Crayon drawings and superhero stickers covered the walls, filling up the corridor. I tugged at my bright yellow volunteer vest, which was a bit too large, as it slumped awkwardly over my shoulders. The paediatric ward seemed to glow even brighter now that yellow had joined its ranks.

It was my first day, and I had been assigned to a boy named Omar.

He was twelve years old, from Palestine, and newly arrived in Hong Kong. He barely moved and curled into the corner of his hospital bed like a letter nobody had ever bothered to read. His name was printed on a card in both English and Arabic. Two plastic horses with very chipped paint sat by his side. I offered a soft “Hello” in English. Then Cantonese. Nothing. He stayed hunched over his notebook, sketching grey balloons with deliberate strokes.

The nurse, adjusting the IV line taped to his arm, glanced at me and said, “He doesn’t talk. Just sit with him.”

So I did. I sat in the stiff plastic chair beside his bed and watched as the other volunteers lit up the room with laughter. Rachel was building pillow forts, Ivan was folding paper cranes, and Maddy was performing little puppet shows. I tried to join in and make something happen. I brought over a Jenga set, hoping the universal language of falling blocks would at least catch his attention. He didn’t even blink when the tower collapsed. The next day, I (having researched the list of allowed and banned foods for people with leukemia) offered him an egg tart packed in a sealed container and he pushed it aside without a word. A week later I’d even practiced saying “Marhaba”, thinking it might open a door. But when I spoke it aloud, he flinched.

Maybe I got the dialect wrong. Or maybe the sound of Arabic reminded him of something painful.

I began to feel invisible, like a ghost in a yellow vest. Present, but useless. Omar would glance at me every now and then, and look back down at his sketches when my gaze met his. I was envious of Rachel, Ivan, and Maddy, who made children light up and brought vibrancy into the sterile air. I would sit beside Omar, our shared quietness growing heavier by the minute, until it felt like I was sinking in it.

Then came the blood test.

The nurse rolled in a tray of vials and needles, and Omar tensed immediately while clutching his notebook in a deathly grasp. “We’ll need to hold him down,” the nurse said, already sounding tired.

“Wait,” I said, rolling up my sleeve. “Look, Omar - like this.” I tapped the inside of my elbow, miming the motion. “Just a pinch.”

The nurse caught on and played along, pretending to draw blood from me first. Omar’s eyes stayed locked on mine. After a long pause, he whispered, “You… stay?”

“Always,” I told him.

I didn’t know if he understood, but he nodded.

Afterwards, he reached into his drawer and slid a piece of strawberry candy towards me. It was wrapped in a kind of fancy paper. His eyes met mine briefly. Only briefly, but in that moment, the silence between us didn’t feel empty anymore.

Next time, I brought balloons in all the colours that I could find in the store.

He’d drawn them over and over. Grey, floating, alone. I twisted one into a lopsided horse and placed it on his bedside table. He let out a sound, half-cough, half-giggle, then pointed to his figurines. “Linda,” he said. “Home.”

That’s when I learned he had horses back in Palestine. Linda was one of them. He started sketching more long-legged, elegant horses with names like Zara, Laila, and Adi. One afternoon, he hummed a tune I didn’t know. I hummed back, matching his rhythm as best I could.

He began eating more. The nurses said he slept better. His drawings changed, too. One by one, the balloons turned from grey to red, blue, yellow, purple, pink…

Then, one morning, I walked into the ward with my bag full of horse figurines and saw his bed was stripped bare. No horses or sketches. Just crisp, clean, white sheets that removed any trace of Omar having ever existed in that bed.

The girl in the next bed piped up, “Doctors ran in last night. Code Blue.” She said it so naturally like she was wishing me “good morning”.

My hand clenched around the strawberry candy wrapper I always kept in my pocket. I thought of what I’d said. Always. Had it been a lie?

A nurse spotted me and walked over. “He’s stable,” she said gently. “He is just resting in the ICU now. But he asked me to give you this.”

It was a folded piece of paper.

On one side, Omar had drawn two stick figures standing beneath a sun, each holding a colourful balloon and riding a horse. I turned it over, and there, circled in pencil, was something I’d written on a corner of his sketchbook weeks ago during a moment of doubt:

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.” Charles Dickens.

Now it’s circled in Omar’s pencil.

I hadn’t cured Omar or translated his physical pain into something manageable. I couldn’t even speak his language. But I stayed. I listened. And somehow, through crayons and balloons and silence, I had helped him lift some of the weight he carried.

For a few weeks, I was the hand that untied the grey balloons, and helped his heart rise, just a little, towards the sun.