Friday: The Hospital
Just listening can make someone smile
On Friday, my last job was at a .
Nurses were walking quickly along the halls.
A kind , Ms. Kudo, met me at the door.
"Today you will visit some patients," she said gently.
In one quiet room, an old woman was resting.
She was looking out the window at the gray sky.
"Hello, I am Yuna," I said with a soft smile.
The woman, Mrs. Tanaka, smiled slowly back at me.
"Please sit down, dear," she said in a voice.
I was sitting her bed and holding her hand.
She was telling me stories about her long life.
"I was a teacher for forty happy years," she said.
While she was talking, her tired eyes became brighter.
I just listened and nodded at her kind words.
I was not doing anything special or difficult at all.
But Mrs. Tanaka was smiling more and more each minute.
"Thank you for listening to an old woman," she said.
"You have made my whole day much brighter," she added.
Her warm words surprised me and touched my heart.
Ms. Kudo was watching us quietly from the door.
"Listening is real too, Yuna," she told me later.
I understood that can be a kind of work.
When I left, Mrs. Tanaka was waving from her bed.
I walked home slowly with a warm, quiet feeling.