The Thrush deserves a chapter devoted exclusively to her. She represented the closest thing to a romantic interlude I experienced during my entire Chinese adventure.

It was summer, and the windows, which swung to the middle, were open. Because my room was the last on one end of the hospital, this arrangement gave me an excellent, reflected view of the patio. It extended beyond the side of the hospital and had a low balustrade along the edge, on which hospital personnel would sit, enjoying leisure moments.

On this memorable, warm afternoon, I heard a beautiful voice humming familiar tunes, several of them Strauss waltzes.

I sat up in my bed to better view the reflected scene on the patio. What I saw was a Chinese nurse — a truly beautiful woman.

She was probably in her early twenties, of medium to slender build, and somewhat taller than most of the other nurses. She had a pleasant, though unsmiling face. Her cheeks were not as rounded as those of most of the other women, which accented her high cheek bones. Her black hair was bobbed, rather than long and braided.

She was folding bandages as she hummed and sang, in a voice about one octave below the typical Chinese soprano and note by note accurate, indicating possible training. The guard slept as I listened, wondering if she was aware of my presence. The concert lasted twenty or thirty minutes, then she was gone.

I had one final operation to be performed. As I lay on the table, waiting for the process to commence, I looked around the room at the gallery of faces. My eyes locked — there she was... The Thrush was standing against the wall, behind other people, looking directly at me. All other faces disappeared as our eyes made contact. Her expression did not change. However, these were not vacant stares; something traveled across the room.

She, too, vanished when I descended into the vacant sleep of the drugged.

It was evening, a couple of weeks later, and Timid (so named for obvious reasons) was the guard on duty. Timid had a fireplug build and was being his usual, uncommunicative self. He'd drawn a table to the center of the room, beheath the weak light, where he sat, laboriously writing in a notebook. Suddenly, without warning, the voice of the The Thrush floated through the window. Because it was dark outside there was no reflection, but I knew who was on the patio. The song was “Over The Waves,” a waltz.

My guard was totally absorbed in his work; he was nothing more than part of the background. Knowing the tune The Thrush was singing, I began to whistle along. The two of us continued together to the end. Then I started to whistle another tune from her repetoir which I rememberd from her first concert. She recognized the tune in the first few notes and joined me. Following that number, she began another. Again, I took up my part.

Now Timid drifted back into the picture, becoming aware that what he thought was a solo, had somehow become a duet. Slowly he got up and meandered out of the room. I heard his bandylegged shuffle carry him along the hall toward the patio, and I wondered about the outcome of his investigation.

He was gone only a few minutes, during which the duet continued, uninterrupted. When he returned, he said nothing, but went back to his work. He was apparently satisfied that the female half of the concert-in-the night was not breaking any rules, or had sufficient clout to do so. Happily, his decision to not interfer included me.

The concert ended when The Thrush did not take her turn at one point.

Some days later, in the afternoon, I saw a few nurses relaxing on the Patio. The Thrush was among them but didn't sing, for which, I assumed, she had good reason.

So far, we hadn't spoken a word of conversation — or had we?.

We definately had communicated.

I didn't know how much she knew about me, but I wanted to know more about her. I began to wonder if she, too, was a Christian, as I knew others in the hospital were. This would have meant a lot to me.

The Thrush disappeared from the patio, and, within a few seconds, I heard footsteps falling lightly in the hall. Then softly, the voice of velvet began to hum, as it glided past my door. From that moment my favorite hymn has been “What A Friend We Have In Jesus.”

The following day I was removed from the hospital

I heard The Thrush no more.

Long after my release I learned some very interesting facts which related to my encounter with The Thrush.

The night of our duet, the song I first heard was “Over The Waves,” which I thought was a Strauss waltz. Recent research has revealed it to have been composed in 1888 by an American Indian named Rosas. It was titled “Sobrelisolas,” meaning “Over The Waves”. More interesting is the fact that it is also known as “The Lovliest Night Of The Year” because of the lyrics which were written by Mario Lanza in 1950. These begin, “When you are in love, it's the loveliest night of the year.”

If The Thrush knew any of this history, she was truly a student of music, not simply a woman with an exceptional voice.

Perhaps, then, there was more meaning to these presentations than I had dared to imagine. Though she didn't sing the words in English, she could have been trying to make contact for any one of a number of reasons.

Or, perhaps she had just heard the song and liked it