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My wife died, and now I'm the only one left. I kissed her hands and walked out of the ward. As I walked down the canal, a nurse caught up with me from behind.

"Are you going to deal with the aftermath of the deceased now?" She said.

"No."

"Then what do you want us to do with the body?"

"Cremation."

"That's out of our hands."

"Just donate it for experimentation."

"Then you'll have to sign some legal papers."

"Bring it to me."

"That'll take a little while. You wait in the parlor, okay?"

"I don't have time."

"And her toiletries, radio, and clothes."

"I've got to go."

I pressed the button for the elevator.

"You can't leave like this."

"I just have to."

The doors to the elevator opened.

"Doctor, doctor."

She yelled to a doctor who was going through files in the nursing room. The doctor stood up and asked, "What's going on, nurse?"

The doors of the elevator closed. A few floors down the hall, it opened again and I continued down. A security guard was sitting next to the revolving door, and as I walked into one of the revolving doors, which was divided into four compartments, his intercom went off.

"Laszlo." He said into the intercom.

By this time, I had stepped outside.

"Hi, you!" He said.

I turned back around and he nodded, pointing at me and beckoning me back. I crossed the street and walked to the bus stop. He inserted his walkie-talkie into his pocket and walked toward me.

"They want you to go back upstairs and sign some papers." He said.

"It's too late, she's dead and I'm all alone. I've kissed her hand, you can keep her body, and I just want to get far away from here, the sooner the better."

"They want me to take you back."

"You can't do that, this is a public street, only the police can take me back, and even I don't think the police have that authority."

"I'm going to get one now."

The bus came, the door opened, and I had just enough change, so I walked up and put the money in the farebox.

"Don't let this man get on," the guard said to the driver, "they want him to go back to that hospital, something to do with his sick wife, although I can't figure out the real reason."

"I didn't make a mistake," I told the driver and took a seat in the back. A woman sitting in front of me called out, "What's the point of stopping here? It's not a red light."

"Look," the driver said to the guard, "if you don't have specific charges or paperwork for arresting this person, I'm going to drive."

"Will you please drive?" The passenger said.

"Yeah," I said, pinching my voice and pretending it was another passenger talking, "I have an important appointment and I'm sure I'm going to be late when you're slowing down and stopping all the time like this."

The driver shrugged at the guard, "Get in or get out, man, decide quickly."

The guard came up to the car, paid for the ride, the car started, and he came over and sat next to me.

"I have to follow you around and have to report in, do you mind?" He said to me, then raised his walkie-talkie, "Laszlo."

"Laszlo," a voice said, "where did you sneak off to?"

"I'm on the bus."

"What are you doing there? You're not off duty yet!"

"I was with the guy you told me to stop. I tried to stop him outside, but he said I had to get a cop because we were on a public street. I tried to convince him to go back, but he wouldn't. He said he had already kissed some lady's hand and we could keep her body. I didn't understand what that meant. He got on this bus and the driver thought it was illegal for me to arrest that person and that he had to drive the whole way. So I got on this bus and am now sitting next to the guy and if you guys want me to get off at the next stop, I'll get off. I just didn't know how to carry out orders in this situation and had to follow him until I got instructions from you guys."

"You're right. Now let me talk to him."

Laszlo held the walkie-talkie up to me.

"Hello," I said.

"The paperwork to donate your wife's body to the hospital for research or transplant is ready, sir, can you come back with Laszlo now?"

"I can't."

"If you think it would upset you to come back, then can we find somewhere else for you to sign?"

"Do what you want with her body, I don't want to be exposed to anything else related to her. I don't want to mention her name anymore, I don't want to go back to our apartment, I don't want to take that car we shared-let it rust on the street until someone towed it away. This watch, which she bought for me and which she has worn a few times ......" said I, throwing it out the window.

"Why don't you pass it to the back?" The man sitting behind me said.

"Some of these clothes, she bought them, and she's sewn every one of them." I took off my jacket, tie, shirt and pants and tossed them out the window.

"Attention," Laszlo said, "I'm just a hospital security guard with a pair of handcuffs I don't want to use on you because we're on a bus and because of the hurt you're going through, but please calm down."

"I bought this underwear myself yesterday, so I can keep it on." I said to him, "But the shoes have to be thrown away, she nailed the heel on with a cheap shoe repair." I took off my shoes and threw them out of the bus window. The bus had stopped, and the passengers had all gotten off except Laszlo. The driver was standing in the street looking for a patrolman.

I looked at my socks, "I'm not quite sure if she bought them for me."

"Don't take them off," Laszlo said, "they look good, I like the brown."

"I think it's a birthday present she gave me two years ago, that time she gave me a wicker picnic basket with eighteen pairs of different colored socks in it, and this is one of them, by the way." So I took them off and threw them out.

"You know," I said, holding the intercom, "we've lived here together for several years, she and I since we got married. These streets, this bridge, these buildings." I spit out the window, "Maybe even this bus, we've ridden back and forth a few times." I tried to pull up the seat in front of me, but it wouldn't budge. Laszlo handcuffed my hands. "This life," I said, banging my head through the car window and trying to fly out.

An ambulance drove up and took me back to the hospital. I was taken to the emergency room and laid in a bed in the same consultation room where she had last been in this hospital. While the doctors and nurses were busy removing the shards of glass left in my head and stitching up the wound, a hospital employee came in and said, "If you still want to donate your wife's body, then we would like to transplant some of her organs to the patients upstairs."

"No, I don't want someone walking around with my wife's organs, maybe one day I'll run into them or recognize them."

But they grabbed my hand and held it and signed it.