"You look funny."
"I know."
After a brief moment, she fell back asleep.
Bonnie was moved out of the ICU into a regular pediatric ward room. The room had a window. The view wasn't anything special. But it was a step in the right direction.
Mrs. Park did her rotation. She came in twice a day, in the morning and the evening. She sat with Bonnie when I needed to step out, and she sat with me when I needed company. She also made me eat the food in the cafeteria that I'd told her, on three separate occasions, I wasn't going to eat, but I had to. Mrs. Park doesn't lose.
Kit came by the next afternoon.
He came with a paper bag from the lobby vending machine. The bag had four kinds of candy in it, one of which had been on the bottom row of the machine, which was the row Kit always picked from because Kit liked, on principle, the candy nobody else picked.
"Kit, she can't eat all of that," I said.
"But she can eat some of that. Come on, let the girl enjoy her chocolate," Kit smiled
Bonnie was already opening the package.
“Hi, Bonnie,” Kit said, leaning in like he’d been invited.
“Hi, Kit,” she replied, without looking up from the package.
“I brought you a Charleston Chew,” he announced, like it was a diplomatic gift.
“What is a Charleston Chew?” she asked, suspicious.
“It’s the chocolate-covered nougat stick everyone forgets exists,” he explained, solemnly. “It is the candy of my people.”
Bonnie finally looked at him. “Who are your people?”
Kit grinned. “Bartenders,” he said, as if that explained everything.
Bonnie ate one Charleston Chew. She declared it acceptable. She gave Kit's other recommendations — a roll of Necco Wafers, a packet of orange Smarties, a piece of black licorice — a thumb-up, a thumb-down, and a hand-shaking gesture.
Kit laughed harder than I'd heard him laugh in a year.
The next afternoon, Cade and Suzanne came.
Cade brought Bonnie a book —Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness— which was, by Cade's hesitant explanation, a follow-up to the cephalopod book Beau had been reading her. It was a grown-up book. Bonnie didn't care. She demanded that Beau read it to her tonight.
Beau took the book. He looked at the cover, then at his brother.
"Cade, you read this?"
"Yeah, I did. I noticed it was related to the cephalopod book you mentioned she was interested in. The reading was, on my part, deliberate."
Beau and Cade laughed.
Bonnie smiled. “Thank you very much. I love it.”
“You’re welcome, Bonnie,” Cade said.
Suzanne brought a thermos.
She brought it to me without comment and unscrewed the lid. She poured the lid full and held it out to me.
"It’s chicken soup, my mother's recipe. I've been making it since I was twenty-two and have found it to be the only thing that makes a hospital chair survivable."
