I have no family and no car, yet for four years, a man named Marcus has driven me to dialysis three times a week. He is fifty-eight, a veteran, and a widower who works the night shift as a hospital custodian just so he can be available during my morning sessions. He has never missed a day—not for holidays, not for blizzards, not for the exhaustion that must surely cling to him after a ten-hour shift on his feet. He drinks his coffee black, reads historical fiction, and occupies the visitor’s chair beside my dialysis machine with a constancy that borders on the sacred.
My own family stopped coming after the second month. My daughter visited twice before her children’s activities became too demanding and the drive became too long; eventually, she stopped calling altogether. My son came once, spent twenty minutes scrolling through his phone, and vanished before the machine had even finished cycling my blood. My ex-wife sent flowers on my birthday, but they were withered husks by the time I returned from the clinic. For a long time, I lived in a state of profound abandonment, wondering if my existence had become nothing more than a series of medical appointments and quiet despairs.
Then there was Marcus. At first, I was suspicious. I assumed he was confused or waiting for someone else. When I asked him why he was there, he simply said, “To keep you company.” When I told him I didn’t know him, he replied, “Not yet.” Over the next four years, that “not yet” transformed into a brotherhood. I learned his coffee order, his favorite authors, and the names of his two grown children. I learned that he volunteered at three different charities because staying busy was the only way he knew how to keep the grief of losing his wife at bay.
He researched my kidney-restricted diet and brought me muffins and bagels I could actually eat. He read aloud to me when I was too drained to hold a book. We played over five hundred games of gin rummy, and he kept a meticulous tally of his lead. When my blood pressure crashed during a particularly brutal treatment last year, Marcus was the one who held my hand while the nurses scrambled. My emergency contact was my daughter, but she didn’t answer her phone. Marcus was already there.
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