The Visitor

Actually by Matt, only posted by William

She walked to and fro in the hall. She went from one to another asking the same question, only with different words. The words were shaded in fear – fear of the room she would not enter, though she had been inside all the others that day. She knew no one could answer her, not really. She knew no one could take her fear away, not really.
All the patients on the floor were hurting, bleeding in spirit as they did in flesh. It was her task to go to them, because she knew they needed her. What she had to do, she had done hundreds of times before. She had only to enter, and to love.
But there was something about that room, today. She could feel something looming within, silent, still and dark. No one could tell her what was inside. Sure, she had a name, and words, and a photograph, but none of this really answered her question. She wanted to know why she was afraid. She wanted to know the cost of entering.
So it was there, in the hall, where she found herself standing, as silent, still and dark as her destination, awaiting courage. When it came, it brought her hand to the door. Then she opened her eyes and saw.
Before her lay an elderly woman in a lonely resting place. In the old woman’s eyes lay her pain. On her lips lay her mind. Within that mind stood a tree, stretching out its branches above her, keeping her safe. In one hand she held the book, Sadness, and on its pages held her story. In the other hand she held a tombstone. Leaves fell from the tree in a late autumn, covering the old woman’s head.
Alone, the old woman’s visitor kneeled beside her, beneath that tree, in tears she could not withhold. She touched the tree, and her hand went numb. She touched the tombstone, and she felt cold. The visitor knew her fear well now, for she was now beneath the tree as well, and could see out into a barren wasteland, too. It all gripped her, and she could not speak. She could only hear, and these new words were a liquid that drowned her.
But then the old woman looked up, and her cheeks found light, and her face was radiant. She lifted her gaze, and saw the tears streaming down from her visitor’s eyes. Then she set down her book, moved aside her tombstone, and revealed, in her open hands, something she had been hiding away, to the great surprise of her visitor.
The outstretched hands held a treasure unlike any the visitor had ever known. No jewel, nor word, nor smile had captured it for a long, long time. It was Light, but it was more; it was Hope, and though she might, the old woman did not keep it.
When she had left the room, the visitor’s tears remained, but her fear was gone.