OKLAHOMA CITY — The hospital room had a couch for visitors, and 19-year-old Nerlens Noel had flopped down on it. The furniture wasn’t built for his 6-foot-11 frame, so Noel’s knees sat unnaturally high, the scar from his recent ligament surgery impossible to miss.

Kelly Melton, the friend Noel had come to visit at the University of Kentucky Hospital, could relate. He tugged down the collar on his own shirt, making visible the scar on his chest.

“See mine?” Kelly told Noel.

That scar had been left behind by the insertion of a catheter, part of the chemotherapy treatment for Kelly’s leukemia. The night Noel saw it, Kelly had war paint spread across his face. He’d been playing with Legos.

He was six years old.

“It was real sweet to see them sit there,” said Harrison Melton, Kelly’s father. “Two kids comparing their battle wounds.”

It wasn’t the first time — and it wouldn’t be the last — that Kelly gave Noel a reminder that everybody’s fighting something, and that no matter what you’re battling, somebody has an even higher mountain to climb.

“Kelly’s a really special kid,” said Noel, now a 25-year-old backup center with the Thunder. “I felt this positive attitude and energy all around him. He just inspired me, seeing his story and how much he’d overcome.”

Noel has overcome a thing or two in his basketball career. There was that knee injury during his lone collegiate season with the Wildcats, the one that probably cost him his shot at the No. 1 pick in the 2013 NBA Draft. And there have been some self-inflicted struggles, the sort that led him to sign a prove-it contract for the veteran minimum in Oklahoma City, a far cry from the riches and prominent role so many former Wildcats enjoy in the NBA.

Kelly Melton is a reminder to keep those problems in perspective.

But he’s a lot more than that.

Now 12 years old and in his second year of remission, Kelly’s been Noel’s Kentucky Derby companion, his counsel on what video games to buy and how to master them, and his lunch buddy on trips back to Lexington, Ky.

They met the way so many athletes meet so many sick kids. College and pro sports teams routinely set up pop-ins and a photo ops, chances to brighten a young patient’s day, however briefly.

That’s how it starts and often how it ends.

But almost seven years removed from his first-ever meeting with Kelly, Noel still is in contact with the kid from Science Hill, Ky., still affected by their time together when Noel was a Wildcat and Kelly a young Kentucky fan fighting for his life.

“Just knowing that Nerlens still even thinks of Kelly, to me, is a big deal,” said Lisa Melton, Kelly’s mother. “He has so many things going on and so many people in and out of his life. Just to find time to be able to text or make a quick phone call, just to let him know, ‘Hey man, I’m thinking of you’ or ‘I saw your pic, you’re looking good,’ it means so much.”

But it’s not so surprising.

Not if you know Kelly Melton.

Kelly Melton and Nerlens Noel met at the University of Kentucky Hospital when Melton was six-years-old. (Photo courtesy of the Melton family)

Harrison and Lisa Melton have a daughter and three sons, but “we jokingly say Kelly was our boy,” Lisa said.

When there was dirt to play in, Kelly would find it. If it was mud, so much the better. He was energetic and upbeat and relentlessly positive.

Kelly loved school from the start, and so it struck his parents as odd when they got word in the fall of 2012 that their 6-year-old son had fallen asleep in class, that he was asking his teacher to repeat herself because he couldn’t hear her. They suspected an ear infection.

So one November afternoon, they saw their primary care physician, who referred the family to a local hospital for blood tests.

By the end of the night, Kelly had been diagnosed with leukemia and taken by ambulance to the University of Kentucky Hospital in Lexington, about 70 miles north.

“It rocked our whole world,” Harrison Melton said, and the change in Kelly was evident immediately.

The first two weeks of his hospital stay in Lexington, Harrison said, “(Kelly) gave up.”

“Of course his mom was not gonna have any of that,” Harrison said. “She kind of got him motivated and moving.”

That process started before University of Kentucky athletes came to visit. Former Wildcat football players Martavius Neloms, Max Strong and Landon Foster were among the visitors, as was Noel, who showed up with a pair of friends on a night when Kelly was in quarantine.

Lisa Melton laughs now that she was “such a mom” in the moment. She jumped up and forced the trio out, insisting they be outfitted in scrubs and masks, forcing them out the door before she realized Noel was a Kentucky basketball star.

But Noel came back, properly attired, and got a proper introduction to Kelly. That could have been the end of their interaction. Instead it was the start of something.

Noel would pop by after games. He’d check in and offer encouragement. He came to regard a six-year-old kid as not a patient he’d see in the hospital, but something more like a friend.

“It was crazy, because he’s such a mature kid,” Noel said. “Going through that much, you kind of have to grow up fast. He was so stable and mature, mentally, but he always wanted to crack a joke, smile, laugh. That was the joy of it, seeing him in such a good place with all that he was going through.”

And even as Kelly fought the fight of his life, his concern was for others. Including Noel.

Whenever Noel heads back to Lexington, he and Kelly try to have lunch together. (Photo courtesy of the Melton family.)

There weren’t many opportunities to go back home to Science Hill, but Kelly got one on Feb. 13, 2013.

On the way home that night, the family did what any dyed-in-the-wool Kentucky fans would do. They tuned the car stereo to the Wildcats’ basketball game at Florida.

The Gators — coached then by Billy Donovan, now Noel’s coach in Oklahoma City — had controlled the game, and with eight minutes to play were poised to stretch a 12-point lead to 14 on a steal and breakaway by guard Mike Rosario.

Noel chased down Rosario and blocked his shot, but landed awkwardly and collided with the basket support, tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.

The six-year-old kid, temporarily released from the hospital that day, was focused only on his new friend.

“He heard on the radio that Nerlens had gotten hurt,” Harrison said. “He was worried. He wanted to know if Nerlens was gonna be OK. When he found out he had torn his ACL, he was really worried.”

And that, Harrison said, “is just Kelly.”

At one point during his hospital stay, Kelly had a room adjacent to a crying infant, and Lisa told Harrison she thought she might have to “tie Kelly down” because he was so desperate to make sure the baby was OK. When it was time for a blood transfusion, Kelly would worry that he’d “use up all the blood,” Harrison said, not leaving enough for the other kids.

He had hard days and long nights — at one point he was at the UK Hospital for 59 consecutive days — but somehow Kelly found a way to stay upbeat.

The Wildcats who came to visit helped, but Kelly provided a lift, it seemed, as often as he received one. That was particularly true for Noel in the days after his surgery. His absence derailed Kentucky’s season and put his NBA Draft spot in question, but here was a kid, not yet seven years old, whose life was in the balance.

“It was definitely tough at times seeing Kelly down a little bit whenever he had to get extensive treatment,” Noel said. “But his spirits always stayed up. That’s the most special thing about him.”

Ever since, Noel has done his best to keep those spirits high in the small ways he can.

There’s a lot going on in the picture of Noel that hangs in the Melton home.

It’s from a rainy Kentucky Derby Day in 2013. Noel’s in a sharp gray suit, sporting the high-top fade haircut he sported in his UK days. Kelly is by his side in a blue shirt with a cream-colored vest and pants.

“I could not keep up,” Noel said. “Kelly was looking super fresh.”

But there’s a reminder, too, that he wasn’t just any six-year-old at the Derby. In the photo, Kelly’s head is bald. He’s wearing a surgical mask.

In the photo, Noel is holding Kelly just above the wet ground at Churchill Downs, keeping his black shoes dry. In some ways, it tells the story of their friendship.

Noel took Kelly to the Derby in 2013 and again in 2014. Though Noel hasn’t been back — and hopes not to anytime soon, given that the first Saturday in May conflicts with the NBA Playoffs — he said “As many times as I go, I’ll look to bring Kelly.”

It’s a big gesture, a celebrity taking a kid to the state’s social event of the year. But more often, Noel’s giving Kelly a little lift, the way he’s doing in that picture.

Kelly’s a busy kid these days. His hair’s growing out; his body is “solid,” Lisa Melton said. He’s going to school and engaging in extracurricular activities.

Noel’s schedule, too, is full. Now in his fifth NBA season — the 76ers held him out in 2013-14 after he went sixth in the 2013 draft — he’s hoping for a career reclamation in Oklahoma City. After a tumultuous tenure in Dallas during which he turned down a reported four-year, $70 million contract offer, he’s playing for the veteran minimum with the Thunder, a one-year contract with a player option for a second.

And so far he’s off to a solid start, averaging 7.8 points and 6.3 rebounds in 15 minutes per game. He might never be the player he projected to be as a one-and-done prospect at Kentucky, but he’s playing with the kind of effort and defensive activity that can make him a key rotation piece.

So Noel and Kelly don’t talk often. But when they do, it still means something.

These have been trying years for the Meltons. Kelly’s leukemia has been in remission for two years. It takes five to be declared cancer free, and there’s always the risk of a relapse — or some other medical complication.

“We need to hold strong to our faith that we will have another day tomorrow,” Lisa said. “Kelly says, ‘God took care of this the first time, and if it comes back, God will take care of it again if that’s what’s meant to be.’”

Kelly’s fight has been public, thanks in part to the former Kentucky athletes like Noel who drew attention to it, who raised funds to help the family pay for expenses. Strong and Foster remain in touch with the family. Marcus Lee, who played basketball for the Wildcats after Noel, formed his own bond with Kelly.

There are calls and texts and visits, and those things “mean the word to us,” Lisa Melton said.

Noel tries to meet the Meltons every time he’s back in Lexington. They’ll grab a bite to eat and he’ll pose for a photo or two with Kelly. When Noel returned one summer for a Kentucky basketball alumni game, he gave Kelly the ball cap participants received.

When Noel ditched his fade for long braids and Strong opted for longer locks and a man-bun, Kelly grew his hair out, too, a luxury once not afforded him. When Noel saw Kelly’s long hair on Instagram, he sent a comment to let him know he approved.

Lisa Melton believes — maybe now more than ever — in the value of small gestures. She understands the power of smiling at a passing stranger, of paying the drive-thru tab for the car behind you, of sending a text for no reason but to say, “I’m thinking of you.”

Those gestures from Noel, she said, “mean the world to Kelly, and to us.”

And they won’t stop anytime soon.

“I’ll always try to send little messages, telling him to keep his head up and that I always had his back if he ever needed to talk about anything or wanted to spend some time,” Noel said.

“He knows I’ll always have his back. I love Kelly.”

(Top photo: Jeff Moreland / Icon Sportswire / Corbis via Getty Images)