But before he could think any further, Ben glanced at his phone, and the date caught his eye.
Two months ago, exactly.
Within an hour, he was on the subway, heading downtown. There was somewhere he needed to be.
He hadn’t been there since that afternoon in August, when the park was packed with spectators, both adoring and enraged.
As he neared the park entrance, Ben noticed a small crowd gathered by the side of a building, a handful of people even snapping pictures. The question briefly crossed Ben’s mind—were they here for the same reason he was?—before he realized they were photographing some sort of graffiti on the stone wall.
When the group moved aside, Ben saw what they had been looking at: a black-and-white mural of the mythical Pandora, crouched over her opened box. It was too late, the contents of the infamous chest—shadowy spirals and demonic faces—had already been released into the world, crawling upward along the edge of the wall. The image prickled Ben’s skin, and he quickly turned away from it and walked into the park.
His memory seemed to lead his body instinctively toward the place where he had stood that day, and as Ben came closer, he was surprised to see a young woman standing motionless, almost meditative, in the middle of the busy walkway, the stillness of her body only broken by the hem of her long floral skirt dancing lightly around her ankles. The woman pulled a bouquet of flowers out of her bag and knelt down to rest them on the pavement.
She was several yards away from the spot where Hank had fallen, as though she had also been there that day—or perhaps was guided by the descriptions of the event in the news. Regardless, Ben felt sure of her intent, and he debated whether or not to approach her. He knew the rules of the city, the eyebrows raised at those who willingly spoke to strangers. And, if this woman were truly mourning Hank, was it rude to disturb her grieving?
As he walked slowly toward her, Ben tried to deduce who she might be. Hank didn’t have any sisters, and this wasn’t the woman who had eulogized him, Dr. Anika Singh. Perhaps a cousin, a colleague, another ex.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Ben said delicately, “but are those for Hank?”
The woman was startled by his voice. “Oh yes, they are,” she said. “Did you know him?”
“I did.” Ben nodded. “Though only recently, I suppose.”
The woman paused for a moment, her head slanted in thought. “What was he like?” she asked.
Ben was surprised. He had assumed that this woman knew Hank. But she was hardly an acquaintance, it seemed. Some obsessive admirer who heard Hank’s story?
“Uh, well, he was one of the most interesting people I’ve known,” said Ben. His initial caution melted away, as he saw the woman’s intrigue. “I got the sense that he never wanted to be a burden, or let people feel sorry for him. He always wanted to be the hero.” Ben smiled. “And lucky for him, he usually was.”
“That’s why I wanted to come,” the woman said. “To thank him.”
Of course, Ben thought. A patient who only knew Hank the physician, not the man outside the ER.
“He was your doctor, then?” Ben asked her.
“Actually, no,” she said, just as the breeze lifted the edges of her long black hair, the ends dyed a vibrant pink. “He . . . gave me my lungs.”
For a moment, Ben felt his own lungs struggling for breath. He stared, blinking, at the woman in front of him, her chest expanding and filling with the autumn air.
Ben had no idea that Hank was an organ donor; nobody mentioned it at the funeral. But it made perfect sense, didn’t it? A hero’s final act.
“It’s been two months, and this is the first time I’ve been able to visit. But I think of him all the time.”
“I’m sure he would be very happy to know about you,” said Ben.
He suddenly remembered a conversation with Maura, something about cryonics and mind-uploading, all the bargains and sacrifices that people made now in the hope of living on someday. But when Ben looked at the young woman before him, he thought about her string, and how every piece of the thread that extended beyond that afternoon in August was a portion gifted from Hank’s string to hers, how this woman’s life had been lengthened simply because Hank had been alive, and Ben realized that there was more than one way to live on.
“I still haven’t looked at my string,” she said, as if Ben had voiced his musings aloud. “At first, before I knew about the surgery, I was too afraid to look, and I made my whole family swear not to look, either. But now, no matter how long my string is, every day just feels so sacred. And I don’t want to waste any time feeling sad or distracted. I just want to be grateful. To live as much life as possible.”