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The kindness and support from the community and the patient's neighbors was tremendous and Hyale was very grateful for their kindness toward him in the days after the fire. He went back to work after a few days off, which his boss had forced him to take, and after his shift every day he would go to the hospital and visit the boy he saved. It was a compulsion, he couldn't help but want to check up on his condition. At first Hyale was horrified by the amount of damage the boy had taken from the fire. It looked far worse now that all of the soot and dirt had been cleaned away. It was a mercy that they put him into a coma until he healed at least a little bit. The pain he would have felt if left awake would have been unbearable for anyone, let alone this poor boy.
He kept up this routine for weeks it seemed, checking in on the boy, making sure that he was stable and doing well. There had been several scares over that time, but it seemed that the patient was going to be all right. Hyale had become such a frequent visitor that all the nurses now knew him by name and he theirs. He would spend a few hours after each shift, talking to and comforting the boy as he lay asleep or just sitting by his bedside, watching him. He felt a responsibility toward this boy, as if it was his duty to make sure he made it through until the very end, even if his real involvement with the boy should have been over the moment he left the ambulance that fateful night.
That, and he wanted to see those strange eyes of his again.
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