Free Things Invisible to See by Nancy Willard

and buckled Clare’s legs into place.
    “Now, Clare, get up by yourself, the way I showed you.”
    Clare twisted around in her chair, shifting her weight to her braced legs.
    She took one crutch and hoisted herself up on it.
    She reached for the other and tucked it under her arm and adjusted her weight.
    Now she was standing, facing the nurse.
    “Are we ready to see the world?” asked Mrs. Thatcher, and she glided around to Clare’s right side.
    The tip of the crutch edged forward on the smooth floor as Clare put her weight on it. Mrs. Thatcher pushed her foot against the tip to keep it from slipping.
    “Right crutch, left foot—left crutch, right foot,” she sang out. Clare’s braced legs clattered across the floor. “Let’s walk to the playroom in the children’s wing. It’s at the end of the hall.”
    A large paper turkey eyed them from the door of the glass partition that separated this end of the corridor from the children’s rooms. By the time Clare reached it, the muscles in her arms were trembling.
    “We’ll rest a few minutes,” said Mrs. Thatcher. “I’m sure braces don’t have to be so heavy. Someday, someone will find a way of making them lighter.”
    Leaning on the door frame, Clare watched a little boy in a blue bathrobe walking up and down the hall, pushing the big metal frame that supported his I.V. The tube from the bottle snaked up his sleeve and disappeared.
    “Ready?” said Mrs. Thatcher, taking Clare’s arm.
    In the playroom they found Ginny, reading the magazines on the coffee table. Most had lost their covers and some of their pages as well. An empty milk bottle and a scattering of clothespins—oh, who could have left them on the table, these tokens of home?
    “Clare, let me help you into one of the straight chairs,” said Mrs. Thatcher. “The settee is like quicksand. I’ll be back in a few minutes. You can ask Ginny if you need anything.”
    Ginny grunted and went on combing her short brown hair with her fingers. On a high shelf out of everyone’s reach, behind a sign which said Don’t Touch, the radio played continuously: two women were arguing.
    “Ma Perkins.” Ginny yawned. “Doesn’t it play anything else?”
    The boy on the I.V. sat down at the table between Ginny and Clare and cleared a little space among the magazines and began to drop the clothespins into the milk bottle, raising his hand higher each time to increase the difficulty.
    “Is that fun?” asked Clare.
    “It teaches patience,” said the boy. “I have a hole in my heart.” Seeing that Clare was impressed, he asked, “Do you know how big your heart is?”
    Clare shook her head, and he held up his fist.
    “Your heart is as big as your fist and it grows at the same rate,” he told her.
    On his pale chest, just above his half-buttoned pajama top, two gold medals gleamed.
    “Did you get those medals in the gift shop?” asked Clare.
    The boy shook his head. “My mom gave them to me. I don’t know where she got them. This one’s St. Anthony and this one’s St. Joseph.”
    Noting that she wore none, he opened his bathrobe a little wider and showed her a paper medal pinned to his pajamas that read
    HERO: I HAD MY SHOT TODAY .
    “Maybe,” he said, “you could get one of these.”
    “But I haven’t had my shot.”
    “I’ll ask the nurse to give you a medal anyway,” said the boy.
    “She can wear mine,” said a voice none of them recognized, and they all turned in surprise.
    A young man in a purple and gold varsity jacket was dangling a silver coin strung on a thread of elastic. He was tall, with an open face and blue eyes and reddish blond hair that was all cowlick and no style, and Clare recognized him at once. Everyone at school recognized him. Once when Clare dropped her wallet while she was trying to open her locker, he’d leaned down and picked it up. In the jostle and din between classes, he’d picked up her wallet and handed it to her. “You dropped your wallet,” he said. She