Chapter 13 - Page 183 - Tunnel Vision

She threw her arms around their necks and began to weep. Her knees buckled.

“Sweetheart, are you OK?” Jim asked.

   The little girl stopped crying and wiped her eyes. She stepped back and waited until both of them were looking into her eyes. Then she deliberately blinked her eyes. To make sure Jim and Rhasha saw her, she blinked her eyes again. Tears began to trickle down her cheeks. In a shaky but certain voice, she said, “That means ‘I love you both.’ ”

   Jim and Rhasha both gasped, suddenly recognizing the little girl who had lain in bed one, nearly crippled by starvation. She shouldn’t have been standing. She shouldn’t have been able to talk. Yet this little girl stood before them, pretty and healthy, and spoke to them in the voice of an angel.

   They threw their arms around her and hugged her.

   A woman with two little girls, all healthy, walked up to Jim and Rhasha. The woman knelt beside them, while her two daughters remained standing. The little girl who had previously occupied bed one released Jim and Rhasha and Jim looked at the woman and her two children. They had tears in their eyes, obviously overwhelmed by the situation. The mother looked at Jim and Rhasha, speechless. One of the daughters took Rhasha’s hand in both of hers.

   The other daughter brushed Jim’s hair with her hand. “Papa,” she said, “do you know who we are?”

   Jim hadn’t known until that moment, but now he remembered two girls in the hospital, and that one of the girls had been smaller than the other.