I’m Theo. I’m seven.
Me, my mom, my Dad, and my sister Ava, we’re in the doctor’s office. The talk doctor.
Mom and Dad are sitting on the shiny blue couch. It made a squeaky sound when they sat down. Ava’s between them. She’s eight. She’s wearing bell-bottoms, just like Mom. She even has a mood ring, just like Mom. She thinks she’s so grown up.

My name is Henry Wadsworth. Most prisoners call me Hank. I am proud of that moniker. Rare is the prison wherein there are any guards not loathed by the inmates. To be called Hank means I am an exception, one of the good guys, known to be decent and fair. It’s because I’m a man of faith. I don’t proselytize, though. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. I don’t force my faith on others. I think that’s why the prisoners like me.

I fell in love for the first time during the summer of ‘94. It was the summer before my senior year of high school, the same summer Sammy Davis played baseball for the Vermont Expos. He wore Mickey Mantle’s old number seven and manned his old position, center field. The Mick was Dad’s favorite player. Dad grew up west of the Mississippi in the fifties, so he bled Cardinal red. Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, and Enos Slaughter were his Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

I was admitted through the ED to a step-down unit shortly before midnight on a rainy late July Thursday. My wife, Gwen, had driven me there because of increasing gut pain, but upon intake it was noted that I also had significantly low heart rate and blood pressure. Initial tests provided no immediate explanation for any of the conditions, but because the pain became sufficiently intense that they had to administer a low dose of morphine…

I was just a tiny feral kitten when I lost my mother. She went to fetch food like she did every day. My siblings and I would wait on the porch of a house whose family was always traveling. It was freezing more than usual that evening. The loud noises from the roads made us crouch in fear. Then, I heard this screeching sound followed by a door opening and slamming in the street near the house’s porch. I listened to a woman’s cry of anguish.