On a sunny Wednesday with a high, cloudless sky, a boy sits on a bench. He sits slightly hunched, vacantly gazing off, on just one of the many benches outside this particular medical center. He sits with a head full of thoughts and a growing awareness that his story, so important to him, is fantastically dull when grouped with the many other stories buzzing around this place. He watches story after story filter through the doors behind him.

The boy looks to his left, beyond the wall of the medical center. The streets bustle with cars and pedestrians on lunchbreak,  oblivious to what carries on around them. It’s like watching dozens of movies at once, each with their own main character intent on sharing little more then the set they’ve been placed on. To the boy on the bench all this is disheartening.  At this moment it’s proof of chaos, of purposelessness, of randomness.

And then Will appears. He’s about sixty and wears a green shirt with the word Volunteer emblazoned across the back. He asks the boy why he’s here?

He listens to the boy’s response.

“Well, I remember when I was here six years ago, I was always in there it seemed,” Will says, pointing to the building behind the bench, “the chemo, the transfusions, thought it would never end.”

Will explained he had been diagnosed with leukemia and his treatment eventually led him to a bone marrow transplant.

“How was it?” the boy asks.

“You ever see  the Rocky movie with the big Russian? Well there’s a scene where Rocky’s trainer says ‘you’re gonna go through hell, worse than any nightmare you’ve ever dreamed. That was what it was for me, ” he smiles and nods his head, “But his trainer also says ‘you’re gonna be standing if you do what you got to do.”

“And that was true for me too. I always chalked it up to an something I had to do because I hadn’t lived the most perfect life, and it turned out to be a blessing. It’s why I’m here.”

“How about you, I bet you haven’t been perfect either?”  Will says laughing. He pauses for a moment allowing his clear eyes to take the boy in, “Whatever happens, good luck. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.”

And then Will is gone. Back through the revolving doors, back to passing out sandwiches or stuffing envelopes or escorting patients too weary to escort themselves.

The boy sat in the bench for another 10 minutes or so, eyes softened to the world around him. It all looked so different.

When it’s time to go he stands, looks once more toward the bench he was sitting on and then up towards the blue, cloudless sky. And with a slight smile the man turns back towards the building and disappears through the revolving doors.

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