ENG The day all dreams came true - Chapter 5

Sky lingered in front of the hospital room. She held her bag pressed to her chest with sweaty hands, hugged it as if she needed something to cling to.
Silent music sounded from the room, a song that felt strangely familiar. She knew the melody, but couldn't remember the text.
Eventually, she felt ridiculous standing so long in the hallway, and stepped in.
Will sat in the bed and gazed out of the window. He looked almost unrecognisable, pale and weak, with deep shadows below his eyes as if he hadn't slept for days. Still, he wore a strange, bemused expression. His forefinger bobbed up and down, accompanying the rhythm of the music, and he was humming silently.
"And the world is like an apple, whirling silently in space...
Like the circles that you find, in the windmills of your mind..."
Now, Sky recognised the song. She started to hum along as she stepped closer to his bed.
"Lovers walk along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand...
Was the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand?" she sang weakly.
Will's head flew around. His expression changed from the thoughtful look from earlier to true delight.
"Pictures hanging in a hallway, or the fragment of a song...
Half-remembered names and faces, but to whom to they belong?" he sang with a rather croaky voice, then both grinned. Will turned the little CD-player on his night stand off.
"Hello" he murmured. "It's good to see you."
"Good to know that you're feeling better" Sky said and started to twist a loose strand of hair around her finger.
"Yeah, the doctor said I'll be discharged tomorrow, and then I can go home." With a lax movement of his thumb, he pointed to a wheelchair that was standing across the room. "I'm already allowed to roll around with that as much as I want." He pursed his lips and stared on his feet.
Sky didn't really know what to respond, so she kept silent and eyed the wheelchair closely. To her, it looked like a cage.

"I still remember...," he started again, "when we were old enough to walk on our own, and our parents locked the buggy in our cellar. Kain totally loved to run around on his own, but I begged my parents to keep driving me around... Now I am being wheeled around, and I don't want anything more than to be able to walk on my own again. Life is crazy. Easy as that."
Sky caught herself staring on his legs, and quickly forced her eye to focus on something else. Suddenly she noticed how she still hugged the bag. Quickly, she let go of it and opened it, as her way of changing the topic.
She reached into it and said: "Before I forget... I brought some little things for you."
The first thing she pulled out was a little drawing of Windmill. She had sketched the mare yesterday, when she had been on the pasture with Luna and Tuna. She gave him the picture with the words "Nana and I, we've cared for her, just like I promised to you. She's such a pretty and sweet thing."
Speechlessly, Will stared at the sheet of paper, then at Sky, then at the sheet again.
"Thank you...", he staggered, but noticed his eyes slowly filling with tears again. He wiped them away in a sudden and resolute motion - he had sobbed quite enough thoughout the last days.
Sky was already larding his bed sheet with the other things she had brought with her - a bag of butterscotches gifted by Nana and Rahel, and a "Get well soon"-card from all the others from the stud.
Sky thought it was maybe a bit superficial, but it was a well-meant gesture Will would surely understand.
"Anne wrote this - I should tell you to get well and..." She hesitated. "...get back on your feet quickly, she doesn't pay you for idleness." Will burst out laughing.
"She isn't paying me anyway!"
Sky was glad to see him joke about the situation, and continued. "The sweets are from Nana and Rahel. They actually wanted to visit you, too, but they never found time."
"Neat!", Will said. "I love those. Tell them a 'thank you' from me - or wait, I'll just do it myself when I come back to the stable."
"You're coming back?", Sky asked in disbelief and stared at him.
"Of course! If you keep Jet away from my wheelchair...?"
Sky sighed. "How on earth are you able to deal with all this so well? So.. naturally? You're so unbelievably strong..."
"I am not." Will shook his head. "Many times a day I totally lose myself in self-pity and keep telling me stuff like 'I'm a cripple, I'm useless, I'll never be able to walk again, I'll never be able to do anything anyway, everyone avoids me... Do you know what gives me strength to carry on?"
Sky nodded hesitantly. "I wish I was as consequent as you when it comes to reading the Bible. I wish my faith was as strong as yours..."
"You know the story of Job, don't you? God allowed that everything he owned, he loved, broke away from him - his property, his children, in the end his health. And do you know what the dude said when he was lying on his bed, just about to lose his life, too?"
Will paused a moment, then he continued. "He said something like 'The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' In the end, that man got more than he had to give up in the beginning. And I thought, when God gave Job the power to live through all this, he does the same with me. Everything he does has a purpose. And if he wants me to sit in this wheelchair for the rest of my life, never walking again, then damn - it has a purpose, too"
He sighed and let his eye wander out of the window. "But I don't claim to have understood it whole. It isn't easy. I mean, really not easy..."

Dusk was approaching, dipping the hospital room in a soft, orange light. The warmth of the last sun beams prickled on the skin - comforting, almost hopeful.
Laboriously, Sky picked up the bag from the bed and attached it to her shoulder. She didn't want to go, but it was time.
"I.. have to go soon", she whispered and straightened her back. Will looked up to her, nodded and said quietly: "Okay, then..."
He looked so vulnerable, so frail. Sky desperately wanted to put her arms around him, ruffling his hair and telling him that everything was going to be alright. Instead, she wordlessly turned around and went to the door.
"Wait a moment!", Will called after her. Surprisedly, she spun around.
"Will you visit us at home sometime? I could tell my mum to make some cake and coffee... stuff like that."
He smiled ingenuously.