It was very quiet and the white of her knuckles made him shiver.
Nathan Cross placed a hand over the girl's, her tiny fist easily cupped in his long, golden fingers. It was the hospital room he was assigned in, cold and pale in a blend of bland white and the lightest shade of blue. It draped her eight-year-old form as a blanket, her sillouette etched into the sheets. It was indeed very, very quiet. The lively zigging line on the heart monitor was not giving a quiet tick, nor was it continuously bleeping. The tree scraping against the window was not scraping. It was as if he were deaf - deaf and dumb.
Nathan came to a frightening revelation.
Where was he?
He was no nurse, no doctor, and he did not know this girl - He was a drywaller, nothing else.
And then the eight-year-old's china blue eyes snapped open, little blue lips opening and speaking words so quiet that he could not hear them. He leaned down, unconsiously, to catch but a tiny noise from her lips. It was silent for a brief moment, and then she gripped the sides of his face with the still-white little fingers and screamed shrilly into his ear.
It was very silent then.