods, and plastic forks could melt into hot food. (Even though they don't like completely melt, it's only a little, and you can’t tell.) I also knew that these products were filling up the land field, and also that they didn't break down very well. But that could not be helped, at least right now.
         "Are you ready to go see David?" Teri asked.
         "Yes, I am thank you." I replied.
         "Okay then, let's go."
         Side by side we walked down the halls of the hospital. I wondered what Teri could be thinking.
         Often I could read people; tell what they were thinking. It's very obvious once you know how, you simply have to look at how they say things, what they're unconsciously doing with their bodies, and the thing that tells the most what people are thinking are their eyes. We've all heard the saying 'the eyes are the gateway to the soul' and well I believe that's wrong. You can believe all day long that your soul will be captured when a picture of you gets taken, or that when you intentionally murder someone your soul will split and you can capture it in something. But that's not what I believe, I just have come to know that you can always tell when someone is lying, or the way they feel by just looking into their eyes; I can’t always tell, but if you know someone well enough there always is a way to tell. Some people are really good at hiding things, and can act and lie all day long, wither it's a big fake smile or a sense of knowing, or whatever, but you can't lie with your eyes; someone could appear to be the happiest person in the world, but no one, not even the best actors or actresses can make their eyes happy when they aren’t.
Teri's eyes were unlike any that I had ever seen; I could not read them. She almost had a different way of expressing things, like she used a different eye language then everyone else. I don’t know what it was, but all I could see in her eyes were depth. I could see that how ever she was doing she had had a lot of experience in what she was doing. Whether that be nursing or living, I couldn’t tell, I could just see experience. I didn't know how this made me feel, I'd see people that were difficult to read, but Teri was definably the toughest.
         Not wanting to jump when we finally arrived at David’s office I turned my attention back to where Teri and I were headed and was glad that I had such good timing. I knew that we were almost at the office because on the walls there were lots of pictures hung up. Most of them had been done by really little kids. Or not, I thought, as I looked at the names and ages under the pictures. Scanning around I realized that most of the children who had colored the pictures were older then I was. That was a surprise; I really didn’t know anything about 'normal' children my age.
         Teri and I walked a few feet more and reached the door that contained David's office. She opened the door for me, and then closed it behind her, sighing. I had no clue what she had been sighing about, but had no time to ponder it because the secretary/assistant said "You've been expected," I thought that it had sounded a bit like a horror movie of some sort, "just walk right in." He finished.
         "Thanks," said Teri.
         We did what we were told and just walked right in David's office. He looked up when he heard the door and greeted us in a frazzled voice. "Hello, come and join us, will you?" He was wearing long sleeves just as he had done when I had seen him with Amy before, but other then that he looked the same as always.
         Amy on the other had had slightly different attire then she had before. Her eyes said the same thing as they did before; her hair had been re-dyed so it was now completely dark brown and you couldn’t see that she was truly a blond. She was wearing jeans that looked the same as the ones she wore yesterday; they might even have been the same pair. Her sneakers were shoelacesless as before. Her jacket looked hotter then every because this one unlike last time was black.
         Amy was the first one to speak “Hi Kristi,”
         “Hello Amy,” I replied
         “You can speak again? David didn’t tell me.” She shot David an evil “How long couldn’t you use your voice?” She paused “If you want to answer that, if it’s not to nosy.”
         “Oh, it’s fine, it was almost three weeks.”
         “That must have really—” She said, but she got interrupted by David.
         “Hello Kristi, how are you? You girls can talk later; I want you to exchange phone numbers and call each other tonight anyways. Right now I just want to tell you how proud I am of you Kristi.” David said, all in one breath. “You see,” he continued “most people would have taken a while in therapy, and then finally they something to their therapist, which was why you were in therapy, before they’re ready to talk to anyone else, sometimes this person is a friend but for all I know, until you, it was someone who talked about their problems with them. It usually takes a while so the doctors were going to let you go home today whether or not you could speak because they were done with their tests . . .”
         I toned David out; I didn’t care very much what he had to say, after all I’d much rather talk to Amy instead, and from the way her face lit up when David had told us to exchange phone numbers I think she had wanted to too. That was the real reason I had wanted to say good-bye to David, because I has wanted to see Amy, but if all works out we would be seeing each other a lot.
         “Did you hear any of that?” David’s voice had changed and that was what had caused me to jump, literally, out of my stupor.
         “Sure,” I said automatically.
         “So,” said Amy “I guess this is good-bye.” Although by the way she said it I could tell that she was waiting for David to tell us to exchange phone numbers.
         “Wait!” David cried, as we both knew he would. “You should both exchange phone numbers; then decide who is going to call who tonight.”
         “Do we have a piece of paper?” Amy asked.
         “Sure, sure,” David reached over and picked up a piece of paper and a pencil off a table and gave it to Amy.
         “Thanks,” She said after taking the paper and pencil from David. Then she quickly jotted down her number. “I’ll call, if that’s okay of course.”
         “Yeah sure,” I said jotting down my own number after she passed the paper to me. “I’m not doing anything that I know of, anything that my parents have told me about anyways. So I guess now this is good bye,” I said to David “But I guess I’ll talk to you later.”
         “Yep,” Amy said.
         “Good-bye Kristi.” David said.
         I waved as I turned around and left the room with Teri.
         “See ya,” said a low gruff voice that I recognized to be the secretary/assistant.
         “Bye,” I replied.
         Teri and I left the office. We walked by the pictures colored by other children, and went down the hall.
         “Do you think she, that girl, is going to call you?” Teri asked me.
         “Sure!” I said brightly so she would think I was an innocent five-year-old.
         I had just remember that if people knew how advanced my brain was for my age that they might start asking questions. So I switched my manner to innocent five-year-old, or what I thought five-year-old should sound like. I don’t really know, but after walking by those pictures a second time I acted how I acted when I colored pictures the way the other five-year-olds did.
         “She might not; you know that right?”
         Of course I knew that, but I also knew that she would. And I thought that if I gave her a real response she would think of me more as the way I really am, instead of my character. So I gave her an answer that I would have when I was that bad at coloring pictures oh so many years ago. “Why wouldn’t she; that would just be silly. She said she call, so she will.”
         Teri sighed; I was pleased; my mommy said that when Josh was five she got exasperated with him all the time.
         After that we got quiet; both lost in our own thoughts. I couldn’t tell what Teri was thinking about but I was thinking about the time I got lost at a boardwalk. I guess all the different ways we could have gotten lost reminded me, but it was not the same at all.
I was one and a half or two years old, and I was just walking besides my daddy. Josh who was ten or eleven was walking on the other side. I could keep up okay, but my legs weren’t as long so I couldn’t go as fast, and I had been only been walking a little more then a year. So while I was good at it I wasn’t as good as Josh or my dad. There were a lot of people on the boardwalk so we had to be careful to stay together. My daddy had been talked to for like twenty minutes by my mom to bring us all back. Somehow we got separated; I looked everywhere for them, and all I saw was legs and feet. I got really, really scared, there was nothing I could do, and while I was pretty proficient at talking I wasn’t that loud. Unless you counted my scream; I could scream really, really loud but it just sounded like a baby’s scream and everyone would just think it was some child who couldn’t get an ice cream. I didn’t know what to do, so I just kind of waited through the crowds of people trying to find the rest of my family. After what seemed like a million years I decided what I was going to do. I decided that I should look for someone safe like a police officer (I didn’t know it then that those people are scary, well not all of them, just some of them) or someone who had children. When it felt like an hour (probably only a few seconds) had passed I finally saw someone. He was a really tall man with a stroller. The stroller was one of those that had two seats; there where three kids in the stroller. In the back seat there were twins girls that looked less then one; they could barely sit up. The front seat was occupied by a boy that was older then I was; he was about three. So I went up to this really tall man and miraculously he saw me and stopped. He asked me where my family was and I explained to him that I was lost. He was a very nice man. He put me on his shoulders so I could look for my daddy and Josh. I was very glad when I saw them; they were looking for me; I was glad about that too. Josh looked up just randomly and he saw me and he started screaming. Then my daddy saw me and he came over to where I was. Then after asking me if that was my family put me down. I told him how glad I was to have met him and thanked him for his help. Then my daddy talked with him for a while, after checking with me of course. I was very glad of the nice man that might have saved my life that day.
         “Kristi, Kristi!”
         I came out of my memory with a jolt. Irene had been trying to get me to come out of what my mom calls Kristi land. I tell her I hate when she says it, but really I don’t; really I like it a lot.
         “Kristi?” Irene said again.
         “Sorry, hello, how are you doing?” I asked politely. I didn’t know if five-year-olds have manners or not, but I’m sure it’s possible. Anything is possible.
         “I’m great, especially since one of my patients no longer needs my assistances.” Her blue eyes were shining so bright I was afraid that her blond hair might catch on fire.
         “Kristi,” Teri called softly “It’s time to go home.”
         “Okay, I might talk to you another time, bye”
         “Bye,” Irene said.
         Teri took me gently by the arm and we began our walk again. This time I wondered what Teri was thinking. After all everyone has a story. Everything is built on the foundations and when you don’t know that it’s usually hard to understand them. I wondered what her story was; had she been a nurse in a war, or lost a loved one? I thought war is stupid, but if I say that to most people that go back to something that their parents told them about and then they’ll ask me something about if World War Two was stupid. Then they go on and on about how there’d be no Jews left if we hadn’t stopped Hitler. I just reply, but if anyone talked with Hitler kindly and tried to tell him how silly his idea was, but with respect; tell him how really we’re all the same, maybe he’d understand. People love war, lots of times when there was just a misunderstanding or a disagreement instead of agreeing to disagree or talk nicely and not losing their tempers a lot of wars could have been stopped. I don’t understand it.
         I jumped as something wrapped itself around me. Oh well, I though, it was probably just my mom or something, and I was right.
         “Oh, Kristi, I’m so glad you’re back with us.” My mom practically sobbed into my shoulder.
         “Mommy,” I said uncomfortably “You’ve been able to see me when ever you want; I’ve been with you all along.”
         “No, you haven’t Kristi; you’ll understand when you’re older.”
         I didn’t exactly know what she meant, but I think I got the gist. I think she thought that I’d never be normal again. Normal as in a taking person, but she was wrong which I guess is a good thing. I wouldn’t be that happy if I couldn’t talk; it would actually get really old really quick, so I’m glad that Josh helped me talk again. I don’t know what I would do without Josh.
         “Are you ready to get out of here?” My dad’s voice said; I hadn’t noticed him before.
         “Yep,” I said as my mom finally released me from the hug, and after looking around I noticed that Josh was not there. “Where’s Josh?” I asked.
         “He’s at school.” My dad said.
         “Oh,” I said remembering. “I knew that.”
         “We were actually going to pick him up from school on our way home.” He said looking at his watch. “We better run.”
         “Okay,” I agreed.
         “Bye,” said Teri.
         I jumped because I had forgotten she was still there.
         “Bye,” I said back. “Thanks.”
         “That’s my job,” she said before giving me a big hug. Then she left the room.
         I walked back into the hospital room and got my clothes; then I put them on. After I was clothed in my original clothing I went out in to the hall of the hospital with my parents. Together without speaking we traveled down to the hospital entrance, this time without confliction.