And the funny thing is

he looked at me and it reminded me of a dog I’d had when I was young, that dog who one day started shaking and turned grey all at once and we couldn’t afford the vet but my mum took me anyway, and when I went to pick him up and put him in the back of the car, and later on the table at the vest he gave me that look, that exact same look that young man was giving me now, that look of fear and hope intermingled, of pain and the prospect of being freed from pain, and there is so much love there and so much trust, they trust you and they love you and they believe you can do it, they know you of all people can do it, and you can, but not in the right way, you can take away their pain and it will take them with it, and I’m not saying a person is their pain or anything trite like that, I’m saying the pain so bound up in there with that person that you can’t remove it without damage, without pulling out all of the places it grew into, which is all of them, and they aren’t stupid, the dog or the young man, they know this before you do, and they both sigh, a long deep sigh that could fool you for contentment, like they’ve got there now, to a different place, not better but different – if it wasn’t for the faint warble on the edge of their breath, that flutter that gives away what it’s taken for them, what it means, and you nod like you understand, but you don’t, not yet, and then they are gone, the pain is gone and all that’s left is an indentation, some drying flowers on the windowsill, a whisper of a breeze on the back of your hand.