Cold, he sat outside, back to a plaster wall, knees to his chest as if they could offer protection. His breath mixed with the smoke he exhaled, and together they drifted off, away from him. The smart thing to do, he figured.

He sat there, feeling low and small under the darkening sky, letting the wind cut through his clothes and lighting another cigarette once the one before was finished as he looked out on the parking lot, the gravel and dented hoods. This went on for some time.

His phone rang. “Hello,” he said into it, eyeing the caller ID.

“Where are you?”

“Where do you think?”

“You’re a stupid son of a bitch, Mitchell.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Can’t believe you’d let her go through with it.”

“You heard what she said. She can’t do this with me”

“Of course. I did, everyone did. Doesn’t change the fact that you could have said something, anything, just a word, and she wouldn’t.”

Mitchell didn’t immediately respond. “She said I’m a fuck up.”

“You are.”

“Why would she want anything to do with a fuck up?”

“I ask myself the same thing all the bloody time.”

“And what’s the answer you come up with?”

“You honestly let her go through with it?”

“She does what she will.”

“I know.”

“Your sister absolutely hates me.”

“That’s not true.”

“She should. I am a fuck up.”

Mitchell was crying at this point, snot hanging off his nose, dripping down over his lips. He laughed at how pathetic he would look to any bystanders, but it was too cold for any to be around, outside. There may be someone in a car, warm, who was looking at him and feeling better about themselves. They deserved to, he wagered. From his perspective, the sun was swinging downwards, towards the ground, and within a few hours time, he wouldn’t have any indication that it existed.”

“Is she still in there?”

“Yeah.”

“And where are you?”

“Having a smoke.”

“You really need to go back in there.”

“I can’t.”

“Hold her hand. Be there for her. Be a fucking man for her.”

“I can’t.”

The phone beeped three times, indicating the person on the other end had given up. He put it back in his pocket, and took out the third to last smoke from the pack. With a hand sticky with tears and snot, he shielded the lighter from the wind and inhaled, the flame catching and the smoke filling his lungs in that satisfying manner only something that will kill you can accomplish.

The earth crept further around the sun, and from his perspective, sitting on the sidewalk with his back to the clinic, the sun looked like it was sinking towards the horizon. It hit the pollution in the atmosphere, along with the clouds, and it looked like a smear of every known color up there in the sky, bringing more tears down his face. He inhaled and exhaled and wiped the back of his shirtsleeve across each cheek, then under his nose.

He had thoughts then, of going inside and getting her, taking her home and leaving, driving until he ran out of gas, then picking a direction and continuing to walk that way until he dropped, then lying there until the cold and the animals ended him. He thought of getting his gun and sitting in his kitchen. He would move the china cabinet and paint the wall as his dad did, years back.

His grandfather sat him in that kitchen when he was a kid, the year after his dad did what he did, and with a beer in his hand and a cheap cigar hanging from his lips, the old man told him of the war. Stories he’d been told since he before he knew it, for a couple hours, the beer being replaced, the cigar shrinking to a pile of ash on the table, then the old man told him one he’d never told anyone else, save the boy’s father. Told him about getting shot, how it felt, the bullet straight through the sternum. Told him how it felt, fading away. How one moment he was there, bleeding in a ambulance, fear of God on his heart, and the next he was nowhere. There was nothing and there was no him and no world and just the nothing, and it seemed like that for a long time. Then the nothing shifted, and there was the color of light through capillaries, and there was a man, and the old man said a man did what a man had to do, no matter what.

The old man had eyed the china cabinet through every word.

Mitchell left the last two cigarettes for the drive home. He’d stop for more, or they would be the last. He stood and dusted off his pants. Cleaned away the snot. In the glass of the door he saw how bad he looked. Inside, he went to the back, and she was still in the bed, awake, her hands clenched and her face the same as his. They hadn’t started the procedure yet.

Mitchell took her hand in his, said the words he should have sooner and she smiled, and it was like heaven for him.

They left, and she didn’t go through with it.