She laughed.
He slept.
She called her sister.
He went inside.
Slowly, I realized something.
Thomas hadn’t been gathering memories.
He had been collecting the moments when someone decided life was still worth walking back into.
My eyes moved toward the green backpack beside my chair.
For the first time… It didn’t feel heavy anymore.
It felt full.
Over the next week, I kept replaying every conversation we’d shared.
The nurse whose husband had started baking sourdough bread.
The volunteer whose grandson had finally passed his driving test.
The cafeteria worker who always slipped an extra peppermint onto Thomas’s tray because she’d noticed he gave the first one away to nervous visitors.
He remembered everything.
One afternoon, I had asked him,
“How do you keep track of all these people?”
Thomas had smiled.
“I don’t.”
“You clearly do.”
“No.” He looked out the hospital window. “I just try to pay attention while they’re talking.”
