The Winter Holds a Bite We Never Felt Before

I like my horoscope today:


A sudden insight or intuition, perhaps even in the form of a precognitive dream or "psychic feeling" will come to you just in time to prevent an unpleasant situation today. You may have a strange encounter with a child who is wise beyond their years.


I'm not sure if what happened already today has anything to do with this horoscope. But I just looked at the horoscope so there was no way for it to be fake. 


Today, for clinicals, we went to a school to do vision and hearing screens. Many children stopped by my area and got tested for nearsightedness. Hilarious kids, quiet kids, happy kids, all kinds of kids. But about 3/4t hs of the way through, my teacher brought me a child around the age of 8. Not sure the exact age. She lipped the fact that he probably wasn't going to open his mouth. 


This wasn't the greatest news to hear considering the test I was doing was like a reading test. I place a card 14 in away from the child's face and see what they can read. They have to say out loud what it is they see. So, here I was looking at this small child wondering what it was that made him not want to speak. I just decided to do what I could to make him comfortable. 


He sat down in the small, blue, chair and looked at the ground. I said hey and asked him his name. He didn't respond but rather looked up at me with his small, puppy dog eyes, red and swollen and then looked back down at the floor. I changed my tactic by pointing out the colors on his shirt. I said, "hey, you're wearing a red shirt...is red your favorite color?" and he nodded his head, yes. I immediately realized what I had to do. I knew he wouldn't speak so instead, I just asked him if the number that he was trying to read was, say a 3? a 4? a 5? and he'd nod yes to the correct answer every time. So I was able to make sure he had good vision. At that moment, I felt really good. I honestly didn't want him to go. I wanted to spend more time with him. But he needed to go to the next station so I watched him walk across the room and I began to just cry.


 I tried to hold it in but my eyes just watered. At first I wasn't sure why I was crying. I've heard sad stories about people and have never cried unless it was a built up emotion like in movies. This time was so different. It was like I could feel his pain and I understood there was something wrong going on. The fact that I reached a part of him made me attached immediately. I wanted to keep being there for him. I watched my other nursing friends use the same tactic that I used to get him to do the other tests. It made me feel like I had done something so important...and I did. 


He finally left the classroom and I began to talk about him to the other girls and began to cry again. It was an unexplainable emotion that really got me thinking. I'm not sure where I'm going with the thoughts yet so I won't express them quite yet.