A bag of blood hung from a pole. “It’s not my type,” the eleven year old informed the nurse, spurring a lecture on the capabilities of a universal donor.

BET played “Thriller,” which she and the nurse watched on the small television hanging over her chair. “This video used to scare me,” the girl told me. Amazing that someone so calm in the face of blood transfusions would be scared of dancing zombies, but I nodded. “Me too.” The nurse flushed her IV and walked away. The girl returned to her watercolor painting and her haunted house story. Then she paused. She looked at Michael Jackson’s face with such empathy and said to me, “I wasn’t even thinking of him yesterday.”

“I don’t think anyone thought this would happen,” I assured her. The news hit me like the end of an era the night before. She persisted– of course she didn’t think he would pass away, but more importantly, she didn’t think of him before he was gone forever. I lingered, wondering if the thoughts of a child can save someone.