I was twenty-nine and still struggling to function after my mother's death.
Volunteering at the hospital became the only thing that made the grief feel useful. For nearly a year, I sat beside patients who had no family with them at the end.
That's how I met Bennett.
He was seventy-two, frail, dying from heart failure at Millbrook Regional. His eyes looked exhausted, but he still managed a gentle smile whenever I walked into his room.
We started talking.
Within days, those conversations became the best part of both our routines.
Within days, those conversations became the best part of both our routines.
He told me about the small engineering firm he'd run for thirty years before selling it, about a garden he'd kept behind a house he no longer visited, about a wife he'd lost decades earlier — Eleanor, he said her name like it still cost him something every time.
