Love Is Blind by Claudia Lakestone Read Free Book Online

this morning,” the bored looking receptionist told me, punctuating her sentence with a loud, obnoxious smack of her bubble gum.  She barely even looked at me.  She was far too busy studying the chips in her tacky blue nail polish.
    “He went home ?” I repeated, feeling simultaneously happy for him and sad for myself.  “That’s it?  He’s just gone?  What about his eyes?  He was supposed to have a procedure done…” 
    The disinterested receptionist shrugged and then squirted a giant gob of hand lotion into her cupped palm.  She rubbed it into her skin slowly and ritualistically, her body language letting me know that she was done talking to me. 
    With an exasperated sigh, I tracked down the head nurse on the unit.  I’d learned early on that she could be a bit of an ogre if you caught her on a bad day.  Usually I tried to steer clear of her but today I marched right up to her as she refilled her coffee cup. 
    “There was a guy named Chris in Room 403,” I told her, offering my most charming smile.  “I noticed he’s been discharged…”
    The nurse looked at the candy striper hat tucked discreetly under my arm.  “Aren’t you finished your shift?” she asked me, making it clear that she knew I wasn’t a relative and the status of patients was none of my business. 
    “Yes, but…”  I sighed again.  “Okay.  Thank you.” 
    Dejectedly, I turned around and slowly began to walk toward the elevators at the far end of the hall.  So that was it.  Just like that, Chris was out of my life.
    I felt deflated.  I didn’t make friends easily and, despite my misgivings about Chris’s past, I cared about him a lot.  Perhaps foolishly, I’d simply assumed that all that time we spent together meant something.  I hadn’t ever really thought about what would happen once he left the hospital, but I guess I’d taken for granted that we’d remain in contact.
    I kicked myself for never thinking to get his contact information.  But then again, he’d never asked for mine either.  Maybe our friendship meant more to me than it had to him.  To think that he could just exit my life without so much as a goodbye stung.
    “Hey,” the nurse called out to me as I neared the stairwell at the end of the hall.
    I turned.  “Yes?”
    “You’re Michelle, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “I almost forgot,” she said, pulling a piece of paper out of her uniform pocket and holding it out to me.  “The patient in 403 left this for you.”
    I opened the crumpled piece of paper like it was fabricated from delicate silk.  Scribbled on it were a phone number and a sloppily drawn cartoon face beneath it.  The left eye of the happy face overlapped the last digit of the phone number, which was the sole clue that the person who’d written the note hadn’t been able to see what he was doing. 
    I had to run out to the street to catch my bus home, but as soon as I was seated, I called the number. I was annoyed with myself when I noticed my hands were shaking a little.  Why was I letting myself get so worked up?
    “About time you called, Michelle!” Chris’s familiar voice said as soon as he picked up.
    “How did you know it was me?” I asked, feeling my heart skip a beat.
    “It’s not Wednesday so it isn’t my sister calling,” he reasoned.  “I live with my mother who happens to be asleep in the next room, so it isn’t her.  And, sad to say, no one else calls me these days. Plus,” he added cheerfully, “I’m sure part of it was just wishful thinking.”
    He always had a way of making me feel special. 
    “So you were discharged, huh?”
    “ Sure was – apparently I’m in good enough shape to be treated on an outpatient basis now.”
    “That’s great!   You must be thrilled to finally be out of there.” 
    “ Yes and no.  I won’t miss the hospital food but I’ll really miss you visiting me every day.  But talking about hospital food isn’t the reason I called – uh, made you call, I