The man lay dying, wrapped in the rough hospital sheets; all he could do was stare weakly at the colorless walls, and listen to the constant high-pitched beeps emitted by the countless machines attached to him. Life had beaten him and left him alone to fend for himself—at a moment’s glance, this was obvious. His breath was short and shallow, his white peppered hair seemed unkempt and ragged, and his hands were calloused and toughened by a life of constant labor. He was admitted to the hospital late the night before, after collapsing in the shopping mall down the street. He knew something was wrong, but this was the morning he would find out exactly what that something was. Though his life was full of people, he was alone. Although he kept a face of courage, the little boy inside him cried in fear night after night. A little boy whose parents gave up on him and who grew up in constant fear of the foster parents who took him in only for the money they received from the state for doing so; that boy still lived within him.

A quiet knock on the door was followed by an immediate opening. She, the doctor, walked in with a genuine, caring smile on her face.

“Hi there, Mr. Smith, I’m Doctor Pace, but you can call me April. How are you feeling today?” she said as she checked his IV and other monitors, all the while making sure to maintain eye contact so he would know she truly cared.

“I’m alright,” he said flatly, “but I can’t seem to catch my breath, and when I try to breathe in deep, there is a sharp pain in my chest.” Physical weakness was evident in his speech.

“Yes, that’s what normally accompanies what you have. Mr. Smith, I’m here to tell you that you have a lung disease called emphysema, and it’s late-stage. It’s…it’s terminal,” she said solemnly with watery eyes.
Nothing.

Mr. Smith just looked out the window and pressed his lips tightly together, trying to hold back the flood of emotions rising in his entire body. He lifted his IV-pricked hand to his eyes and pressed his fingers against them. The doctor stood there waiting for him to speak. She had been here before with others and knew he needed the moment of silence to sort through the screaming thoughts and questions ricocheting around in his head. “I—I have no one,” he whispered to the window, letting the words slowly fly into the open blue sky. “No one.” He whispered quieter still. The doctor pulled up a chair next to his bed and set down her folders on the side table. The mounds of work she needed to finish did not seem to matter right now; she simply focused on him.
“Sure you do; let’s think carefully,” she said, her head resting on her fist.

“My wife died in a car-wreck and I don’t have children. There’s no one who truly knows me, or cares for me…except for one boy I knew, but that was a long, long time ago…and even he was taken from me.”

“Okay, tell me about him. What was his name? I want to hear what he was like,” Dr. Pace said sweetly. “Can you tell me some stories of you and him?” She held on to the hope of somehow getting him to realize that he really did matter.

His lips lifted into a bright smile before speaking. He must have been re-playing memories of this boy in his mind.

“Well, I called him Pip Squeak.”
“Mr. Smith,” she questioned, bewildered, “what did you say you called him?”

“Pip Squeak. Yep, he was a small one, but he had a big heart. Ah, I would love to see him again.” His eyes danced back and forth viewing nothing in the room, but rather every square inch of his memory’s movie screen. She did not interrupt anymore; she just listened to the man recall his distant past.  “He had such a funny way about him. Even after our foster parents would yell at us, he seemed to find a way to cheer me up. He had dark olive skin and rich brown eyes, the most amazing I’d ever seen before, and, of course, he was small. Ha! We had so many great times together, even though our lives were far from great.” He coughed as his laugh increased from a concealed chuckle to an open rumble. This boy must have been special. Then his face grew somber, “There was one day—I remember it so clearly—our foster parents got extremely mad at me, and we knew their anger meant a beating. I sat in the basement ready for yet another harsh punishment. An hour went by, then two, and I realized they weren’t coming. I snuck up to our room and opened the door, and saw Pip Squeak on his bed. When I asked him what was going on, he looked at me and I saw his tear-drenched face…” The man’s lip began to quiver, but he pulled himself together and finished the story. “He took my punishment, just because he cared for me. I deserved it, but he was the one who took the beating.” Mr. Smith’s voice trailed off into a fond, yet painful place. He simply stared out the window; the smile did not return.

“Pip Squeak?” the doctor whispered, as her gaze dropped to her shoes. A tear fell from her cheek and splashed onto her black clogs. Mr. Smith did not hear her, and he was not intended to. She needed to vocalize the name again in order to process what had just been said. Silence fell over the room like a blanket, so thick it could have been cut with a knife. He lay on his bed watching Pip Squeak run around out the window, somewhere in the now-clouded sky. The lost smile slowly returned, like a timid child hiding shyly behind his father’s leg. The doctor sat on the bed-side chair with her head hung low; she wanted to make sure what she was thinking was right before she asked.

Doctor Pace raised her head and wiped the remnant of tears from her face. She pulled her blond bangs back behind her ears and cleared her throat.  “Mr. Smith,’ she said. He did not acknowledge her; he was with the one person who cared for him—with him in his mind anyway. She tried again, “Um…Jimmy?” He twisted his head toward her in disbelief.

“No one has called me that in years. How did you know that was my nickname?”

“I’ve been told so much about you,” she began, with more tears of joy readying for release. “Since I was young, I dreamed of how amazing it would be to meet you, and tell you that we have been thinking about you and praying for you.”

“What are you talking about? Who’s we? Praying for me? What do you mean?” he inquired in confusion.

“My family. All of us. My mother, brothers and sisters, and now even my own children and husband. Pip Squeak, the boy you have been talking about, his real name is Oliver, Oliver Voorhees, isn’t it?”

He could only nod slowly.

“Jimmy,” her emotions made it difficult to speak, but she finally continued. “Jimmy, I am Pip Squeak’s daughter.” The doctor’s tears flowed silently into a smile that stretched from ear to ear.

“Pip Squeak?” he said pointing toward her eyes, “I can see it now- in your eyes. And—and your smile, and…and, where is he?! There is so much I want to tell him! So much I want to know! This can’t be real!” The man’s level of excitement was revealed by the hospital monitors, which were having a difficult time keeping up with his heart rate.

Dr. Pace’s smile faded, “He—he died when I was eighteen. But, Jimmy,” she continued with a newfound look of hope. “I know where he is, and that I will see him again in just a little while. He promised us kids that death was a temporary goodbye, one that promised a time when hello would then be forever.”

“How could he promise that? No one knows what death brings. We live, we die, and people like me don’t die with much attention drawn to us. We simply stop breathing one day and get put in a box. Maybe a few will turn their heads and nod in respect, but that’s it.” With what he had been through, the doctor understood why he responded that way.

“My father could have said the same thing, but he chose to believe in a true and eternal hope…one that only Jesus can bring. We grew up with next to nothing, but I remember him constantly giving what little he did own. I asked myself why quite often, but then I realized that he knew he had something more valuable than anything his money could buy. He taught us that, and that’s why his impact still lives today. Mr. Smith…Jimmy…I am a living legacy of that small boy, the one you called Pip Squeak.”

“Can a man like me have that?” he said, now allowing his emotions to flow.
“Yes. Would you like to hear about the Man who gives it?”
“Yes, yes, I would.”

The monitor went on beeping, his breathing was still shallow, and the colorless walls still surrounded him, but now the man once again knew the joy that Pip Squeak had given him all those years ago.