Daniel Rivera jerked awake when something small collided with his wheelchair. A little girl, maybe seven years old, with tangled hair and a dirt-stained pink shirt, stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. In one hand she held a small piece of bread.
“What on earth…?” Daniel murmured as his two security guards stepped forward toward the child.
“Please,” the girl whispered urgently, ducking behind his wheelchair. “Tell them I’m your granddaughter. That man wants to hit me.”
Across the path, a furious street vendor was already rushing toward them, waving his arms angrily.
Daniel felt a sudden ache in his chest—not from the pancreatic cancer slowly destroying his body, but from something deeper he hadn’t felt in years.
“Leave her alone,” he told the guards calmly. Then he looked toward the vendor. “How much for the bread?”
Just three hours earlier, Daniel had been sitting inside the office of the most respected oncologist in Chicago when he received the news that ended his future.
Stage four pancreatic cancer.
“Three to six months,” the doctor had said gently. “Possibly less.”
Daniel had responded without emotion.
“No treatments,” he said. “I prefer to leave this world with dignity.”