“Don’t worry, Shane brought me lunch,” I assured her, mostly to take my mind off the train of thought it had started down. Alice frowned at this and glanced at the door that joined her room to the one I’d just been in, and I laughed. “No, she left already. I didn’t even see her; I went up to the cafeteria when the nurse came in. When I came back I figured I’d watch some TV if the nurse was still here, but there was a bag from the Planet on the table. Shane left a note and said she was planning to say hi to you, but you were getting a sponge bath at the time.”

Alice gave a frustrated sigh and looked a little sad. “Awww, you miss her, don’t you?” I asked, but it was just to say something. I already knew the answer. She knew I knew, too, but she nodded anyway. “Don’t worry, she and Jenny are picking me up later, I’m sure they’ll come hang out with you for awhile when they do.” Alice just sighed in frustration again. It made me sad, because before this had happened, if she’d wanted to talk to Shane she’d just gotten in her car and gone to find her. She wasn’t being neglected now or anything, but I could understand her annoyance at not being able to see people when she wanted to.

I didn’t have to think of it for long, though. She looked at me beseechingly, and squeezed my hand again. I was going to ask what she wanted when I remembered that I’d been telling her a story before the nurse came in. “Sorry, I forgot. Senior moment,” I said, and she rolled her eyes at me. Not because I’d forgotten, but because I was acting like that was something new since I’d gotten old. I’d been forgetting things forever now. She didn’t seem to care very much, though, just looked at me until I met her eyes. I sighed, lifted her hand to my lips and kissed it before I started the story again.

**********

We’d gone home after watching the baby for quite awhile. I’d known from the second I saw Alice’s face, looking through the window as well as the clear plastic of the incubator on the other side of the glass, that it had been love at first sight for her. I’d like to pretend that it wasn’t the same way for me. I’d never believed it was possible, to love someone the first time you saw them. Still, when we’d stepped back to the glass after our little talk and I got the chance to really look at the baby for the first time, I felt some sort of weird pulling sensation in my chest.