“Then I definitely can’t afford it.”
That almost got a laugh out of the doctor, but not quite.
His face kept doing something strange, like he was trying not to feel too much all at once.
Jim noticed that. He noticed everything.
Age had stolen his money, his knees, half his hearing, and most of the people he used to call brothers.
It had not stolen his instincts.
“What’s this about?” Jim asked.
The woman glanced once at the doctor, then back at him.
“It’s personal.”
Jim almost shut the door.
Personal usually meant overdue, denied, terminal, or buried.
He looked past them at the black sedan. Clean. Polished. Not local. Lawyer money. Hospital money. Trouble money.
Inside the house, his old gray cat, Diesel, brushed against his leg and let out one rusty little meow.
Jim sighed through his nose.
“Fine,” he said. “I don’t have coffee. I don’t have cookies. I don’t have patience. But I got four walls and two chairs.”
“That’s all right,” the doctor said softly. “We won’t stay long.”
Jim stepped aside.
The two of them entered carefully, like they knew they were walking into somebody else’s last piece of dignity.
The living room was small enough that the front door nearly opened into the coffee table.
A faded recliner sat crooked near the window.
A secondhand sofa sagged in the middle.
A box fan rested in the corner even though it was off-season, because Jim’s lungs had gotten particular about stale air.
There were pill bottles lined on a narrow shelf, a cane leaning by the lamp, and framed photos scattered anywhere a nail still held.
Motorcycles.
Men in leather.
Road dust.
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