Chapter 4

The orders ranged from more sophisticated foods than the oatmeal served in the morning, warmer blankets than the specimens that gave us for the cold nights, or even walks around the isolated road that led to the clinic.

Noelle, perhaps affected by the memories of lost childhood, had asked for a whole day for chocolate ice cream. Even if we were in the middle of May, the heavy rain had not only left a wet trail behind but also a cold of cracking its teeth.

I reinforced my refusal to share my ice cream because I was sure that taking it would be the same as taking a shower in a bathtub with ice cubes. Noelle narrowed her eyes and completely ignored what I said, asking for the other empty cup that was on the table, next to the large styrofoam jar with ice cream.

Just being outside was more than a privilege for me. So, just so as not to waste my order, I demanded to help the gardeners with their tasks. I felt on the verge of violence when the nurses did not accept my simple request and tried to make me change my mind.

I had to seek maximum peace of mind to convince my Psychiatrist that I would not use the pruning scissors to kill anyone or even to kill myself. In the end, after a lot of annoyance and little use, I received the green light to do what I wanted if I agreed with the escort of a nurse.

I spent twenty minutes sticking my hand as deep as I could, digging and closing holes just for pleasure, until a shadow covered the little light that the cloudy weather had not been able to extinguish. For a moment I thought it was the nurse informing me that my leisure time was over.

I tilted my body to the side and raised my head, finding a pair of green eyes watching me with curiosity. The boy was so close that before I turned around completely, I felt the bar of his sweatpants leaning against my foot.

"If you plan to dig a tunnel to escape, you need to make it a little wider," said the stranger, smiling with scorn. Your accent was strange to me at that time.

" I don't want to make any tunnel," I answered dryly.

The boy crouched crossing his arms and stretched his neck to see the empty holes around some flowers. Frowning his brow, he turned his gaze to me and threw me another debauched smile.

"What's your name?" He asked.

I pretended not to have heard anything and dragged my shovel to the feet of an orchid. I was almost sure that I would end up spoiling the flower since for some reason my main goal was to destroy roots and dig more holes.

The boy moved to get out of my way and it was the moment he uncrossed his arms that I had the feeling of hands closing in the shape of a shell around my right ear. I looked directly at her hand and realized that there was something white involving her.

"What is this?" I asked, indicating your hand with a movement of your chin.

He hid his arm in his back and smiled maliciously. "An answer and you are entitled to a question."

I rolled my eyes. "Abby."

He gave a wide smile and two round shapes appeared on his cheek.

"Abigail?"

"Just Abby..." I murmured.

"Don't you like your name?" He asked.

"Nobody likes their name."

A whispering breeze pierced the boy's hair, blowing silky strands away from his face.

" I like my name."

My annoyance with that conversation hit my education in full.

"So it must be a ridiculously common name." I cursed.

The boy laughed and I looked intently in his direction. I used to hate that they spent too much time watching me, but I never noticed when I did the same with other people.

So much extra time to observe that boy was not used for anything more than noticing the first thing that had caught my attention; his brown hair curled in curls at the tips and the silky strands were agitated towards the nape of his neck as if they had been combed with their fingers.

"My name is Henry." He said, raising his right hand to me. The white thing I had seen before was a sash.

I dropped my shovel and lightly squeezed his bandaged hand.

He let go of my hand after a few seconds and said: - Carpal tunnel syndrome.

"What?"

Because I said everything very quickly, I thought those words were part of some greeting from the place where he came from.

He gave me another smile before repeating what he had said. "You asked what this was" he waved with his bandaged hand. "Carpal tunnel syndrome."

I dodged it slightly and wiped my hand on my clothes. " Is that contagious?"

I watched as Henry's smile took on exaggerated proportions and his laughter echoed in my head. It was as if he guessed or someone had told me, I already knew that he would be the one who would always find a way to make fun of me, just as I also knew that he would always approve of his jokes, even without understanding most of them. I closed my face and crossed my arms, feeling stupid and a reason for a dull joke.

"It's a fracture" he replied still laughing.

Embarrassed, I uncrossed my arms and murmured something almost inaudible that sounded "complicated". I avoided looking in Henry's direction once again, knowing that his dimples would be showing and that he would be having fun at my expense.

However, the sudden movement he made when stretching to capture one of the magenta-colored Orchids — which would probably die in a few days thanks to me — caught my attention again. For a fraction of a second, I observed his arched back and the way the long-sleeved blouse wrapped his arms with a significant thickness.

Shaking my head slightly to ward off a shadow that was forming in my thoughts, I turned towards one of the black iron tables just to receive a new narrowing of eyes coming from Noelle's direction.

She had the ice cream spoon still stuck between her teeth and I could swear that her lips trembled in a kind of smile. I felt my hair clinging to what I thought was the branch of some flower, I stretched out my hand to pull it and realized that it was Henry who was holding three small strands.

"What do you think you're doing?" I asked trying to sound rude, my voice threatening to become thin and almost childish.

I think it may have been the unexpected event or maybe the similarity in a scene that passed quickly through my eyes like a flashback that awakened one of the sides that I tried so hard to control. I remembered a woman who touched my hair, her touch left my scalp bubbling tickling.

"When I was little, my sister always let me braid her hair." He said moving the strands on top of each other. "As far as I remember, hers is as big as yours."

I frowned. "Why don't you do that in your hair?"

He laughed. "Yours is prettier."

On the one hand, I felt that my space was being invaded and I wanted to hit your hand to rid my hair of your touch. On the other hand, the most dominant side, I realized that I liked that gesture. Without knowing it, through his simple touch, Henry reminded me of something that in the past had been more than a good memory.

Henry lightly pulled the tip of my braid and arrested it by wrapping the stem of the magenta Orchid. The braided strand mixed with the rest of my loose hair, and only the pink-purple color of the flower was apparent.

I pulled the strand to look closely, feeling my head vibrate slightly. I interpreted this wrong, and I started to think that the boy in front of me was just some kind of hallucination affecting me little by little or some kind of new disorder. Even worse, I imagined that he would be a kind of cheerful and sarcastic "entity", different from all the others who insisted on haunting me.

"So..." He started with a slight tone of shyness in his deep voice, pushing away with a pedelec my doubt about his existence. "What's your problem?"

For the second time, I looked closely in your direction. "Really?"

"What?"

"Do you want to have a conversation asking what my disease is?"

He frowned and looked around. "We're in a hospice," he said, turning to me. " You didn't want me to ask your opinion about the weather forecast, did you?"

I gave a pompous smile. "No, but to get to know me better, you could have asked me something like: "What is my favorite color", and then talked about more serious matters. That's how normal people do it." At least that's what I thought.

" Cool..." He shook his head and cleared his throat before asking: "What's your favorite color?"

I opened my mouth to answer and the next moment I realized that I didn't know the answer. Henry arched his eyebrows and imitated the smile I had given.

"Did you forget your favorite color?"

I denied it with my head. " It's been a while since I've been known what I like."