By Benjamin Cameron Davis Jr.

Joe and I lay in our beds waiting for Nurse Betty to bring us Jell-O. The room never fully settled into silence. I could hear the low hum of the lamp, the turning of pages, the steady ticking of the clock, the radiator clicking every few minutes.

Joe was reading from the Bible he had given me during my first week there. By then I knew its weight, the worn cloth of the cover, the small nick along the spine. Joe still did most of the reading.

“Did you hear that, Will?” he asked. “Jesus healed a blind man.”

“I heard you.”

“All it took was faith.”

“Not for me.”

The page turned softly beneath his fingers. He didn’t argue.

It had been twenty-two years since I lost my sight. I knew the day by what I could hear.

One morning, I said, “Look out the window and tell me what’s going on.”

Joe shifted in his chair. I heard the blinds slide upward.

“It’s bright today,” he said. “Sun hitting the brick building across the way. Makes it look almost orange. A woman walking her dog. The dog pulling at its leash. Kid dropped his backpack trying to run across the street. Somebody upstairs shaking out a tablecloth.”

I smiled. “I hear a bird.”

He grew quiet for a second. “Sounds like a dove,” he said. “Soft. Not in a hurry.”

“Describe the sky.”

“Clear. The kind of blue that makes you forget you’re stuck inside.”

I leaned back against the pillow and listened while he kept talking.

A few days later, on a quieter afternoon, I asked him about the dove again.

“Still around?”

“Sitting right on the ledge,” he said. “Bold thing. Doesn’t move for anybody.”

“What does it look like?”

“Gray. A little white at the throat. Watches the street like it owns it.”

I liked that he never described it the same way twice.

A few days after that, his breathing sounded thinner.

“Tell me what’s outside today.”

The blinds lifted slower this time.

“It’s dark,” he said. “Clouds coming in. Wind pushing against the building. Looks like a storm.”

“Any birds?”

“Not now.”

He cleared his throat. “They’ve cleared out.”

After a moment, he said, “They’ll come back.”

“They always do?”

“That’s what birds do.”

I turned my face toward his voice. “You really believe that?”

He was quiet for a moment. “I think people need something to listen for.”

The room stayed quiet after that except for the clock and the soft rattle in his breathing.

The next morning, Nurse Betty rested her hand on my knee before she spoke.

“I’m sorry about Joseph,” she said softly. “I know what he meant to you.”

I nodded. For a while, neither of us said anything.

Every sound in the room had changed places overnight.

Finally I said, “Every day I asked him to look out the window. He’d tell me what he saw. The people. The sky. The light.”

My fingers moved slowly across the blanket. “Could you look out for me? Just this once.”

She walked to the window. The blinds moved.

Then silence, long enough for me to hear the radiator click again.

“It’s a brick wall,” she said quietly. “Same as always.”

The blinds clicked softly as she let them fall.

I sat there without speaking.

Somewhere beyond the wall, a bird called.

Soft. Not in a hurry.

My hand moved beneath the pillow until my fingers found the familiar cover. I pulled the Bible to my chest and opened it. My thumb found the small nick along the spine before my fingers settled on the page.

I had held it before.

I just hadn’t seen it.