A NUGGET OF HOPE AT A HOSPITAL WAITING HALL

      

After reading Nuggets of Hope by Kim Lengling, today was the first time I felt that I was able to pass on a small "nugget of hope" to someone else — a little girl named Lara Elizabeth, a pre-KG student, in the most unexpected of places: a hospital waiting hall.

This morning, I was accompanying my brother as his attender for a treadmill test at a private hospital. As a part of hospital protocol, they stuck a sticker badge on me to identify me as the patient’s attender. We sat in the waiting area, anticipating the call for his procedure. Once his name was called, he went in, and I settled into my chair with a book in hand.

Soon, a little girl and her mother came and sat opposite me. The girl playfully took the sticker badge from her mother's dress and stuck it onto her own. She was so fascinated — touching it, feeling it, admiring it. After a few minutes, she returned it to her mother’s dress, only to take it again and repeat the process. Her mother gently warned, “If you keep doing this, the adhesive will wear off, and it won’t stick anymore.” That worried the little girl. She finally chose to stick it back to her mother's dress, kissed it a few times lovingly, and said goodbye to it.

Sometime later, her grandfather joined them. As per hospital procedure, the nurse tied a patient band around his wrist, writing his name, age, and patient number. It was larger and more ‘official-looking’ than my attender sticker. The little girl immediately jumped up and pleaded with her grandfather to give it to her or at least tie it on her hand. He gently refused, unsure how to explain that it was meant only for patients and that she, thankfully, wasn’t one.

She looked so disappointed, nearly in tears.

That’s when a thought struck me — to offer her a small nugget of hope and joy. With permission from her mother, I pulled out a friendship band from my handbag — a band my friend had tied on me just two days ago for Friendship Day. I tied it gently onto the little girl's wrist.

Her face lit up instantly. She beamed with happiness, pointed at the colored beads one by one, and rushed excitedly to show her father, who was standing in line to pay the bills.

The joy on her face and the sheer delight in her eyes gave me a deep sense of peace. All the tension I had about my brother's health seemed to dissolve in that one moment. Soon after, his test reports came back normal, and the doctor assured us there was nothing to worry about.

I shared the little girl's story with my brother, and even he smiled, visibly relaxed and touched by the joy of that moment.

Reading Nuggets of Hope had made me pause and reflect, but this incident made me live that reflection. As Kim Lengling shares in the book, sometimes we are placed in situations not for ourselves, but for someone else — to give, to comfort, to uplift. She too once experienced something similar in a hospital and realized later that her detour had a greater purpose.

Perhaps I was meant to accompany my brother today, not just as support for him, but to extend a small gesture of kindness — a nugget of hope — to a little girl who just wanted to feel special.

Thank you, Kim Lengling, for your words and wisdom. Your Nuggets of Hope helped me recognize mine.