Healing

“Ari, are you awake?”

Ari’s eyes flashed open—not that that helped very much.

A blurry shadow beside her bed called to her again. “Ari?”

Ari groaned, recognizing the pleasant dream for what it was. She tried vainly to find a clock before she remembered she couldn’t read the numbers without her glasses. She flailed at the little table beside her bed but couldn’t feel the missing frame and lenses. She tried to sit up, but her useless legs frustrated her efforts.

“Here, let me help you,” the man said.

He clearly misunderstood her immediate priority because instead of handing Ari her wayward glasses he did something to the side of her bed. A motor hummed to life, lifting the mattress beneath her back and head and raising Ari to a sitting position. “Is that better?”

Ari finally pulled enough of her wits into wakefulness to identify the voice. “Arden?”

“Yes.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I …”

“Wait a minute! I need my glasses. I can’t see anything without them.”

Arden fumbled around on her nightstand until he found the desired object and placed them in Ari’s hand. She gratefully slid them into place so that the blurry shapes resolved themselves into dark shadows.

“Thank you,” she said. “That’s much better. Now what are you doing here?”

“I, um, didn’t want to sleep so I-”

“Wait a minute!” she told him. “What time is it anyway?”

Arden spoke about the same time that Ari found the clock. “About three o’clock in the morning.”

She shook her head. “This is unbelievable. Am I missing something or did we just meet this morning?”

Arden audibly swallowed. “I’m really sorry,” he repeated. “I’ll let you get back to sleep.”

“There’s no point in that now,” Ari told him. “I’m awake. Why don’t you turn the light on and pull up a chair?”

“Really?”

The young man fumbled around near the wall for a moment and then the light came on in Ari’s room. She blinked furiously for several seconds until her vision cleared. Arden had already picked up a chair and carried it over to her bed. He was wearing sweat pants with no shirt and his pale body was very lean. She couldn’t honestly call him muscular, but neither was he skinny. The affect was very pleasant on the eye.