might have been little girls
in his childhood, and he had his troubles with them. He was praying
for a toy train, a roadster, to pass his tests, to keep from being
fired, to be less lonely, and back to toys again. He hated his father,
and his mother was too busy with church bazaars and such to pay much
attention to him. There was a sister: she died when he was a kid. He
was glad she died, hoping maybe now his mother would notice him, but
he was also filled with guilt because he was glad. Then somebody, he
felt, was trying to shove him out of his job.

The intravenous feeding kept dripping into his vein and he went on
rambling. After ten or fifteen minutes of it, he fell asleep. I felt
so disappointed that I could have slapped him awake, only it wouldn't
have done any good. Smoking would have helped me relax, but it wasn't
allowed, and I didn't dare go outside for one, for fear he might
revive again and this time come up to the present.

* * * * *

"Broke!" he suddenly shrieked, trying to sit up.

I pushed him down gently, and he went on in frightful terror, "Old and
poor, nowhere to go, nobody wants me, can't make a living, read the
ads every day, no jobs for old men."

He blurted through weeks, months, years--I don't know--of fear and
despair. And finally he came to something that made his face glow like
a radium dial.

"An ad. No experience needed. Good salary." His face got dark and
awful. All he added was, "El Greco," or something that sounded like
it, and then he went into terminal breathing.

I rang for the nurse and she went for the doctor. I couldn't stand the
long moments when the old man's chest stopped moving, the abrupt
frantic gulps of air followed by no breath at all. I wanted to get
away from it, but I had to wait for whatever more he might say.

It didn't come. His eyes fogged and rolled up and he stopped taking
those spasmodic strangling breaths. The nurse came back with the
doctor, who felt his pulse and shook his head. She pulled the blanket
over the old man's face.

I left, feeling sick. I'd learned things I already knew about hate and
love and fear and hope and frustration. There was an ad in it
somewhere, but I had no way of telling if it had been years ago or
recently. And a name that sounded like "El Greco." That was a Spanish
painter of four-five hundred years ago. Had the old guy been
remembering a picture he'd seen?

No, he'd come up at least close