The Star

The Star

I sat next to the bed of the little girl I’d been visiting for a long while at the hospital. I was a volunteer there as a “visitor.” My job was to visit those patients who didn’t get regular visitors because the family lived too far away, or they worked all day, or in the case of this child, they had no family. Gina was an orphan.

Gina had lived at many houses since she became an orphan, at an age too young to really understand not having parents anymore. She had not found a forever home because of her illness, each time it flared up she had to spend time in a hospital and by the time she was ready to go home, her home had taken on someone else.

I understood, those people knew she would not be coming back one day, and it was too painful falling in love with a child and having her rushed off to a hospital every few months. Always with no guarantee she would be back at all.

But now she was in her room, in her bed, in my house. I’d had her for three years because she was so full of life, even though that life was due to be short, that I fell completely in love with her.

I always asked her what she wanted to be, letting her know I had plans for her to grow up. She always said, “I’m going to be a star.”

Tonight as I checked on her, she looked just like she was sleeping, but she was not. I needed to call someone, but I didn’t want to leave her. As I cried over my lovely child, I look across to the window.

There, in the night sky, was one brilliant, beautiful star.