excerpt
The night before he asked the old man to give him
a ride home but he had said he would stay put and spent the night
there. There wasn’t anything he had to do at his apartment, he
was just fine to spend his night there. And there was where Anton
found him; numb, exhausted, hardly breathing. Anton knelt
close to the old man.
“What is it?”
“I don’t feel well.”
“Want me to do something?” Anton asked while he went
to the sink and got some water. He gave it to the Irish man who
took a sip.
“This is the second time you have such an incident in two
weeks,” Anton said, “we better get you to the hospital let the
doctors look at you.”
Dylan didn’t say anything. Anton left him and ran upstairs
to the Father Nicolas’ office. This early in the morning, no one
had gone to their offices yet; he ran upstairs to their sleeping
quarters. He knocked at Father Nicolas’ door. Father Nicolas
opened; he saw the panic in Anton’s face; he was informed of
Dylan’s health issue; he assured Anton to look for Father Jerome
and the nurses and advised him to go attend to Dylan which
Anton agreed and ran downstairs as fast he could. The old man
wasn’t any better. Anton sat next to him and tried to calm him
down.
“These smokes of yours; two weeks ago you promised
to slow down, remember? The cigarettes kill people, everyone
knows that,” Anton underscored,
Dylan didn’t say a word. He just stirred his body around
when at that moment Father Jerome, Father Nicolas, Sister
Gladys, Mary and Sister Anna came in. Father Jerome looked at
Dylan carefully as if examining him, a short examination …
Manolis Aligizakis 