The Riddle of Us

The hospital smelled of antiseptic and resignation. I stood in the doorway, watching Marcus sort his pills into those plastic compartments—Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday—like he was arranging some small, tedious monument to survival.

"Still taking the vitamin D?" I asked, and he looked up, startled.

"Doctor says my bones are turning to glass," he said, that old grin still clinging to his face like something learned by rote. "Can't have me shattering before we settle things."

We'd been best friends since Little League, back when baseball was religion and the crack of a bat was the only sermon we needed. Then came the incident, the silence, five years of radio static between us. Now pancreatic cancer had done what apologies couldn't: forced a reckoning.

"Remember that time you tried to steal home?" Marcus asked, and I nodded. "Coach said you had the heart of a lion. I said you had the survival instincts of a suicidal lemming."

"You still have that bear tattoo?" I gestured to his forearm, where inked ursine eyes watched us both.

"Meanest thing in the woods," Marcus said softly. "Until it's not. Until it's just something that used to be fierce."

A sphinx of paperweights sat on his nightstand—glass, stone, metal—a collection he'd started in prison. Riddles with answers he'd never shared. I realized then that forgiveness is its own riddle, and I'd been demanding the answer without listening to the question.

"I sold the baseball card collection," I said. "The one we built together."

Marcus nodded, unsurprised. "Good. They were just cardboard and gum stains anyway."

He coughed, and I thought about how easily we break each other, how clumsily we try to put things back together. How some things are never meant to be solved—only endured.

"I brought something," I said, pulling a crumpled ticket from my wallet. Game seven, World Series, from when we were kids. We'd sworn we'd go together someday.

Marcus took it with trembling fingers, and for the first time, his eyes weren't sphinx-like anymore. They were just scared, and human, and exactly like mine.

"Next season," he said.

"Yeah," I lied. "Next season."