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I have no family and no car, but for four years, a man named Marcus has driven me to dialysis three times a week. He’s fifty-eight, a veteran, and a widower who works the night shift as a hospital custodian just to be available for my morning sessions. He has never missed a day—not for holidays, not for blizzards, not for the exhaustion that surely clings to him after a ten-hour shift on his feet. He drinks his coffee black, reads historical fiction, and occupies the visitor’s chair beside my dialysis machine with a constancy that borders on the sacred.
My own family stopped coming after the second month. My daughter visited twice before her children’s activities became too demanding and the drive too long; eventually, she stopped calling altogether.
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