Paper Cranes

For three long months, Mina had watched the same square of sky from the same hospital bed by the window. The doctors spoke softly about her heart and about an operation that kept being moved further away. She had grown so used to waiting that she had almost forgotten how it felt to hope for anything. Then, one grey afternoon, a girl in a yellow cardigan sat down at the empty table across the ward. Her fingers moved quickly over small squares of coloured paper, folding each one into a tiny bird. A large glass jar beside her was already half full of paper cranes in every colour Mina could name. 'Three hundred and twelve,' the girl said without looking up, as if she had felt Mina staring. 'There is an old story that whoever folds one thousand cranes is granted a single wish.' Her name was Rin, she said, and she came to the ward almost every day just to fold. There was something so stubbornly bright about her that Mina found it hard to look away. 'Do you want to help me?' Rin asked, holding out a single square of red paper. Mina had refused every visitor and every kind word for three months, and she meant to refuse this too. Instead, to her own surprise, she reached out and took the paper, and Rin smiled as if she had already won something.