1. “How you doin’, doc? You gonna come ’round here to visit again?” His was a predator’s smile.

2. The patient hobbled along the hallway, stopped at the nursing station, and leaned onto the counter. The nurses, already familiar with what was about to happen, averted their eyes. “Hey, can I have a dollar?” she asked.

3. “I don’t want to tell my loved ones about my diagnosis. They don’t know about my lifestyle. What if they begin to hate me?”

4. He stumbled out of his chair and approached the panel of light switches. His left hand fumbled with the switches, flipping them on and off, while his right hand loosely held the styrofoam cup underneath the panel. “Why won’t any water come out?” he asked.

5. “I’m going to miss you,” he said. “I remember when we first met; I didn’t even want to talk to you. That’s changed.”

6. The man in the wheelchair saw me approaching and quickly wheeled himself around the corner. I began to walk faster; when I turned the same corner, he was already at the other end of the hallway. “I just want to talk to you,” I called out.

7. The senior physician on the team gazed at the circle of trainees. He cleared his throat before he began to speak. “This patient is an @$$hole,” he started, “and should be treated as such.”

8. His weak hand grasped the curved handle of his metal cane. He lifted the cane into the air and waved it around slowly, first in circles, then jabbing it directly at me. “Get the @#$% out of my room!” he demanded.

9. “But we are going to see each other again, right? Do you ever go to the Union Square greenmarket? I will look for you there.”

(First installment of three-sentence stories here.)