The first name took my breath away.
Thomas.
Then I saw the last name underneath.
I gripped the file tightly with my hands.
It couldn’t be him.
There must have been hundreds of men with that name.
But when I looked up at the patient lying in bed, I recognized him immediately.
Fifty-six years had passed, but they had not erased the face he remembered.
Thomas was thinner now.
Her skin was pale, and the illness had left her with deep dark circles under her eyes.
However, those eyes were still the same ones that had seen me get on a bus so many years ago.
He looked at me and smiled as if he had been waiting for me.
“Hello, Nancy,” he said softly.
For several seconds, I couldn’t speak.
I stood by his bed, holding a blood pressure monitor, with the feeling that my whole life had followed me to that hospital room.