Sara gripped her Bible with both hands and entered the old man’s room. Warm, stale air hit her lungs. Semi-darkness momentarily reduced her visibility. Labored breath squeezed from his chest and competed with each tick of the Seth Thomas wall clock. A solid signal the end of his life stood in the checkout line.

Not one visitor had come since his arrival weeks earlier. She drew in a long, silent breath, let it out slow, formulating a warm greeting. “Good afternoon. I’m Sara Winthrop. I thought you might enjoy a short visit.”

His body sat rigid, like a soldier in a dugout ready for battle. No trace of mercy or tenderness could be found in his cold, gray eyed stare. Only hatred and hostility took ownership in the dark, piercing hollows. A sudden intent to crush, even destroy Sara, erupted from the deep furrowed lines of his features, in his pending battle to win a final war of wills. Seared and smoldering, like branding iron on flesh, his eyes bore into hers.

“I don’t need any snot-nose religious brat spitting words of redemption at me!” His angry statement stabbed and formed instant scares on her soul. One by one, each syllable pierced with intense sorrow fell beyond the depths of her tender heart. In a broken moment of time, gentle fingers of grace and mercy applied their healing balm.

In the next instant he lost the battle to fight further. His eyes closed. His body went limp. Only the slight rise and fall of his chest told Sara he hadn’t yet left this world. Void of pity to wager against his tired, cold, hard soul, his body had given up. He could do nothing but moil his pending death, eager to plunge him into eternal despair.

In his youth his strength of character challenged him to face life head on, no matter what the cost. Now, he leaned on death’s door with weak limbs. Reduced to argue his opinions with only a thin thread of verbal fight, until the fiber snapped. His voice dissolved to nothing. No words of wisdom, comfort, regret, or offerings of forgiveness to those he’d wronged, lined his lips in a closing statement.

One final long, shallow breath, flanked in his ridged and hollow spirit broke free. Death walked in on sturdy feet and claimed him. Void of love. Empty of money. He’d clung to his vanity even though it had fled. But its pain lingered to the end, then cemented a permanent, uncomfortable portrait of ugliness onto his face. An exorbitant price he now paid. He didn’t argue in his youth about the cost and lost the polemic attack in the end. Vanity had knit tight into his bones, tarnished his egotistical heart, joined him in his death bed, saturated his last struggling breath, and would consume his final resting place.

Sara exhaled her final prayer for the old man’s salvation in whispered silence. She bent, kissed his rough cheek, and left tears of sorrow stained on his weathered face.