I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

I sit beside her.
“Okay…”
Sony’s recovery is quick. She eats like an animal, always in need of
a napkin. She tries to run before she can stand, shoelaces untied.
The times she almost falls flat on her face from trying to skate on her
IV pole exasperates both her mother and me.
Sony teaches me about racing. She wants to race absolutely
everywhere, at any time. Down the hall, upstairs she can barely
climb, to the elevators, to the bathroom, to her room, everywhere.
She likes games too. Board games I’ve never heard of, puzzles
she’s too impatient to finish, and red light, green light (which is
essentially a race).
The day she says she wants to read, I bring her to Neo.
—
“Wow, you’re tiny. Damn, you’ve got a lot of books.”
I didn’t take Sony’s lack of boundaries into account before opening
Neo’s door without warning. She walks in, her focus split between
the boy in the bed, the stacks of papers, and the books on the floor.
Even her attention span likes to race.
“Hi, Neo.” I greet him with last week’s chapter in hand, setting it on
the side table. “Do you have the next part for me?”
“Who the hell is that?” His pen points at the girl flipping through one
of his books , scatterbrained eyes fixating on all lines at once.
“Your name’s Neo? Neo like Neonate?” Sony asks, trotting to his
bed. “You kind of do look like a baby.”
“Neo like Neo. Don’t touch that.” Neo, like Neo, swipes the book from
her hands. Sony jumps like she’s been barked at.