The Gift

Without telling anyone and without anyone knowing, he conveyed his deep and heart-felt gratitude to the two young faces that fundamentally yet unknowingly changed his life.

He was at his sister’s house one evening having dinner. She and her best friend Maggie, who worked as a nurse at the hospital, were always wearing each other’s jewelry. As he drove past the hospital on his way to work every morning, his sister asked him to return a pair of earrings to Maggie on his way to work the following day.

Whilst in the hospital looking for Maggie, he stopped outside the ward for children with a terminal illness.

He didn’t go in; he just stood at the door, transfixed, looking into a world that on some level he had known existed, but had never seen. A world that suddenly loomed very large and very real, close enough to feel, close enough to touch, a world that made all his “don’t-haves” “must-haves” and “why-mes” appear trivial, a world that stripped away every vestige of self-importance, a world that made him realize, for the first time in his life, that he had not yet come close to understanding how truly wonderful, yet how achingly fragile life is.

He was looking into the world in which a little boy, dwarfed by acres of starched white linen, was asleep in a huge bed; his head resting on a pillow big enough to have been borrowed from giants. His woolen beanie had slipped back, revealing a doll-like and cleanly shaved head.

He was looking into the world in which a little girl, sitting up in bed, was having a subdued but very serious conversation with her doll. Her head was fully bandaged and she had a tube in her nose. She looked up and gave him a tired smile, raised her hand slightly and said “Hello, who are you?” He stood there flummoxed, slowly raised his hand in response and tried to form the words that would convey to that little girl who he was. He was devoid of speech, unable to answer.

A nurse came bustling up to him and asked him if he needed any help. Her sudden appearance jerked him back into the world that he had so recently stepped out of and returned his power of speech. “I’m looking for Nurse Maggie” he replied, and for a second or two had not the foggiest idea why.

Following the nurse’s directions he found Maggie, returned the earrings and was soon outside the hospital and on his way to work. Back in “his” world, a world that he barely noticed and took for granted, the images of that little boy and that little girl kept swirling around inside his head.

Something inside him had changed, had shifted. He was like one of those “Spot The Difference” pictures, where two identical looking pictures are laid out next to each other but contain definite differences that are not easily seen.

The young man who left the hospital appeared identical to the young man who had entered it, but there were profound differences; he was vibrantly aware of some fundamental changes within him, he could feel them, but didn’t know what they were or where they were, he just knew that things had shifted, that things were very different, that he was very different.

During his lunch break he went to a toy store and spent a large portion of his savings on fluffy toys. He bought teddies and bunnies, giraffes and pandas, dogs and lions, ducks and dolphins and birds with big colourful beaks.

He had the whole lot delivered, without a note or an explanation, to the terminally ill children’s ward at the hospital. The hospital that he drives past every day, the hospital in which a little boy sleeps with his tiny shaved head cushioned on a huge white pillow, adrift in a sea of white, the hospital in which a little girl with a bandaged head and a tube in her nose comforts her doll.

It’s been six months since he had the toys delivered to the children’s ward. He has not been back, but he treasures and holds very dear the extraordinary gift that that little girl gave him, when she looked up and asked him who he was. Up until then he had not known.

Comments