A Chance at a Life Unlike Mine

Allen hails a bus. He is absent-minded, face ashen, eyes red and swollen. He has never had a discreet crying face and all his life he’s avoided such occasions. He boards the bus and recognizes the driver, sees her face almost daily and today feels like any other workday he’s grind through. Some days a friendly chatter between them, she observes that today he must need his space. She fell quiet, hands on the wheel, and gave him a nod as he took the steps up and towards the back, taking the same seat he usually takes at the deepest corner of the bus where he can view three beautifully lit parks along the way home to the far suburbs. He feels his shirt pocket for the stiff envelope, recalling his disbelief at its contents and still finding it difficult to accept. The surprise gain of a great loss. The ride is long enough to process the remains of a day that will change his life forever.

Looking out the bus window, its images blurring through, he remembers the days in his life that weighed heavy, the kind that makes itself be known ever so subtly yet stayed with him like smoke from the fire pit long after the embers breathe their last spark. He remembers Mr. Claren shaming him in front of junior mathematics class on a Monday, reading aloud a note with a slight hint of a profession for love to Albert, rocking the rest of his high school life into chaos - the longest week of his life. He remembers his father's constant coaching to be “man enough,” that he didn’t want to see this “sissy” side of his son, and when he wasn't sneering these snide remarks, there was neglect and the refusal to acknowledge his son's presence. He remembers every word the bullies taunt him with when they spied him along their line of vision like a pack of wolves to a meek, lost calf. He remembers the unbearable emptiness that surged through in every corner of his small world that only quiets down to make room for loneliness. He remembers how the two lines of scars on his wrist gave way to a reality that even in death he was not welcomed.

He turned thirty-four just a month ago. To live as a friendless bachelor meant no surprise birthday parties. But he felt loved at the clinic for their modest effort expressed with thoughtful gifts: a pot of beautifully arranged succulent by Adrina the receptionist; a gift basket filled with Ethiopian goodies accompanied by a lone balloon that spelled in bold letters “Happy Birthday!” from the clinic director Liya (who spoke about her longing for the motherland as often as she spoke of every other shape of compassion); and three movies worth of gift cards to the indie theatre Avalon in downtown, pulled together by the rest of the small crew.

The patients at the clinic were all Allen has a reason to get out of bed for. Their hopelessness triggers his own, it's a surprise a strength could be drawn from it. But their days are short, and their pain stretched mercilessly. They cry for no one, for someone, for anyone but mostly they died alone, unheard and unloved. There were ones who fell quiet, as if the less they spoke, the less they felt their pain. There were ones who screamed at each waking minute, at every available ear the words that they hoped carried their redemption to someone who might care. And then there was Clarence, cold and calculated. But once he saw the scars on Allen's wrist, he warmed up and got friendly, recognizing a familiar pain in someone else's eyes.

The patients do not have anyone, do not want anyone, they have entered a bargain with the devil himself, they tell him. They deserved this neglect, convinced that they are worthy of abandonment. Leave us be, almost in an eerie chorus. Clarence is the kindest one in his brutal ways, he’s seen enough horseshit.

The head nurse Lily, tasked Allen the job of calling their friends, their families, and if the black book didn’t list a name or a number, he must coax it from the patients during his sit-ins. People must know it is our way of life, she said in her broken, almost new immigrant English. Her and her staff kept their ears open when the patients utter a name, a full name. They take their tender time looking people up on the yellow pages but brace themselves for the deadline. That quiet on the other line when nothing else they could say kept them listening.

He sits with Clarence whose presence grew on him, as his on Clarence. Allen hears his sparse, repeated stories, but he wants to get a name, a number, the black book and a pen at the ready. He sees Clarence's slow decline and felt the urgency but Clarence sees the black book and laughed it off. There is no name, brother, no one he waves his hand in resignation and Allen can only try again another day.

Lily calls Allen on his day off, a Sunday. Clarence asked for him, and he might not make it by the next sunrise. He gets there and in heavy breathing, Clarence tells him why he doesn’t have anybody, tells him of his regrets, longing, his dreams of gazing at more sunrises, shattered… this is it, friend, oh what a word to say when all these years I’ve had none. Truth, truth, the bulk of them come down on the deathbed. It's almost ironic. So heavy it makes the dying confess, I want the ears of those who matter to listen but there are none. Clarence tells Allen the truth of his life, a familiar path Allen already walks on, fraught with so much pain. The juxtaposition is stark. Allen winces at the pain of his kind that has not lifted as generations passed. Too much, Clarence and himself fall victim to the absurd constraints of a society that they have little to live with, not even at the periphery. Clarence reaches out and hands over an envelope. He did have Allen—he says with his last breath—which was enough to avoid dying poor. A friend in the end. Flatline buzzes, Allen falls quiet, hears the burning of a loss so loud in his ears. He opens the envelope to find a check out to him, $20,000 to his name that Clarence wrote in his shaky hands FOR: “a chance at a life unlike mine.”