a friend has come visiting

yesterday,
one of my very good friends came visiting.
today, i feel like telling you about her, and about how we became friends
a person who's existed at the periphery of your consciousness for five whole years, whom you barely know, with whom all conversation is polite small-talk; would you expect such a person to become a close friend? i don't think so.
i guess i have my wretched (or in this case, blessed) sense of humour to thank for this wonderful occurrence.
so here's this person who was in my class all the years of medical school, and yet i barely knew, except as the friend of a friend.
it happened in internship, when we were never even posted together
i was in the main hospital, and she was a few miles away, at a small health centre.
i don't know which one of us made the call, and i certainly don't know why the call was made. as a humorous end-piece to the usual polite conversation, i cracked a joke about her missing her boyfriend, who was also in the main hospital. and there the conversation ended. five minutes later, i got a message from her telling me that her relationship had been long over, and that it hurt to be reminded of it. i was mortified. i seriously contemplated just burying my head in the deepest sand-pit and avoiding her completely, so embarrassed was i.
i thank God i chose to call her instead to apologise. we started talking again, but this time, the talk had real substance. and we haven't stopped talking since.
the 1 year of internship saw us grow so close, that a lot of people were quite sure we were attaching ourselves to each other 'on the rebound', considering i too was commonly thought to be recently jilted.
but who cares? why should i go around explaining to everyone?
both of us are still amazed at this friendship, and the way it came about
thanks, dear friend, for being there through some very lousy times.
but she had to go. at the end of internship, she went off to a small hospital in a far-off place to work for two years.
and that's how, after 3 months there, she's come to visit.
it was so wonderful to see her standing here again.
here's to you, radiance and brightness, may your life be full of them