Then I began volunteering at the hospital because the first time I saw someone die alone, something inside me refused to leave.
I sat with patients whose families lived too far away, no longer called, or couldn’t bring themselves to come.
I held cups of water.
Read magazines aloud.
Learned which rooms were always cold and which nurses hummed when they were under pressure.
People called me generous.
They were wrong.
I was hiding in the only place where grief made sense.
Thomas noticed that before I noticed it myself.
He was 72, with hollow cheeks, a weary smile, and that green backpack always resting beside his foot.
Sometimes I found him near the cardiac wing.
Sometimes by the vending machines, where he claimed the coffee was terrible but honest.
Sometimes in the chapel, sitting in the back pew as though waiting for someone who might still arrive.
Thomas never spoke like a man who was dying.
