The Stranger in the Next Chair

He told me about the appointments. Cecil’s heart had been bad for years, and once Caleb got his license he was the one who drove the old man to the VA once a month, always the first Thursday. They had a thermos and a bag of peanut M&Ms. Cecil hated waiting rooms.

“He used to say the news was never the worst of it,” Caleb said. “It was the three hours before. He’d say, ‘Son, you don’t have to fix it. You just have to sit in it with me.’ And in the truck, outside the doors, if I looked scared, he’d say, ‘You don’t have to be brave in here.’ He was talking to himself as much as me.”

“I joined the Guard when I was eighteen,” Caleb went on. “Missouri National Guard, as a combat engineer. I’m a specialist now. E-4. In March of 2023 I was at Fort Leonard Wood for a two-week school. Granddad said he’d be fine, he’d get a ride. And Grandma had just had her hip done, so she couldn’t take him. And I was on the range with my phone locked in a box.”

He stopped.

“It was a first Thursday,” he said. “They were running behind. He sat in that room, in this room, for hours. The nurse said later he had a spell and they took him up. He passed that night in the ICU. I got the Red Cross message at eleven the next morning, from my instructor, standing on a gravel lot.” Caleb looked at his boots. “I got home in time for the visitation. That’s all.”

I put my hand over his. I do not know why.

“Here’s the part that’s hard,” he said. “A lady from housekeeping came to the funeral. She was a small woman, she’d worked there a long time, and she found my grandma in the line and told her something. She said that she had been mopping outside the cardiology waiting room that morning, and she’d seen Cecil sitting there by himself, and a man had come and sat beside him. An older man, she said. A feed cap. They’d sat together for two or three hours. She said Granddad wasn’t alone.”

His voice broke on the last word, and then he took a breath and got it back.

“She didn’t know his name. She’d never seen him before. She just wanted Grandma to know. And Grandma, you have to understand, she sat with that for a year. She’d say, ‘Somebody sat with Cecil. I wish I knew who.’ She wanted to bake him something. She never found out.” Caleb wiped his face with the heel of his hand. “I never found out either.”

“So after he passed, I started coming in on the first Thursday. Just to sit in his chair. I take the day. Mr. Farrow said fine. And one day I looked around and there was a man in a ball cap who looked like Granddad looked, sitting by himself with his hands in his lap, and I thought, somebody sat with Granddad. And I don’t know who. But I know what they did.”

“I figured that was the only way to thank him,” he said. “To do it for somebody else.”