The Window

The chapter opens by describing how e-mail has changed the way people communicate, letting messages reach many people at once and travel the world in seconds. It then presents one such e-mail, sent by a girl named Sara to her friend Brad, sharing a story she thought he would enjoy — the story of "The Window," about two hospital patients named Peter and Joseph.

Peter, who has a serious lung condition, is placed in a hospital bed by the room's only window and is allowed to sit up for just one hour each afternoon. That night, another patient, Joseph, is admitted with a serious back injury and placed in the next bed, forbidden even to sit up while his spine heals. Unable to see anything but the blank ceiling above him, Joseph begins talking to Peter, and the two men become close friends, spending their days discussing their families, homes, jobs, and past travels.

Each afternoon, when Peter is propped up by the window, he describes to Joseph everything he claims to see outside — a park with a lake full of ducks and swans, children sailing model boats, couples walking, flower beds, a busy street beyond with buses and taxis, and a magnificent city skyline with old buildings, glass towers, a church steeple, and a signal tower. Joseph closes his eyes and vividly pictures each scene in his mind, and these daily descriptions become the highlight of his long, difficult days, helping his health slowly improve.

One morning, the nurses do not come to help Peter sit up, and Joseph later learns that Peter died suddenly during the night. Heartbroken at the loss of his friend, Joseph eventually recovers enough to ask if he may be moved into the bed by the window himself. When he is finally propped up and looks outside for the first time, all he sees is a plain brick wall. Confused, he asks a nurse when the wall was built, and she tells him it has stood there for years — and that Peter, in fact, had been completely blind and could never have seen anything through that window at all.