Thomas noticed that about me before I noticed it myself.
He was seventy-two, all hollow cheeks and a smile that looked tired even when it meant something, that green backpack always propped against his foot like a dog that wouldn’t leave his side. I’d find him by the cardiac wing some mornings, by the vending machines other times — he swore the coffee was terrible but at least it was honest — and some afternoons in the back pew of the chapel, sitting the way you sit when you’re waiting for someone who might still walk through the door.
He never talked like a dying man. He talked like a man keeping a ledger of everyone else’s lives. “Did the cafeteria lady’s grandson pass his driving test?” he asked me once, out of nowhere.
“I don’t know.”
“He was taking it Tuesday.”
“You remember that?”
He only shrugged, like it wasn’t a thing worth remarking on. “She mentioned it.”
