Princess Margaret

Tough guys, down from whatever floor they’d been warehoused in at the hospital, sat outside smoking.

They didn’t talk much, although the one with the small, white hospital towel draped over his knees, offered that, “heart disease might be involved, too.” He took a drag from his cigarette as he waited for a response. You could see the tattoos covering his hand, the IV piercing the skin just above the word HATE spelled out on his knuckles, the smoke being exhaled. The other guy nodded. He had nothing to say. And with that the conversation disintegrated. Just space between them now. An unbroachable distance. Grief-struck and lost, a million miles apart, they looked through all the people passing by on the sidewalk in front of them, and stared off into other worlds.