You have them in your life too. They're throwaway people. They mean nothing
to you. Your life goes on with or without them.
You ride the train to work every
day. You're insistent upon never being
late so you get there about 20 minutes early as a rule. Now you have 20 minutes to waste. You may as well
talk to people to kill the time.
Your first one was Randy. Randy is about - well just over the official
retirement age - and he works as the station ambassador.
"Ever since I retired, I'm
going downhill."
"What do you mean?"
"I've got a doctor for
everything - a high blood pressure doctor, a diabetes doctor, a neurologist -
last week I couldn't speak. My wife
called the ambulance. It was a mini
stroke."
"I'm so sorry."
"Now I have to see a kidney
doctor. You have something to do with medicine, right?"
"Yes, why?"
"Let me show you the
reports."
He stood up with difficulty -
apparently didn't have an arthritis doctor yet - and carefully took his worn
brown leather wallet out of his pocket.
He opened the billfold section and gently removed several typewritten
pages each folded into 8 parts. One by
one, he unfolded them and handed to me.
"Well, this is good. The CT
scan of your brain was normal. And this laboratory report shows some damage to
your kidneys - not bad, really but not normal."
One report at a time, week by week,
month by month, the results of additional tests were reviewed.
"They're talking about
dialysis," he said one day.
"I hope it doesn't come to
that."
It has been about 3 years now since
Randy has worked at the train station.
The rumor was that he was on dialysis and too depressed to talk to the
other station ambassadors when they called.
You hope that this won't have the
dismal ending you worry about for Randy.
The tall lady with the leg cast said
she worked with the county.
One day she said, "I like your
dress. Where did you get it?"
"At a little shop nearby but I
can't remember the name of it. I have
the card at home. I'll bring it in for
you."
It's been at least 2 years since
that conversation. No one knows what happened to her.
You hope one day she will return. You
still carry the card for her.
Jim was a pudgy guy. He got less pudgy each month on his
diet. By the end of a year or two, he
was downright slender.
Jim was retired but still
working. However, he was going to retire
again really soon.
One day he mentioned his little dog
and that became a daily conversation.
"We had to rush my dog to the
veterinarian. It isn't good. He has a huge mass in his lung. His labs are
all out of whack. He is on life support
and has an IV. He's got pancreatitis.
I had
pancreatitis and it was the most pain experience in my life."
"Well, surely they're giving
the dog pain medications."
"Yes, that's why she's on life
support. They're keeping her sedated. My
wife and I are supposed to go on a cruise this Friday for 4 days. We don't know
if we should cancel."
"Well, it's going to take the
dog at least 4 days to recover and if she's sedated and on a ventilator, she
won't know. You should probably still
take the cruise and hope that the dog is much better by the time you
return."
"That's what my wife said.
We'll probably go. I found some miracle
medication online to cure lung cancer in dogs.
It's extremely expensive but I ordered it. We don't want to lose her."
You smile kindly and know that now
is not the time to speak.
Shortly after that Jim stopped
taking the train.
You ask about him and learn that he
finally retired.
You wonder about the dog and you
wonder about miracles. You secretly hope
for miracles.
There are others: the county attorney whose cousin decided to
take the day off from work at the Washington Navy Yard on that fateful day. The
person at the desk next to hers was murdered.
There's the young man who works as an
IT person for a religious organization. His young son is autistic.
There's the nice woman with
ankylosing spondylitis and a frozen shoulder who converted from Judaism to
Catholicism when she was a teenager and whose entire family converted because
of her.
There's the blind woman. She got you
one day, didn't she? She was talking to the person next to you but you were
unabashed in your eavesdropping, weren't you?
She was being evicted from her home and
was in fear of being laid off at work.
You managed as unobtrusively as you
could to chase her off the train and put three twenties in her hand. That was all you had in your wallet or it
would have been more.
All throw away people. People who aren't part of your life and never
will be. People without names and with faces you cannot recollect. Disposable.
Not at all important in your life.
We all have them.
