I opened the door, perhaps accepting my fate almost willingly.

Empty waiting room with the red leather seats so different from the waiting room that I had just left. It had an older feel. I walked up to the counter. The lady, pleasantly plump and somewhat old…was on the phone as was another person. They had a cardboard box between them filled with pastries. They seemed busy with the phone.

I waited patiently and she lifted the phone from her ear. She said not too pleasantly or too pleasantly, “May I help you?”

I looked forward to relief and pushed forward my referral slip, “I was referred here by Dr. Velasco…”

She replied, not looking at the slip, and said in a dull tone, “The doctor passed away yesterday night.”

I mumbled something in response, in shock. She told me to go back upstairs to tell Dr. Velasco. As I walked out back on the elevator, now the whole dilemma was dawning on me. Not because of a doctor that died before I ever got to see him, but rather…life and death appears and disappears almost as if its own will. Did he have a fulfilling life? Treating patient after patient? A hollow job of pain and guilt only amended by the great bedside manner he supposedly held. In an office with a waiting room of old-fashioned red leather seats and gold trim?

Tears don’t come for someone I don’t know.