In the not too distant future...

“Spare some change?” came the gravelly voice. I turned to see the man sitting against the wall. He had an old red hat on. Once, it might have said something, but now whatever it was had long since faded.

He had a shallow, breathy wheeze as he talked - one I was all too familiar with. You heard it wherever you went these days. Not everyone, just a few, but it was still a painful reminder.

“You okay?” I asked.

His beaten down face filled with something for just a second. Hope? Maybe just the thrill of human connection. Someone to notice him. To talk to him again.

“Got the Covid” he wheezed “back in the double-twenty. Ate up my lungs, kicked my brain in the teeth, can barely breathe anymore. Can hardly think.”

“It’s bad?” I asked.

“Like the devil took a shit in my lungs is what it feels like.” He said. I felt a sadness, a sorrow wash over me.

“You doin’ okay?” I asked.

“Surivivin’.” He said. “Barely make ends meet with m’disabilit-disabilit—“ He broke into a wracking cough. It took him a minute to get his seizing lungs back under control. And then he gasped like a fish without oxygen for a few moments.

“Disability?” I finished for him. He nodded. I eyed the man, taking him in with fresh eyes. The weathered, defeated face with its saggy skin. He could have been fifty, or eighty. After the ravages of that disease, only God knew. I squatted down by him. “Lemme ask you a question. Did you wear a mask?”

His scowl set in. It was still a loaded question, even after all of these years. “What difference does it make?” He spat out.

“So, no, then.” I said.

“How was we to know? I mean, we didn’t know back then—“

“Yes. We did.” I said. “The whole world knew.”

I could see the anger inside him, still there after all these years. It wanted to boil up. To spill over at me. But the body was too weak to contain it anymore, and it just... fizzled away. I sighed.

“I have no sympathy for you.” I told him. “You didn’t wear a mask. And you got Covid. And you probably spread it to others you knew. You’re lucky enough to be alive. But maybe one of them died. And you spent the rest of your life wondering… was it me who did that? Was that my mistake. So don’t look to me for sympathy.”

His face did fill with anger now. Some vestige of the man he once was.

“Wait.” I said “I said I have so sympathy. That doesn’t mean I don’t have compassion. What you did was stupid. And reckless. But no one deserves to have what happened to you happen to them because of that. That’s not a fair or a kind world, and I’m sorry.” I reached into my wallet. Inside, I fished out my last twenty. I set it down into his almost empty change cup. It wasn’t worth what it once was, but it was something.

“I hope you feel better.” I said. And I walked away. The man sat staring into his hands, his face unreadable.