I ended the call before I could ask anything else.
The hospital smelled of disinfectant, medicine, and the silent anxiety that seemed to permanently inhabit its walls.
That morning, I pushed my cart down the long corridor, checking the room numbers and the patients’ medical records.
I was already exhausted, and it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet.
Room 220.
A new patient had been admitted for long-term care.
I opened the door, went inside, and glanced at the chart.
The first name took my breath away.
Thomas.
Then I saw the last name underneath.
I gripped the file tightly with my hands.
It couldn’t be him.
There must have been hundreds of men with that name.
But when I looked up at the patient lying in bed, I recognized him immediately.
Fifty-six years had passed, but they had not erased the face he remembered.
Thomas was thinner now.
Her skin was pale, and the illness had left her with deep dark circles under her eyes.
However, those eyes were still the same ones that had seen me get on a bus so many years ago.
He looked at me and smiled as if he had been waiting for me.
“Hello, Nancy,” he said softly.
For several seconds, I couldn’t speak.
I stood by his bed, holding a blood pressure monitor, with the feeling that my whole life had followed me to that hospital room.
“Thomas,” I finally whispered. “Oh my God! Thomas!”
After that day, I found reasons to visit his room during every shift.
Sometimes he checked his medication.
Sometimes I would bring him water.
Sometimes, I would simply sit next to him after I finished my chores.
Thomas told me that he had never been married.
I confessed that I hadn’t gotten married either.
We laughed at our gray hair, our knee pain, and the silly dreams we once shared.
Other times, we would sit in silence, so comfortable that the decades that separated us seemed less important.
“Are you still drinking your coffee black?” he asked one afternoon.
“Yeah.”
“I knew you would.”
There was something unusual about his serenity.
Many patients with serious illnesses were scared, angry, or overwhelmed.
Thomas seemed calm.
He behaved like someone who had been waiting a long time for something final to happen.
One morning, he asked me a question very carefully.
Do you have any family nearby, Nancy? Anyone who can help you?
“Just a distant cousin named Raymond. He calls me more often since I got back.”
For a brief moment, Thomas’s expression changed.
He clenched his jaw.
Then he relaxed and quickly changed the subject.
At that time I didn’t understand why.
That same week, Raymond’s calls became even more insistent.
“Are you seeing anyone?” he asked. “You shouldn’t be alone at your age.”
“I’m fine.”
“Have you made a will? You should name someone responsible in case something happens.”
“I already told you, Raymond. I’m fine.”
He asked me which bank I used.
I wanted to know if I was the owner of the apartment.
She mentioned Aunt Margaret again, proudly describing how she had handled everything towards the end of her life.
I remembered that Margaret had died practically destitute in a rented room.
For the first time, I wondered why that memory troubled me so much.
Even so, I ignored my instincts.
I spent most of my life ignoring things that made me uncomfortable.
Then one afternoon, Thomas asked me to sit next to him.
His hand found mine on the blanket.
