Intersecting Lines

Chapter 4

                Dr. Mills called in a nurse to wheel me out of her clinic and I give her a slight bow as the nurse pushed me out of the place. When we're at the end of the corridor, I saw Alex sitting in one of the chairs at the 7th floor lounge sipping coffee. He's listening to his iPod and I can't help but allow the smile forming in my lips.

"Oh." I said too abruptly and the nurse stopped pushing the wheelchair, "I'll do it myself. Thank you." I gave him a weak smile and he happily nods at me and he began to walk away. I pushed myself towards his direction. He doesn't really notice because he has his eyes closed while he holds the coffee cup between his grasp. When I was near enough, I spoke to him hoping that he would hear my voice on top of the song he's currently listening to.

"Do you know it's dangerous to hold something hot while you sleep?" I tell him and he automatically opened his eyes like he was waiting for me to come and talk to him. He looked at me and removed the headphones from his ears.

"Yeah, I do know it's dangerous. But, I'm not sleeping."  Did he seriously hear me or is he just guessing what I said? But it's quite impossible to hear someone speak when you have your headphones on. But, why am I amazed? He is Alex Kim after all. The guy who heard my thoughts at two a.m. and as weird as it sounds, he does understand. I guess I wasn't able to hide my expression because he smiled at me.

"Surprised that I heard you?" He asked me. I nod at him. I don't know why I don't speak up when he talks to me. I mean, this isn't silent rebellion. It's just that I have no idea how I'll talk to this guy, "I know you're coming this way and you're probably going to talk to me. So, I turned the volume to zero so I could hear you." This is crazy. Are the doctors and nurses sure that he should be in the orthopedic ward and not in the psychiatric one? I thought I finally got how he thinks but his mind is a maze. I'm getting tired of understanding yet I'm craving for some more. I shook my head to myself. Even my mind isn't making sense when I'm with Alex.

"Why?" I ask him. I don't really know what I'm asking for. Maybe I wanted to know why he knew I was coming or why he knew I was going to speak to him. Maybe the deeper thoughts of me wanted to know why he talks the way he does or why he thinks that way too. I don't know. I just needed to ask "why."

"Why? Well, because you have no one to talk to in this big hospital but me." He's right. I have practically no friends in this hospital. I haven't spoken to anyone but my mom and Dr. Mills in which, not to mention, is something I had to do because we needed to discuss things about my health. Not my worries or deep thoughts, or the voices in my head or anything that doesn't concern therapy, figure skating, how my day was and scientific terms that I have to Google to fully understand what she meant.

                "What did she tell you?" By "she" I think he's pertaining to Dr. Mills so I assume that's what he means by that question and so I answer him that in two months, I'm out of here but I have to go back every Saturday and Sunday for therapy.

                "What about you? When will you be discharged?" I asked him.

                "Not any time soon. That's for sure." He takes a sip of his coffee and he leaned in a little nearer in my face that I backed away slightly, which actually made him smile, "I'm not as healthy as you." He whispered as he backed away a little but still near enough for me to notice that he has monolid which is quite a thing for Koreans, he stares right into my eyes and I do the same thing. I also noticed how long his eyelashes were. I'm knocked back into my senses when he winked at me with his left eye. He is seriously unpredictable I'm getting tired of talking to him.

I cleared my throat, "well, you should start taking care of yourself. You're going to run out of friends when I'm out –"he doesn't let me finish and he cuts me off with a "whoa"