Brent liked the way it looked there, like Amy peering out from the middle of a forest.
"When are you going to paint my portrait?" Kirk asked.
"I don't know," Brent replied. "I'm not very good at painting like Picasso."
Brent was enjoying the game: the candles, the forest of plants, the tablecloth, the jokes. He felt very special and even closer to Amy and Kirk than he had that afternoon.
We are, at this moment, a very close three, he thought.
There was a knock at the door.
"Perhaps that's dinner now," Amy said. "Come in."
A delivery boy appeared in the opened door. "Is this where the pizzas go? The nurse said this was the room."
"They sure do," Amy said and crossed to her bedside table and took out some money. "Just put them on the table please."
She paid the boy and he left, closing the door behind him.
"Dinner is served. Pepperoni or mushroom?"
"My God," said Kirk. "I, in all my born days, have never smelled anything so good. You, Amy, are a saint in a bathrobe. Let's eat."
Amy opened the two large lids of the flat cardboard boxes. Steam and odors swept upward into the candlelight. It was beautiful: two huge pizzas, covered with sauce, bubbling with cheese, spicy with pepperoni and mushroom.
"Amy, no crap, you're a genius," Kirk said.
"So I've been told."
She pulled the slices apart and placed one from each pizza on two plates, for Brent and Kirk.
"I don't know how you're supposed to eat pizza lying down, but I don't care if it glops all over my pillow or dribbles in my ear."
Amy took one slice from the mushroom pizza and nibbled at it, quietly smiling.
Amy ended up eating two pieces, Brent five and Kirk managed the other nine.
"You can't let the food of the gods go to waste," he said as he started to chomp on the last slice.
"That was great, Amy," Brent said. "Thanks. I really mean it."
"Mmmm," Kirk added through his last mouthful.
"You must come again some time," Amy said. "I love giving dinner parties."
Suddenly she gasped and blood gushed from her nose. It ran down her chin and spread across her bathrobe.
"Oh, good shit," Kirk said. "What is it?"
Amy covered her face with her hands and shook her head. The blood came through her closed fingers.
"Get somebody!" Brent said.
Kirk grabbed at his crutches and hobbled and jumped toward the door. He swung it open and almost fell into the hallway.
"Somebody get down here! Sombody get down here fast!"
Nurse Schultz ran down the hall toward him.
"What's the matter?" she yelled.
"It's Amy. She's bleeding."
Nurse Schultz shouted back to the nurses' station. "Jean, send for a doctor, quick."
Kirk turned back to the room and stood just inside the doorway. Amy was holding her nostrils closed. She was streaked with blood.
"I'm sorry," she managed to say.
"Don't be," Kirk said. "It's been a lovely evening. Thanks. I really mean it. Perhaps you would like to be alone to clean up the dinner dishes."
Kirk turned and left the room.
Brent lay in his bed imprisoned. He felt awful for Amy.
"I spoiled it," she said.
"No you didn't, Amy. Don't be sorry about anything."
The nurse packed Amy's nose.
The doctor arrived and said, "She'll be all right. Let's set up a transfusion. Nurse, get the stand."
While the other nurse went for the equipment, Nurse Schultz began to wheel Brent's bed toward the door.
"Hey, Amy," Brent said at the door. "You take care, you hear? I don't know when I've had a better pizza. Thanks."
Amy managed a smile and a wave, which Brent just saw as he was rolled into the hallway. Nurse Schultz wheeled him back to his room.
The evening was over.
"All in all," said Kirk after the lights had been turned out and the hall was quiet, "it wasn't a half-bad evening."
"I'm worried about Amy," Brent said.
"No shit. Go to sleep, why don't you?"