The last thing I remembered was passing out on a curb in New York City.

Now I was on a bus somewhere in New Jersey going south.

How did that happen?

I grabbed my backpack and found the contents had been replaced.

The only things left were a large meat-and-cheese sandwich and two bottles of water.

Its front pouch only held my one-way, non-refundable bus ticket, a burner phone that had no signal, and a scrap of paper with a phone number scratched on it.

I'd been kidnapped - but not really. None of the other passengers on that bus seemed bothered at all, not even noticing I was even there.

Going through the pockets of my jeans and jacket, I also found that all my ID and money was gone. And I had no other clothes than what I was wearing.

So the only thing left for me to do is to take this ride where it was already heading - to some tiny town in the middle of nowhere...

Except:

I came out through the glass and aluminum door of the clinic.

Dour-faced, upset, frustrated.

Earlier that day, I'd lost my job.

I had nothing in the bank. No relatives anywhere nearby ? and the ones I had out there didn't particularly want to hear from me.

My last hope was that my doctor here would give me something I could OD on.

But that conversation went something like this:

"I can't prescribe anything for you any more. Because it would probably kill you faster than you already are killing yourself. And as a Doctor, I can't assist your own suicide."

My look at him was a plaintive as I could make it. "Come on, Doc ? can't you give me something for all this?"

I held up my hands, they were both shaking.

He just shook his head no. "Your blacking-out is in addition to your nerves going south. I told you six months ago you only had six months to live. And I've been telling you at least every month since what you needed to do to fix all that.

"But you didn't.

"So I'm going to tell you one more time, for whatever good it will do: Get into rehab, get off those caffeine drinks. Start eating a good diet with lots of protein. Get some rest. Get some sunshine. And get someone to take care of you ? because until you get that stuff out of your system and replaced with the proteins and vitamins you need ? well, if your heart doesn't just quit on you, you're probably going to black out crossing the street and get hit by a truck or something."

His face wasn't happy. He was serious. More than I'd ever seen him before.

Then he walked out of that examination room without looking back.

I left the clinic just like he did to me.

And soon wondered if I still had anything left that was worth pawning for some street drugs to end this miserable existence with.

Then my feet stopped. I was now standing on the curb of yet another street. One of the tens of thousands of streets that criss-crossed this city that never sleeps.

I was in the middle of the block. And like most New Yorkers, I had a penchant for walking in between the moving cars to get wherever I wanted to go.

I stopped because I was shaking all over now. And it was taking all the concentration I had to figure out how to get my feet to start moving again.

Then the blackness hit...

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