The nurse pushed the brakes on my wheelchair out in the Rotunda in the middle of the courtyard of St Augustine’s Home for the Beloved. The nurse straightened and tucked a blanket around my legs and made sure the one across my shoulders was secure. “Why Alan, it’s September 12th. You know that. You have it circled on your calendar in bright red.” She smiled and pushed a strand of my scraggly white hair that needed a cut badly behind my ear. “Honestly I don’t know why you insist coming out here in this cold weather. I really could get in trouble if you get sick.” She sighed as she plopped down on the cement, ornate bench. She rubbed her neck, a migraine surely building under her soft brown eyes. My fingers rubbed incessantly on the blanket, I hated this. I hated the endless wait. Usually at dusk the thing came. I’d had a soul each year. It’d been easier when I was free to move around. But here, here it was not such a simple task to wrangle a good soul to sit with me as the sun set and be taken instead of me.
