The statement that Roland made about his past stays in the hospital seemed to be of interest to Avery as she questioned him about his reasons of visitation long ago. Standing next to her, he looked over to her as he smiled, laughing a bit at the question.

[i]“I’ve been a patient here a couple of times,”[/i] began Roland, [i]“The first day I started school, and about a few months after that.”[/i]

He walked away from the bed Avery was in to pace slowly back and forth in the middle of the room, explaining as to how and why he was hospitalized when he first came into the scene.

[i]“A couple of guys were picking on Steven the first day I came to school. Being rough on him, calling him names, that sort stuff, you know. Typical bullying. Well I went over to butt in basically and told them to stop and leave him alone. Or….well, something along the lines of that. A few minutes later, I was starting to regret it.”[/i]

He went over back to the recliner and sat down on it, continuing his story.

[i]“All I know is that I was grabbed by my shirt collar and punched in the face. Oh, and kicked a couple of times. Lights went out and I couldn’t remember anything else, that is until I woke up in a hospital room with my parents and Steven’s parents almost hovering over me. I freaked out for a moment but everything was fine after that. But me and Steven started our friendship after that.”[/i]

He started laughing to himself again as he was going to bring up his other visit from something stupid he did afterwards.

[i]“The other one was my fault,”[/i] he continued, [i]“Actually, Steven was the one who brought it up. That big tree that we have next to the school? He wanted me to climb it and try to get on top of the school building or sneak in one of the classrooms, something like that. I couldn’t really remember the whole purpose of it, but I fell off either way and landed on my arm. I broke it, went to the hospital, got myself a cast, then got into trouble. That was after my parents left though, and I had to call them and explained what happened.”[/i]