alone

I've been over here for a while now. I see people with what can only be called extreme diseases. Tumors that have grown to monstrous sizes, legs so crippled they look like they've been put on backwards. I've learned to look straight at suffering without flinching, to face it without turning away. Some days it feels like there's nothing that can shock me anymore.

At least that's what I thought. Until Vincent came back.

It's been less than a month since I saw him, waiting for us outside the gate, waiting like he'd been waiting for more than a week before the ship sailed into port. When I saw him then, I knew he was starting to look bad. I knew his cancer was starting to take over, but I wasn't prepared for how it would be when I would next see him.

Yesterday I met him in the hospital hall where my friend was bringing him, one slow shuffling step at a time, into an empty ward to lie down. I saw him and the first thing I wanted to do was turn away. I wanted to pretend I hadn't seen him, pretend it wasn't true. It took an agonizing eternity to get the shirt off his back, easing the cuff inch by inch over the hand wrapped in dirty strips of cloth. His bones stood out in sharp relief, every rib clearly visible under his skin. The wound under his arm, the place where the cancer had spread, was gaping and raw, and I wanted nothing more than to turn away.

Instead I put my arms around him. With a translator to lift his legs, we lowered him into bed, his body hot with exhaustion. I covered him with a blanket, and he closed his eyes as his head came to rest on the pillow.

No one should live like this, and no one should have to die like this. No one should live on the streets, begging for the hope of one meal a day. No one should waste away to skin and bones with no family to care. No one should ride in a taxi for hours and hours from one country to the next, alone and in pain and so very tired.

No one should have to die like this, so Vincent won't. We'll keep him with us until we can find a hospice for him to be admitted to. We'll change his bandages and give him medicine to dull his pain while he eats three meals a day. He'll be on a soft mattress with clean sheets, and he will not be alone.

We won't let him be alone.