Plan's POV

I was gently awakened by my sister Natalie because the nurse assistant had already brought in my hospital breakfast tray.

My sister Natalie, whom I call P'Nat, is two years older than I am. She is the only other sibling that I got.

My mom is a very busy department head of a large business establishment while my father is an equally busy corporate lawyer.  Between the two of them they only saw me once in the late evening in the hospital after their work day. They always worked long hours and were mentally and physically exhausted by the time they came home.

My sister Natalie has always been a caring older sibling and always finds time to see me in the hospital.

On the day that Mean came to see me with his basket of fruits, or rather Saint's basket of fruits, I had been fighting an infection from my head wound and had been administered a fever reducer medication by the nurse and so I was sweating as a side effect of the medication.

My sister was trying to lower my fever by dabbing a cold moist face towel across my forehead when Mean walked into the room.

Shit, looking back on it now, I had forgotten to introduce my sister to Mean. No wonder he seemed a bit uncomfortable and was rushing to leave. Mean has always been uneasy around strangers for some reason.

P'Nat pushed the adjustable bedside table in front of me and placed the breakfast tray on it. Breakfast consisted of a bowl of hot cereal, a hard boiled egg, a plate of cut up Valencia oranges, a glass of cranberry juice and a glass of water. There were several small containers of creamer and sugar to add to my bowl of cereal and packets of salt and pepper if I wanted to sprinkle them on my boiled egg.

I turned to my sister, "Thank you, P'Nat, for taking such good care of me."

"Nonsense, I'm your older sister," she said, "that's what I'm here for. Now eat."

P'Nat was never good at accepting thanks from me or anybody. It made her feel uncomfortable for some reason. She always felt that she did what she did for anybody because that was what she wanted to do and therefore didn't need any expression of thanks for it from the recipient.

After lunch, my sister said she had to go but was coming back in the morning to help me go home because I was being discharged from the hospital by tomorrow.

I turned the television set on. It was the only substitute I could have for a hospital companion to keep me from getting bored or lonely.

Of course the nurses who were in and out of my room were friendly and cracked jokes with me every now and then to keep me smiling.

By five o'clock I was starting to wonder whether Mean was going to keep his promise of coming to see me. I had received calls from Perth and Saint during the day, asking how I was doing but I had not received any call from Mean so far.

I decided to call him but his phone just kept on ringing until I got directed to his voicemail.

When by six o'clock I did not get any return call from him, I resigned myself to the fact that he had changed his mind about coming to see me.

I was starting to feel hungry and hoped that my dinner tray would be delivered to my room very soon.

No sooner had I formulated my wish on my mind, I heard the hospital orderly knocking to deliver my dinner tray, except it wasn't the orderly but Mean who walked in.

Never was I so happy to see anyone else in my whole life.

"Mean!" I exclaimed happily, "I had given up hope of seeing you today! I tried calling you earlier but you never called me back."

"My phone was upstairs while I was busy cooking this for you so I did not hear the phone ringing," he said while  wheeling the adjustable bedside table in front of me and placing a food container that he had brought with him on top of the table.

"What is it?" I asked eagerly, "and did you say that you cooked it yourself? Gosh, you never told me that you could cook!"

I was blabbering with happiness.

When he uncovered the food container, a strange but delicious smell wafted to my nose. I had never seen this kind of dish before.

"It's called jambalaya," he said when he saw me looking up at him with a quizzical expression on my face.

"Banjawala whaaattt?" I asked and he burst out laughing.

"Jam-ba-la-ya," he enunciated the syllables one by one.

"Whatever," I said, "it smells delicious and I wanna dig into it now because I'm really hungry."

"Have a blast with it," he said smiling.

And I did have a blast. I ate every single morsel of it.

"How and when did you learn to cook it?" I asked curiously.

"I just googled it yesterday and tried cooking it and I was successful at the first try," he said.

"I must learn how to cook it, too," I said.

"There you go again with your competitive spirit," he said but he was smiling.

When he bent to wheel away the adjustable bedside table from in front of me, he asked me, "Are you having a fever?" and placed the back of his hand on my forehead.

"Yes," I said, "but the nurse already gave me a fever reducer pill more than three hours ago. I can't have another dose until an hour more from now."

Without a word he went into the small bathroom inside my hospital room. After a while he came back with the hospital wash basin. There was a face towel immersed in the cold water in the wash  basin.

"Ahh...ahh...it's too cold!" I complained when he placed the ice cold face towel on my forehead.

"The colder the better," he said without looking sorry at all.

I was starting to realize that this seemingly unfeeling friend of mine was actually a warm and caring character. I hoped that we would remain friends forever.