Chapter 84 It's not fair
Humanity likes to believe in balance.
The idea that people exist somewhere along a spectrum, that no one is completely good, and no one is completely bad.
It’s a comforting philosophy. One that allows us to forgive things more easily, to explain cruelty as circumstance and kindness as instinct. But in reality, people tend to fall into quieter categories.
There are those who try.
People who make a conscious effort to be decent to the world around them. To be kind when it costs them something. To show up for others when they don’t have to. To soften their edges rather than sharpen them.
And then there are the others.
The ones who move through the world like it’s personally offended them. Who carry bitterness the way some people carry faith. Who treat strangers like enemies they haven’t yet identified.
Every day you walk past dozens of people. On sidewalks. In grocery stores. Sitting across from you on buses or trains. And you never really know which kind they are. Most of the time, when you approach someone, they surprise you. Even the reserved ones. They look up, they smile politely. They answer your question. They hold the door a second longer than necessary. They nod in quiet acknowledgment that you exist. Little gestures. Small confirmations that the world is still inhabited by people who remember how to be human with each other.
When you experience that enough times, something subtle begins to settle in your mind. A belief that the good outweighs the bad. That most people, when given the choice, lean toward kindness rather than cruelty.
But every once in a while, you meet someone who breaks that illusion. And it lands like a slap to the face. A sudden, jarring reminder that bitterness exists too. That there are people who wake up in the morning already angry at a world that hasn’t even asked anything of them yet. And what stays with you isn’t the hundreds of small kindnesses you’ve encountered before. It’s that one moment of unnecessary cruelty. That one person who looks at you like you’ve done something unforgivable simply by existing near them.
And afterward you find yourself wondering about them. Who lives with that person? Who shares a table with them at dinner? Who listens to their voice every day without eventually walking away? How do people tolerate that kind of constant hostility?
Maxwell Konan, the fourth patient in A Body Made of Quiet Things, was one of those people.
Mean.
Angry.
Cruel in ways that felt almost intentional.
The kind of man who could turn a simple interaction into something sour within seconds. If kindness was offered to him, he treated it like an insult. If patience was extended, he seemed determined to exhaust it.
People like to say pain makes people kinder. That suffering deepens empathy. Maxwell Konan was living proof that sometimes pain does the opposite. Sometimes it sharpens every ugly edge a person already carries.
He was sixty-nine years old when they told him the cancer had spread too far.
Pancreatic cancer.
The kind that quietly grows in the background until the body finally realizes it’s losing a war it never knew it was fighting. By the time they found it, surgery wasn’t an option.
Treatment wouldn’t cure it. All medicine could offer him now was time. And even that came with conditions.
Hospice was the next step. And when Maxwell Konan arrived there, he was carrying the same anger he had apparently spent a lifetime perfecting....
Ryan eventually takes my hand, even though he hesitates first. It’s subtle, the small pause before his fingers close around mine, but I feel it anyway.
I pause the TV, the frozen image hanging awkwardly on the screen behind us, and then I reach for my phone on the coffee table. My thumb moves absently as I scroll through songs.
“Nothing sad,” Ryan says.
I glance up at him. For a moment I just look at his face, the quiet seriousness in the request. Then I smile.
“Nothing sad,” I repeat, nodding.
After another second of scrolling I find a slow piano piece. No lyrics. Just something soft and steady. Something that won’t intrude. I place the phone back down on the table and step closer to him.
Ryan chuckles a little when I guide him into position, the sound low and awkward as I place my hands on his waist and gently adjust the distance between us.
“Michael—”
“Focus,” I tell him curtly. “This is serious business.”
He huffs out a quiet laugh, but he lets me guide him. At first the movement is hesitant and clumsy. Two people trying to understand the language of something their bodies haven’t quite learned yet. My hand shifts slightly against his side, nudging him into the next step. His grip on my shoulder adjusts. Our feet bump once, then twice.
But after a minute we find something.
A rhythm.
Not perfect, not elegant. Just something that works. So we stick to it the same way Ryan sticks to Survivor. Because it works. And sometimes that’s reason enough.
We move slowly across the small space, our steps quiet against the floor. Ryan’s grey eyes find mine and for a moment we just look at each other.
“You’re suspiciously good at this,” he says.
I raise an eyebrow. “Or we’re equally terrible, and therefore incapable of noticing.”
He chuckles softly. His hands tighten just slightly where they rest around the back of my neck. And as we keep moving, my mind drifts somewhere else.
To Maxwell Konan.
The man who hated everyone. Who seemed to wake up every day already angry at the world. He was cruel to the doctors trying to help him. Cruel to the nurses who checked on him at all hours. He pushed away the few family members who managed to swallow their pride long enough to visit him.
And whenever he saw Angel Jimenez walking down the hospice hallway with her notebook and pen, he would sneer at her like she was personally responsible for his suffering.
He’d say she was enjoying herself. That she was young and healthy and that was the only reason she volunteered there.
“So you can absorb our misery,” he once snapped at her.
“Feed off it.”
I remember the way Angel just stood there quietly, absorbing the words without answering. And later that night, she finally opened her notebook and wrote....
“Some patients spend their final months searching for peace.
Maxwell Konan seems determined to prove the world never deserved his kindness in the first place. Almost like it betrayed him long before cancer did.
Some people fight cancer.
Maxwell Konan fights everyone.”
Standing here with Ryan in my arms, I find myself thinking something ugly. Something cruel. Something that probably says more about me than I’d like to admit.
Because I look at Ryan....at this beautiful man. This young, gentle, thoughtful human being who apologizes when he accidentally bumps into people in crowded hallways. Who thanks waiters twice. Who worries about stray animals and carries the kind of patience it takes to stand in front of a classroom every day and believe the effort still matters.
And I think....It’s not fair.
People like Maxwell Konan carry their bitterness through the world like it’s a badge of honor. They hurt everyone around them. They poison every room they enter. And yet they still get their years. Still get their time.
While someone like Ryan, someone who moves through life like a quiet light...He ends up with a disease that’s slowly trying to erase him.
It’s an ugly thought. A cruel one. But standing here, holding him while we sway slowly to the quiet piano music, I can’t stop it from surfacing.
If the universe insisted on handing cancer to someone....If it came down to people like Maxwell Konan and people like Ryan...
I would choose Maxwell.
Without hesitation.
Without guilt.
Because Ryan....Ryan is the kind of person the world should protect. The kind who deserves long mornings and good coffee and ordinary days that stretch on forever.
He deserves good food. He deserves to travel to beautiful places. He deserves quiet evenings in restaurants with live music drifting through the air.
He deserves a second chance to sit across from someone he likes, and gather the courage to ask them to dance.