A homeless man sat in his cardboard and newspaper home, observing the mid-afternoon traffic that passed him. When someone walked past, he would jingle his cup, asking for spare change. If anyone dropped a bottle or can, he went and picked it up, and stored it in the back of his box. Cans were five cents and bottles ten- he could make five dollars a day if he was lucky. In fact, this act did more than augment his pitiful existence with the odd bottle of cheap whiskey every now and again- his efforts kept the street much cleaner than it would be otherwise. Had that not been the case, he would have been arrested long ago for his drunken, crazed behavior. A young man stared at him from across the street, and the homeless man felt a pang of fear, though he did not know why. He watched this young man. A reasonably handsome face, if he would shave it, the old man thought to himself. A short, scraggly beard coated most of his face, blond in the sunlight. He did not look as he crossed the street, merely turned directly into traffic, no fear apparent in his demeanor. A sobering chill came over the homeless man, as well as compassion for what he saw as a kindred heart. The young man stopped in front of the homeless man, two sets of eyes meeting for the first and last time. The homeless man stood, slowly, painfully. His remaining foot supported his weight as he leaned nonchalantly on the stump that once was his left foot. It gave him a stooped appearance that somehow gave him a kinder visage, though a rugged one. “How did you lose your foot?” the young man asked. “’Nam,” the homeless man answered in as gruff a tone as he could manage. “Is that what you tell people so they don’t mug you?” “Yes.” “Guess it works well, huh?” The young man’s sardonic tone insulted and hurt the older man. He sat back down, forcing the young man to either take the hint and leave, or squat beside him. The young man sat. “I’m sorry.” It was not a heartfelt apology, but the older man sensed a certain sincerity to it. He nodded once, and they sat in a companionable silence for a short while, merely observing the day. Sometime later, when the sun was much lower in the sky and threatening to dip the pair into the shadow of the building they were in front of, the older man grunted. Quizzically, the young man turned to him. Without glancing over, the older man began. “Son, I am almost 60 years old. More than half of those were spent in the gutter, half drunk and covered in my own vomit. I went to Vietnam, but I was a cook. A f*in’ cook.” He spat on the ground. For the first time, the younger man noticed that the homeless man had virtually no teeth. “My sons were born when I was still in the service. I wrote to them almost every day. I know they couldn't have read the letters. But my wife would have read them to them both, and they would’ve known their father loved them. But, when I got home, I find out my ‘wife’ had moved. The house had fell apart, and a stack of my letters was in the mai… in the mailbo...” Emotion welled up, choking out his voice, and the younger man instinctively held the older man as tears began to flow down his rocky face. The men sat there, the younger holding the upper, until the street lamps turned on. The younger man looked down at the older, and saw he was asleep. He knew, intuitively, this was probably the first time the man had fallen asleep with out alcohol or drugs in a long time. Extricating himself, careful not to wake the slumbering man, he took out his wallet, placing a clip of hundreds- all of the money he had -into the mans hand, carefully hiding it from passerby’s sight. He nodded to himself, and then looked back down at his wallet. He would not need it anymore, he concluded. As he walked away, a black leather wallet lay open, to a picture of a young man with a pretty girl under his arm, in a picture booth at the local amusement park. Their lips were gently touching.

“Hey, Mike? Will you check over the Mooreview account numbers for me? You always catch my mistakes…” A pretty face, with a petite nose and small mouth, framed by curly golden hair, smiled at the young man. “Yeah, no problem, Audrey.” He smiled back at her. He had always wanted to ask her out, but he had never had the courage. He would be surprised to know she was thinking much the same thing. He watched her turn away, back to her cubicle. He bit his lip, about to call her back, but decided against it. He leafed through the papers, noting mistakes and marking them with his pencil. After an hour, he got up and walked to her cubicle, where Audrey spooned low-fat yogurt from a cup. After they exchanged a few quick pleasantries, he handed her the packet. “The figures seem to be alright, but the wording for how the foundation should be sounds like a slab-foundation, and they live in Arizona. If they built that, they would find out that it might, maybe, collapse their house around them. It is an easy fix, just be more careful. Something like that can lose us a client,” he said. She nodded earnestly. “Alright. Thanks Mike!” Leaning over, she pecked him quickly on the cheek. He started, surprised. “Uh… No problem, Audrey,” he said. “Bye, Mike.” She winked at him. He went hurriedly back to his cubicle. He glanced at his watch, and saw that it was later then he had thought. He packed his desk quickly, leaving it looking as though no one worked there, so bare it was. Mike half walked, half jogged to his boss’s office, informing him quickly that he had to clock out early. His boss didn’t care- Michael was by far the most productive person in the office. Chances were, he was already done with his accounts for the day- which was, in fact, true. The drive to the hospital was uneventful, but his mind was in turmoil. Two weeks before, he had gone to the doctor’s for the migraines that had plagued him recently. They poked, prodded, and performed a CAT scan. He could see them arguing, before one doctor came in. He informed him there appeared to be a mass in his brain, and that they wanted tests, and he needed to return in a few weeks for a follow up to discuss the battery of tests they were going to perform. Naturally, he had agreed. He shuddered, recalling the feeling of the needles piercing his arm, back, neck, and even his thigh, drawing blood and god only knows what else. He turned up the radio, and finished the drive to the hospital with the blessed lack of thought that accompanies good music. As he pulled into the hospital, Mike felt a small amount of fear fill his stomach. He sat in his car, and tried to control his breathing. It’s nothing. He told himself. Probably some stupid blip on the scan. He forced a smile and checked his reflection in the mirror. He was greeted by a pale, sweaty face. “F*** it,” he muttered. He exited the car, locking it behind him, and went into the hospital. Twenty-two minutes later, Mike sat on the chair in the doctors office as the doctor told him that he, at age 26, had cancer. “Cancer? You’re absolutely sure? You have done the tests, checked them yourself?” Hysteria crept into his voice as he stood up and seized the doctor. “Have you?!” Without realizing it, his voice had grown to a shout. A nurse ran in, and seeing them just inches apart, backed out. The doctor glanced towards the departed nurse and open door, then turning to his patient, he continued. “It’s not as bad as it sounds... We can’t operate-- its in the middle of your brain, and we would probably kill you trying to get it out.” The young man nodded and swallowed, his throat very dry. “However, we could try chemotherapy. We’ve caught it early, and-” “You want to poison me?” the young man asked quietly. “Well, it’s not nearly so--” the doctor began. Mike cut him off. “I watched that poison kill my mother. It did s*** for her. It just made her miserable as f***. I’ll kill myself before I let that happen to me. She was dead before she died. You could see it in her f*ing eyes.” With that, the young man stormed out, tears streaking his face. Leaving the hospital, he ignored his car. He walked down the street and saw an ATM. He punched in the numbers, extracting every ounce of money he had in the bank in twenty-dollar-bills, and stuffed it into his wallet. Unbidden, a memory stirred in him- a young woman, at the time his whole world, and himself at a fair. He touched his lips, remembering the feel of hers on his, how gentle she had kissed him. Even the taste of her lipstick returned to him. They had gotten married just four years after. He remembered, now, another memory, buried long ago. It had been a couple months after they were married. He had come home from work, and saw the lights were all on in the house. He called out to her. She answered from their small apartment bedroom, weakly, and he ran over, mind churning with the worst possiblities. To his surprise, he had found her on their bed, beaming, cradling something in her hands. He looked closer; it was a pregnancy test. “Mike,” she whispered, “I’m pregnant.” He remembered, as well, how frail she had looked in the morgue, how young, just six short months later. The taste of her cherry lipstick evaporated from his tongue, as though she had never existed. The young man turned, and walked away down the street, towards his apartment. He was lost quickly in the crowded streets of New York City.

The young man awoke, his right arm numb. He tried to move it, but it would not respond. He tried to clench his fist, and a spike of pain found its way to his brain. Then he blinked. I’m alive? he thinks blearily. Then, a realization: This wasn’t his apartment! It was a hospital bed.
Audrey slept in a chair in the corner, deep circles under her eyes. He looked down at his arm. The wrist was heavily bandaged, and as he tried to touch it, he realized his other arm was tied down. Confused, he lay back again. His eyes closed.

When he awoke again, Audrey was talking earnestly to the doctor.
“Audrey?” the young man said softly. Instantly, she turned.
“Oh, thank God!” she said, hugging him tightly. “You’ve been out for two days, you lost so much blood--”
“Audrey.. What happened?” he managed.
“Well, you hadn’t been to work for two days, and you hadn’t called in, so I swung by your place to see if you were okay. The door was unlocked, so after I knocked for a while I went in, and saw you were lying on your bed, and there was so much blood…” she swallowed. “I thought you were dead. I called 911, and the ambulance came, and they brought you here. They patched you up, but the first few hours… You had lost so much blood, you know? They weren’t sure...” she paused. “They said it was suicide. It wasn’t was it?”

He didn’t answer, but his gaze left hers for just a fraction of a second. She saw it anyway.
“Oh, Mike...” she said. “Why?”

He shook his head. Then: “My wife died 4 years ago. I have no children. No friends. I just found out I have cancer. What’s the point?” Audrey was speechless. Mike vaguely realizes that he has hurt her, somehow, but he no longer cares. He strains at his bonds, and beeping begins crazily from some machine behind him. He thrashes, and hears his shoulder dislocate with a sickening pop. He groans, and falls back, semiconscious. He feebly yanks out a cord connected to his chest, and blacks out to the sound of his heart, thundering like Death itself at his door. A doctor runs in, pushing past Audrey in his haste. He yells for something, but Mike can’t hear anything anymore, anyway.

“We all loved Mike.. He was a great friend, and colleague. He leaves behind many who loved him, and who will cherish him always in their hearts. I ask now for a moment of prayer, so that we could remember he who has been so violently taken from us.” The pastor bowed his head, his black voluminous robe swaying faintly. Around her, Audrey sees only a few people through her tears, but she knows that most of the office had shown up to pay their respects. She wonders if he would have yanked out the cord to the pacemaker, had he known what it was. She always would.