I worked at a local station of the Berlin fire department. We got an alert (警报) around 8:25pm that Friday and rushed to the fire engine, where the printout from the dispatcher (调度员) said there was a nine-year-old boy locked in a safe.

I asked myself: if it were a safe, would it be airtight? I was aware that it might already be too late by the time we arrived. I had to plan for a bad outcome. On the other hand, if we were in time, how long would it take us to open the safe? I knew it would be an incredibly difficult task. It’s what safes are designed for—not to be opened.

It took less than five minutes to reach the property. When I saw a woman crying on the street,

I knew the situation was serious. She was the boy’s mother and she led us into the basement. She told us the boy was alive and we started talking to him; he was very calm. We asked how it had happened: during a game of hide and seek with his five-year-old brother, he had thought the safe would be a good place to hide.

The boy’s parents had got the house from his mother’s father. The unlocked safe had been there when they moved in and was in an area they didn’t use much. The boy’s little brother had shut the safe, then, when he couldn’t open it again. The only person who knew the combination was the boy’s late grandfather.

From the outset, the biggest priority was getting oxygen to the boy. We got oxygen from the hospital. The boy said that he could feel a thin stream of air. I asked his parents if anyone had opened the safe before and they said no. So we had to guess a six-digit code (密码). We started typing them in—but we had to wait 10 minutes between each attempt before we could try again. So quickly we tried them all. No luck.

We were fully prepared at this point to open the safe by force, starting with a drill.

Then, just as we started to make the first cut, my workmate typed in the correct code.

It was a rather crowded day at the subway station. Seeing the busy passers-by stopped by his performance, Eric, a music lover who just graduated from college, wore a big smile on his face. With deep passion for music, he showed up in the station in his spare time, singing and playing the guitar to people travelling to and from the subway station.

With the melodious (悦耳的) song coming to an end, hearty applause burst out. As usual, Eric expressed his gratitude, nodding his head with a smile. “Man, awesome! An outstanding performance!” Approached a man, holding the hand of a little girl in a ponytail (马尾辫), aged about four.

“Park, a producer of a record company.” The man introduced himself, holding out his hand. “Would you like to give it a try in my company?” Out of politeness, Eric shook hands with him in amazement.

“I haven’t seen somebody this good in a long time! You are a beautiful scenery of this city, with such a beautiful voice!” Park admired. Suddenly, a phone call interrupted their conversation. Park briefly invited Eric to meet later in the same place and walked away to answer the call. Seeing Park off, Eric did realize what had happened, with warm current flowing from his head to toes. It was the first time that he had earned such kind of recognition, which was totally out of his expectation.

“A beautiful scenery of the city, with a beautiful voice!” Eric repeated the words, cleaning his guitar and preparing for the next performance. At that time, he caught sight of a little girl in a ponytail standing in a corner, weeping and looking around. Carrying his guitar, Eric approached her and squatted (蹲) down, “What’s wrong with you, honey?”

“I can’t find my daddy.” The girl burst out crying.   

The girl calmed down in Eric’s song when a man rushed into the office of the subway station.

When I started karate (空手道) class a few years ago, I didn’t know a single person. I felt ashamed of having no idea how to do any of the moves. Even though I liked the learning part, I did not like the feeling-worse-than-everyone part!

But one day after class while I was putting my shoes on, a girl named Abigail said, “That last kick we practiced is so hard for me, and you’re so good at it.”

“You must have confused me with someone else,” I replied. “I’m not good at any of it.”

“In that case, I’m in trouble,” she joked, “because you’re the one I stand behind and copy in class.”

I laughed, “Seriously?”

“Seriously!” she laughed, too. After that, we became great friends. However, a few months later when Abigail’s mom got a job in a different state and she had to move away, I was rather sad. I had a tough time dragging myself to karate for a while after that I missed Abigail so much.

Then, a girl named Ava joined my class. She was always quiet. Until one day we finally had a conversation.

“It must be weird (怪异的) being the new one in class.” I said.

“So weird!” said Ava. “You do things really differently than we did at my old dojo (柔道馆).”

I suddenly realized she’d been silent only because she was new. We started talking more, and we got along so well that we started hanging out after class. Then, almost a year later, guess who showed up at karate.

“This is so cool.” I said, giving Abigail a huge hug. “What are you doing here?”

“My mom’s job in New York didn’t work out,” she explained. “So we got to move back.”

“That’s the best news ever!” I said. “You have to meet my dear friend Ava. And Ava, meet my dear friend Abigail.”

I put my arms around their shoulders. Feeling very excited, I told them I hoped we could get along well and be close friends, while Abigail and Ava stared at each other with some hesitation and an uncertain smile.

Things seemed all right at first.

One day, I simply could not take it anymore.

It was an ordinary school day. I was in the fifth grade. Children like me who didn’t live close enough to go home for lunch brought their paper wrapped meals and gathered under the shade of a tree.

Such lunches usually consisted of a sandwich, hard-boiled egg, cookie and a piece of fruit. If a schoolmate’s sandwich or cookie appeared to be more appetizing than your own, you tried to negotiate a trade. I always tried to trade something I didn’t want anyway--a mashed-bean sandwich or an overripe banana. It never occurred to me to trade a slice of Mama’s Old Kentucky walnut cake for my schoolmate’s offering of a boring-looking sweet cookie, even though I could see longing in the exchanger’s eyes.

Sometimes Mama put two pieces of fruit in my lunch package, one to be eaten at morning recess if I was hungry. Quite often, though, I saved that piece of fruit as my bargaining piece for a sugary doughnut or fried apple pie.

Unashamedly, I always examined the looks and quality of my fruit to see which piece was better and then offered my classmate the poorer, less attractive piece. I felt no guilty of selfishness. It was just a good trading sense.

That autumn day after the lunch-bringers had eaten their food, got rid of the wrappings and walked to various parts of the playground, I wandered under the shade of a maple, watching butterflies flying lazily southward. I was still hungry and Mama had put no fruit in my lunch that day.

I saw my classmate Stella coming up a path.

Without hesitation, Stella handed me the apple.

As a nurse at the cancer care center where I’ve worked for seven years, I’ll do almost anything to make a patient feel better. But when I met Patty at the center, in 2011, she didn’t want my help.

She was a tiny 44-year-old single mom battling an aggressive head and neck cancer. Unlike many of our other patients, Patty was alone during her treatment, but no matter what I did. I couldn't get her to open up. She just buried herself in book or pulled a blanket over her head to fend off conversation.

Eventually I hit on a reliable way to make Patty smile: mentioning her nine-year-old son, Stephen. She'd tell me how well he did in school, how he'd been selected to read a poem he wrote at a local bookstore. She desperately wanted to live for him. With three kids myself, I totally understood how she felt.

After a year and a half of treatment, in August 2012, Patty was told her cancer had spread, and I learned she wouldn't live much longer. My first thought was, “What's going to happen to Stephen?”

Nurses at the center shared stories at their meetings about how bright and unusual the boy was. but no one seemed to know how to resolve the issue of what would happen to him when his mom died. My husband, Michael, who too works at the center, started hearing about Patty and Stephen.

One morning in October, Patty quietly slipped away. Michael and I picked Stephen up after school, drove him to a nearby park, and sat on a bench by a pond. I finally managed to say, “Stephen, we're sorry to have to tell you this, but your mom came to an end this morning.” The sound that came out of his mouth was like nothing I'd ever heard before. This skinny little guy sat between the two of us and just wailed (哀号) and wailed. It was as if his whole world was just destroyed.