Part 2
“The last person who tried to bring me home,” George said.
He took the coffee from me and held it between both palms. A bus exhaled at the curb, but it wasn’t mine.
“Home from where?”
“Depends which time you mean.”
“Don’t do that.”
His gaze stayed on the traffic. “Victoria was a captain when I knew her. Smart pilot, bad temper. She could put a Black Hawk on half a road in crosswind, then argue with the road.”
“So you really flew helicopters.”
“I’ve been telling you that since spring.”
“You also told me you once carried a senator out of a country that wasn’t on a map.”
“He was a deputy ambassador, and the country was on maps. Just not the one we had.”
I searched his face for the smile that would release me from having to decide what I believed. It never came.
“What did Colonel Ashford try to bring you home from?”
George set the cup beside his boot.
“Myself, mostly.”
The hospital bracelet showed when his sleeve pulled back. I asked why he had left before they removed it. He said the emergency room had been crowded and somebody kept closing a metal door behind his bed. Every time it slammed, he woke with his hands clenched around the rails.
“They wanted to keep me,” he said. “I didn’t want keeping.”
“You need a doctor.”
“I had six.”
“You need one who sees you more than once.”
He stood, rolled his cardboard, and changed the subject by asking whether I had memorized the cranial nerves. It worked because I had not.
At lunch I called the national homeless-veteran line from the cafeteria storeroom. I told the woman who answered that George had served in the Army, had recently been hospitalized, and was sleeping outside. She took the location and said a local outreach team could come the next morning.
I did not tell George.
At the time, I called that omission practical. If I warned him, he might refuse. If trained people arrived with a van and offered medical care, identification assistance, and housing, he might understand that I had done what was necessary.
Mrs. Chen found me slipping the phone back into my pocket.
“You asked him first?”
“He needs help.”
“That is also not my question.”
“He’ll say no.”
“Then you know his answer.”
I pushed past her with a tray of clean silverware. “If somebody is sick, you don’t wait for permission to care.”
“For an ambulance, no. For rearranging his life?” She lifted her glasses onto her nose. “Be careful which job you think you have.”
The outreach van arrived at six-ten the next morning.
George saw it turn onto the block. He saw the VA seal on the door and the two people in blue jackets inside. By the time they parked, his blanket and trash bag were already in his hands.
“George, wait.”
“You called them.”
“They can help with your ID and get you into a clinic.”
“You called them without telling me.”
“I knew you’d leave.”
He looked at the van, then at me. His breathing had gone shallow.
“Now you know why.”
He walked into the alley beside the laundromat. I followed until he turned and raised one shaking hand.
“Don’t.”
It was the first time he had ever spoken to me as if I were part of the crowd he needed to escape.
George stayed gone for nine days.
On the second, I missed half a cafeteria shift searching under the highway ramps. On the fourth, Bell’s cut two of my evening shifts because I had arrived late again. By the seventh, my landlord had pushed a notice under my door reminding me that sympathy was not a form of payment.
Each night, I took Victoria’s envelope from my tote and studied the address. George had said to mail it if I learned he could no longer return on his own. All I knew was that he had chosen to leave. I kept the tape sealed.
Mrs. Chen said nothing until she caught me wrapping a sandwich before dawn on the tenth day.
“You keep making those.”
“He might be back.”
“And if he isn’t?”
“Then I’ll eat it.”
“No, you won’t.”
I looked down at the plastic wrap stretched between my fingers.
Mrs. Chen set a banana beside my hand. “You made a bad choice. That doesn’t mean you have to turn it into nine more.”
George was at the bus stop when I arrived.
He looked exhausted. There was mud dried to his trousers, and his breathing carried a soft hitch that had not been there before. He sat with his back against the bricks, but his cardboard remained rolled beside him as though he had not decided whether to stay.
I put the coffee down between us.
“I’m sorry.”
He watched the steam rise from the cup.
“I should have asked,” I continued. “I was afraid you’d refuse, so I made sure you didn’t get the chance.”
“You thought you knew better.”
“Yes.”
“Still think that?”
“I think you’re sick. I think sleeping here is making it worse. I also think the van frightened you, and I knew enough about you to know it might.”
George rubbed the heel of his hand over his chest.
“Mrs. Chen give you those words?”
“She used fewer.”
That almost earned a smile.
I sat on the bench rather than beside him on the cardboard. “Tell me what you would agree to.”
“Breakfast.”
“George.”
“And you eat your own.”
“Fine.”
“In front of me.”
“Fine.”
He considered the terms. “One nurse. Here. No van parked where I can see it. Nobody touches my bag. If I say we’re done, we’re done.”
I called the outreach number while he listened. A nurse named Malik agreed to meet us the following morning on foot.
Malik arrived carrying a canvas medical bag and wearing an ordinary gray jacket. He asked George before sitting beside him. He asked again before touching his wrist.
George permitted a blood-pressure cuff, a fingertip oxygen monitor, and three minutes of questions. He denied chest pain but admitted he could no longer lie flat without feeling smothered. Malik crouched to examine the swelling above his boots.
“I’d like you in an emergency department this morning,” he said.
“No.”
“Your pressure is high, your oxygen is lower than I want, and that swelling means your heart may be struggling.”
“Still no.”
Malik nodded once. “Then tell me what would make it possible.”
George looked at me.
“You go back to class,” he said. “No sitting in a plastic chair all day and getting yourself fired.”
“I can go with you and still—”
“No bargains. You’ve got your half. I’ve got mine.”
He reached for the sandwich, but his fingers missed it. His right hand slid uselessly across the plastic.
“George?” He tried to answer. The sound that came out was thick and shapeless. Then the right side of his face went slack…
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