When all the commotion had subsided and all the people had cleared out of the cafeteria, there was one lunch box left on a table. It looked like a dog waiting for its master's next command. The lunch box's owner was being tended to in the back of an ambulance. He was on his way to the hospital with two new holes in his head.

A large man was compressing his ribcage, breaking some ribs in the process. The boy had no pulse, no power to breathe, no will to survive. He was watching from the roof of the ambulance as the large man worked up a sweat. The boy thought the large man should stop what he was doing, the window for his impossible success never having been open. 

The boy tried shouting at him. “Stop,” he yelled, but the large man kept on working.

When the ambulance arrived at the hospital’s emergency entrance, people in white coats hastily unloaded the gurney and relieved the large man of his resuscitation duties. The boy stayed with the large man and tried to assuage his grief, but it seemed his efforts were failing. The large man was wracked with sobs. The boy tried to tell him he had never felt better in his life, but the large man didn't seem to hear.

*****

Thursday, a lunch box on a table