Sam is the narrator of the novel. He is omniscient in that he knows what each character thinks and feels. At the beginning of the story, he appears to be a typical hospital patient. He has a history with previous patients and develops a close friendship with Sony, Coeur, Neo, and Hikari. However, Lancali reveals that Sam is an unreliable narrator; he intentionally leaves information out that would be relevant to the reader, such as not having a room of his own. The final chapters reveal that Sam is not actually a person at all; he is a physical manifestation of the hopes and dreams people have when they come to the hospital for healing.

At the beginning of the novel, Sam is bitter and unwilling to love another person because the boy he loved before died and left him alone at the hospital with nothing but a name and memories. In the process, he loses his hope that people can live and love—he has seen too many deaths in his time to believe that it is worth connecting with people. When Hikari arrives at the hospital, she reunites Sam with the soul of his lost lover, Sam, and rekindles the hopes and dreams that Sam is meant to reflect.