The Riddle of Goodbye

The hospital room smelled of antiseptic and the fake lemon scent of cleaning products. Mark sat by the bed, watching his friend of thirty years deteriorate. The cancer had come like a baseball curveball — unexpected, unhittable, devastating.

"You remember when we played catch that summer?" David's voice was thin, reedy. "Sophomore year, before everything."

Mark nodded, unable to speak around the lump in his throat. That summer had been perfect. They'd talked about girls and futures that seemed unlimited then. Now David's future had been reduced to this room, this bed, this final inning.

"It's funny," David continued, "how the body betrays you. All those vitamins I took. Every morning. Vitamin C, D, E. Thought I was bulletproof." He coughed, a wet, rattling sound that made Mark's chest ache. "Turns out the sphinx doesn't care about your supplements."

"The sphinx?" Mark managed.

"The riddle, Mark. The one we all have to solve eventually." David's eyes, once bright with ambition, were dull now. "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening? It's not about the legs. It's about the leaving."

Mark reached for the water glass, his hand trembling. David's wife had left him two years ago. Their daughter, now eight, visited on weekends. The goldfish they'd bought her sat on David's nightstand — a final cruel gift from the ex-wife, something living that needed care.

"How's the fish?" David asked, as if reading his mind.

"Still swimming."

"Good. That's something. Goldfish have what, three seconds of memory? Maybe they're the lucky ones."

Mark thought about memory, about how it could be both blessing and curse. The fish circled its bowl, endless repetition without recollection. Sometimes he envied it.

"Promise me something," David whispered, his strength fading. "When I'm gone, don't let Emma forget me. Be the friend who remembers."

The words hit Mark harder than the diagnosis had. He squeezed David's hand, feeling the bones too close to the surface now.

"I promise."

David's daughter came in then, carrying her backpack, trailing the smell of school hallway and childhood. Mark watched them together, father and child, and understood finally what the sphinx's riddle really meant: we all start small, we all stand tall, we all lean on others in the end. The leaving wasn't the tragedy. The forgetting was.

That night, after David's breathing had settled into the shallow rhythm of dying, Mark sat with the goldfish. He watched it swim, endless circles in its glass world. Maybe the fish didn't remember. But Mark would. He'd remember everything — the baseball games, the vitamins, the riddles, all of it. That's what friends did. They carried the weight of memory so others didn't have to drown in it.