Stuart glanced at the wristwatch, waterproof to one thousand meters. Jan had paid a jeweler to etch the phrase “Memento Mori,” after they conversed about why he insisted on always wearing his annoying wristwatch, even while they slept, which aggravated her. Jan didn’t appreciate constant reminders of time lapsed, especially when she wasn’t working.

Stuart considered tossing the wristwatch over the guardrail of the ferry into Lake Ontario as the open passenger boat crossed Toronto harbor towards the ferry terminal, after his latest and last argument with Jan, but he decided against such drastic action. Jan had made a tremendous scene and commotion on the sand of Hanlan’s Point Beach on the Toronto Islands, after she drank a six-pack of hard seltzers. She attracted plenty of attention from beach goers, some of whom were nude. Stuart gazed at her stoically, refraining from commenting, when he observed how angry she had become, how out of control she appeared. She was visibly trembling and breathing hard until she abruptly gathered her beach blanket and towel and her picnic hamper and kicked sand in his face, with feet that had received plenty of practice from recreational soccer.

Her Chihuahua, which she adored and loved, sensed her anger, and intense emotional state, and barked at him aggressively. Jarvik started to attack him, bared and gnashed his teeth, and bit him, causing him to bleed. Jan stormed off in a huff, after she put Jarvik on his leash.

The wristwatch, with its silver finish, its heft, its large size, its thick glass and titanium, and shiny wristband attracted plenty of attention, too much attention. A friend warned him he was likely to get mugged if he wore the watch. But he had to admit he appreciated the wristwatch, even if Jan no longer liked him. Although he once again felt tempted to toss the wristwatch into the Toronto Harbor, as the ferry sped through the summer night, made cool by the movement of the ferry, and the wind, he decided to keep the timepiece and to continue wearing it on his wrist.

Stuart had made the mistake of mentioning all the wristwatches he lost when he went to take a shower at the fitness center or when he went swimming in the pool or at the lake. He needed a watch he could wear in the shower, pool or at the lake, so he wouldn’t lose it, he said. So, Jan bought him the wristwatch, which claimed to be waterproof to a thousand meters in water and gave it to him as a gift. The watch possessed a glass face thicker than a jet fighter cockpit window. People, random onlookers, commented on how impressive the wristwatch looked.

Jan and Kristen drank too many hard seltzers at a picnic at Hanlan’s Point Beach on the Toronto Islands. They ended up complaining about their careers in nursing, their salaries and wages, and overtime pay, all diminished by rising inflation. Later, Jan and Kristen argued over the cost and value of the wristwatch. Kristen questioned how Jan managed to buy a watch with a list price of fifteen hundred dollars on sale at such a discount. Stuart replied that the watch was probably gray market. The insinuation Jan may have engaged in a sketchy or shady transaction triggered her anger and aggression.

Stuart looked around for packets of artificial sweetener for his coffee in the takeout bag filled with muffins and doughnuts. He worried about their drinking and drunkenness on the public beach, which, fortunately, was populated only by adults. Kristen said the wristwatch was counterfeit the same way that he was emotionally counterfeit. Stuart could never understand why Kristen was so insistent on intervening in their disputes.

Later, Kristen dropped by his apartment at an ungodly hour. He didn’t know at first why she visited him after midnight, but he finally decided to answer the door. He reminded himself she was Jan’s friend and close ally, who gave him the impression she didn’t like him. He believed none of Jan’s friends liked him. So why would she be dropping by his apartment at this late hour, especially after he broke up with Jan, and he mostly blamed her dog. At first, Stuart didn’t see who else, but her Chihuahua was to blame.

Still, he answered the door even though it was midnight because Kristen, a nurse, who worked at the same hospital as Jan, was also a night person. Anyway, he liked and admired Kristen. He also appreciated her looks and her slender muscular build.

“You should visit Jan,” Kristen said.

“Kristen, we broke up. We’re history.”

“Still, I think you should visit Jan. She is not in a good place,” Kristen warned.

Kristen allowed her short denim jacket to slip open, so he could see she was only wearing lingerie underneath. None of Jan’s friends believed in conventional fashion; even though they were nurses and doctors who worked in healthcare, they were the most unconventional and bohemian people he ever met. That was what he liked about them, but he continued to believe Jan’s friends, healthcare professionals, never liked him.

“I started to get that impression before we broke up that she was not in a good place,” Stuart said.

“Jarvik died,” Kristen said.

“That’s tragic,” Stuart said. “She must be ready to kill herself.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Kristen said, “and that’s why you need to visit her now.”

“What happened?” Stuart asked.

“She couldn’t get to sleep. It was 4 am. She was wearing a housecoat and slippers, and she took Jarvik for a walk along Eglinton Avenue at four am.”

“People are murdered walking along Eglinton Avenue after midnight,” Stuart said.

“Eglinton Avenue West is safe.”

“You’re a woman and you’re telling me Eglinton Avenue West at 4 am is safe?”

“You’re exaggerating. You never grew up in a mining and logging town in Northwestern Ontario, so you don’t know what’s safe and what’s dangerous.”

Stuart shrugged, considering she was probably correct: Eglinton Avenue, closer to midtown, was probably safer than Eglinton Avenue West on the suburban side. He still didn’t know why Kristen visited his house at midnight with this information about which he could do nothing.

“Anyway, she’s walking along Eglinton Avenue at 4 am in her housecoat and slippers. The police pulled up alongside her in a patrol car and started to ask her questions. She called the police killers, asked them why they were dressed in body armor like they were ready for hand-to-hand combat and urban warfare, when what they did was mostly social work. She really leaned and laid into them, but she never bothered to leash up Jarvik. She wasn’t paying attention to her dog, which started yelping and barking at the police.”

“Well, if you know Jan, you know that Jarvik is the first, the last, the everything.”

“Then the police cruiser stopped. What’s interesting: the whole time the police never stepped out of the car but crept up in their cruiser alongside her. Then they radioed the dispatcher, or the dispatcher radioed them, and they sped ahead. By then Jarvik was running around on the road. The police cruiser drove over Jarvik and crushed him.”

Stuart couldn’t help noticing that Kristen’s bra was sheer, see-through, possessed an intricate flowery design.

“What’s wrong?” Kristen asked.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Stuart said.

“Then why are you smiling?”

“I’m not smiling,” Stuart said.

“But you are smiling,” Kristen insisted. Kristen stepped back and recoiled. “Oh my God,” Kristen said. “You’re smiling. You’re happy that Jan’s dog was killed by the police.”

“I’m not happy that Jan’s dog was killed by the police. But did you ever think that the dog was sick and tired of Jan? Did you ever think the dog may have hurtled itself in front of the police cruiser, in an existential act, fulfilling its fate and destiny, relieving itself of the miserable existence and life it lived as a slave of Jan?”

“A slave of Jan? What the hell are you talking about? Are you suggesting the pet she pampered and took such good care of died because it hurtled itself in front of a police car? Are you suggesting Joyce drove the dog to commit suicide?”

“I don’t think you know the relationship that Jan had with her dog that well.”

“Are you suggesting Jan abused Jarvik?”

“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m merely saying the dog may have finally found some peace.”

“Ok. So, you really are happy that Joyce’s dog is dead.”

“Kristen, please, don’t project your emotions on me. I know, I understand: Jan is upset. Jan is grieving, but it’s midnight. What do you expect me to do?”

“I just came from talking to her, and listening to her, and I think it would help if you visited her.”

“Kristen, I don’t think that you understand. Jan hates me now. We broke up, probably because of her dog.”

Kristen clasped his shoulder. “She still feels for you, and now Jarvik is out of the way. I think she needs you to help her through the loss. Besides, I’m afraid she’ll do something rash.”

Stuart, shrugging, said he didn’t know what he could do to help the situation. Kristen insisted that he was still smiling, smirking, even, still happy, relieved that Jarvik died. Kristen said that she’d drive him to Jan’s house.

Jan lived in a house near Eglinton West subway station, on the line Stuart rode every day.

Stuart could never understand how his friends could afford their houses, since he only lived in an apartment in an old squat square wartime residential building along Eglinton Avenue West. Kristen drove him to Jan’s house, but he didn’t bother to stay. Jan lived in a house near Eglinton West Station, the subway station, which he rode happily every day.

Kristen thought it was prudent to leave them alone to sort out their differences. She hoped they could arrive at some sort of reconciliation, so he could support her in her time of need. She dropped him off, outside Jan’s parking pad, with weeds growing in the cracks.

Kristen observed him at Jan’s door, and then saw him step inside, after Jan barely exhibited the strength to let him inside her house. Then Kristen drove away, leaving Stuart to help Jan manage and cope with the grief and trauma she experienced over the death of Jarvik. Jan, in her housecoat, started sobbing when she saw Stuart, telling him that Jarvik was gone, Jarvik was dead, Jarvik had been murdered by the police.

Stuart tried not to interject; he tried not to interrupt or rebut her, and he tried to be there to support her. Jan started to complain about the police, saying that they profiled her—followed her and harassed her under the presumption she was drunk, homeless, mentally ill, a prostitute. Then, after they ran over Jarvik, they arrested her for assaulting a police officer, when she was only trying to save her Chihuahua, and lost control because they killed him.

“Jan, stop, stop these accusations. Stop blaming the police.”

“You’re worse than them.” Jan slapped Stuart on the cheek hard. “You hated Jarvik.” She slapped him again after she took another sip of her gin. “You hated Jarvik. You’re so self-centered, and so self-absorbed. You could never understand why anyone would care for a dog and love a dog.”

“Jan, I’m going to go. Kristen wanted me to be here for you, and I don’t know why I came.”

“Go, please, go. You never loved me. You could never love me again—even now that Jarvik is gone.” She started sobbing again. “Now go, please go. You never loved me, never cared for me.”

Stuart stepped backwards to the door and advised her she should call Kristen again. Stuart walked along Eglinton Avenue West, past the hair salons and beauty shops, the restaurants, food carts for the Jamaican beef patties and jerk chicken, pizza stands, barber shops and convenience stores, to Dufferin Street. Stuart caught the all-night bus to his apartment block. He thought that the first thing that he could do when he arrived home was call Kristen. He’d tell her that, yes, Jan was in a sorry and fragile mental state. Yes, Jan needed somebody to be there with her, but he just wasn’t a suitable man for that challenging position.

As soon as he arrived home, his landline telephone started to ring, and he answered. Jan sounded angry and sleepy—even drunk and drugged. She told him she had downed a whole bottle of antidepressants, Prozac capsules, and sleeping pills with the rest of the gin. She had overdosed. Stuart tried to obtain details of her binging on the medications, but she sounded incoherent, and Stuart urged her not to fall asleep.

After he hung up the telephone, he called 911 and the ambulance. Then he was about to flag a taxi on Eglinton Avenue West, when he saw the Blue Night bus driving downhill. He rode the night bus back along the thoroughfare to her house. When he went to her house, he was surprised that the police and an ambulance weren’t parked outside her house. After he knocked and rang the doorbell repeatedly and nobody answered, he pounded and hammered the door. Still, nobody answered, and he entered Jan’s house. He found Jan unconscious on her comfortable couch.

He called the emergency telephone number again, but the dispatcher said the police and ambulance were mixed up after a dispatcher error. The police and ambulance had gone to his apartment. Jan remained unconscious on the couch. Stuart tried to find a pulse in the veins in her neck and her wrist, but he could find no such signs. He thought he detected faint respirations, and she felt warm to the touch. He assumed she was still alive, but unconscious and drifting into a coma, so he started administering chest compressions. Jan started to vomit, foul-smelling, unsightly vomitus, which contained pills, white and green capsules, and orange tablets, partially dissolved, bile, and awful smelling liquor.

Stuart tried to rest her on her side and even looked around, in the faint hope she might have a tank of oxygen and a mask on the premises. He ended up calling the 911 emergency call center again. The dispatcher said there was a communications breakdown, or, rather, a coordination mix-up and logistics error. The police and ambulance had gone to his apartment. He said he understood there was a mix-up, but why hadn’t the ambulance and paramedics arrived at her house yet? She was unconscious and unresponsive, and he didn’t know what to do. The dispatcher said he should stay at the scene, that paramedics and police were en route.

Stuart looked around the living room. Jan had printed off grisly pictures of Jarvik after he had been crushed and pulverized by the heavy-duty tires of the police cruiser, pictures she insisted on taking with her smartphone and which the police tried to prevent her from taking before she was arrested. Beneath the lamp he saw on the screen of her large laptop that Jan had written a blow-by-blow account of the incident and encounter with law enforcement. Jan had also been browsing on the Internet, methodically perusing the webpages of the civilian police complaints commission, the human rights commission, criminal defense lawyers, and lawyers specializing in lawsuits against the police.

But he thought: should he continue to attempt to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation? Having found her in dire condition, shouldn’t he try to revive her? Stuart tried administering chest compressions again, but she started to vomit. The vomitus was gross, and the smell was overpowering. Stuart could see dissolved tablets and capsules in the vomitus, so he felt confident she would survive the overdose. When the police and paramedics arrived, they wanted him out of the way, out of sight. The team of police officers and paramedics didn’t even have questions for him because he remembered to call Kristen, who, as nurse and close friend, provided whatever missing information they needed and answered their questions.

Through her telephone calls, Kristen managed to expedite the ambulance to Jan’s house and ended up taking control and command of the first responders. Stuart thought that it was just as well, since Kristen was Jan’s best friend and a nurse, but he felt like an annoying bystander after she lost his patience with him. She snapped at him angrily and ordered him to get the hell out of Jan’s house. The police and paramedics glanced at Stuart with blank pale faces that turned crimson. Stuart reminded Kristen, she had sent him to Jan’s house in the first place, a move that he thought ill-advised. Stuart accused Kristen of wanting to argue, like Jan, when all he was trying to do was mind his own business.

“Who wants to argue?” Kristen shouted, as the paramedics loaded Jan onto the gurney. Stuart was about to leave Jan’s house, but he asked her if he should head to the hospital. Kristen surprised him when she said she might need backup, but she insisted on accompanying Jan in the ambulance. She asked him to drive her car to the hospital. He reminded Kristen that he hated driving in the city. “Jan is at risk of dying and you’re telling me you’re not comfortable driving my car to the hospital? You really are an asshole.”

So, Stuart drove Kristen’s car along Eglinton Avenue until a police officer pulled him over near Avenue Road, for driving erratically, she said, after he made a lane change without signaling. The police officer detained him for an hour, after she pulled him over, alongside a few more motorists. The officer insisted on verifying his identity, since Stuart didn’t have his driver’s license in his possession, but at home. Finally, the police officer accepted his apology and explanation for speeding and cutting corners and set him free.

Stuart resumed the short voyage to hospital row on University Avenue in downtown Toronto. When he arrived at the emergency department of the hospital on University Avenue, a nurse refused to disclose information about Jan because of patient confidentiality and his relationship, or his lack of a relationship, to the patient. After midnight he sat in the emergency department waiting room, reading stale news magazines. Then he started pacing and heard a voice from news radio indicate it was 4 AM. A nurse took aside and led him to a nondenominational chapel. She told him Jan was on life support.

“How could she have died?”

“I didn’t say she died. She’s intubated and on a ventilator.”

“But she’s not expected to survive?”

“She’s in critical condition in the intensive care unit. She might have brain damage. Her kidneys are failing, and the doctors are trying to decide whether they should try dialysis.”

The nurse, one of the few staffers in the emergency department who did not know Jan personally, since she was a recent college and nursing school graduate, gave him a peculiar look. She told him if he needed to cry, he could cry. If he needed someone to talk to, he could talk to her. He returned to the waiting area in the emergency department, hoping he could intercept or meet Jan somehow.

Then a doctor wearing stilettos whose clack helped announce her presence entered the waiting room area around the emergency department reception desk and nursing station. “There was no timely intervention,” the doctor said tepidly.

“But she only overdosed on antidepressants,” Stuart said. “I thought they were safe.”

“She also swallowed the contents of a whole bottle of lorazepam and clonazepam, and she drank about a quart of gin.”

“I don’t understand. Where’s Kristen?”

“Kristen is in a dark place. She went to the nursing station with a few other nurses. You might consider calling her at a more appropriate time. Regardless, what is your relation to Jan? Jan was a healthcare worker at this hospital. In fact, she worked in this very department,” the doctor said, and tapped and clacked her stiletto heels.

Stuart attempted to explain his complicated relationship to Jan.

“I think you’re being provocative, and I’d like to know your relationship to Jan.”

“I’m her boyfriend, or should I say her ex-boyfriend. Her Chihuahua was her significant other.”

“You really sound like you’re trying to be provocative.”

“I apologize. I’m not trying to be provocative. Jarvik, her Chihuahua, was the provocative one. I lost track of the number of times Jarvik bit me, and I never sought medical attention, never went to the emergency department, despite the fact I bled from his bites and even worried I might contract tetanus or lockjaw or rabies.”

“Ok. Enough. Now you’re being very provocative. Your name is Stuart, isn’t it? Jan told me all about you. And I’m sorry, but I can’t divulge any more of Jan Miller’s personal and confidential health information to you. You better leave before I call security. In fact, I’m ready to contact security now.”

Stuart departed the hospital through the sliding doors of the emergency department exits on the laneway where the paramedics arrived and departed in their ambulances. He walked the boulevard of University Avenue, along the stretch known as hospital row, with several major hospitals, including cancer centers, psychiatric wards, and located in the downtown neighborhood, on a mild summer night. The city lights looked bright and held faint promise.

Jan was gone, although he certainly hoped she would survive. He felt free and unencumbered of any relationship that might confine him. He felt a strange sense of exhilaration, the same sense of emancipation and liberation he felt after his father passed away. He no longer had to answer to the old man.

The man in a leather jacket, jeans, and hiking boots caught up to him at Queen and Spadina. Stuart sensed an ominous presence but decided to continue walking towards his own place near Ossington Avenue, despite the fact a taxicab slowed down beside him and offered him a ride. The man saw the shiny heavy titanium waterproof watch Jan had given him. The man had been reminiscing, thinking how he appreciated life in the detention facility, the submarine sandwiches they brought him for meals, the relative comfort and warmth of the cell. He suddenly cherished the glitzy watch, the silver bracelet, the thick glass, the intricate face, the precise mechanical action.

The man slipped his folding knife from his pocket. He slashed Stuart with the sharp blade in the upper arm and then slashed the lower arm, upon whose wrist he bore the watch. The pain was like a jolt of intense electricity, but the sensation was aggravated as he saw the blood that dripped from the injury. The assailant smoothly slashed the knife across his wrist and unclasped the wristband and unfastened the wristwatch.

Out of a reflexive impulse, Stuart seized the man’s arm and hand with the knife. The knife clattered to the ground. Instinctively, Stuart kicked the weapon into the gutter and pushed the blade towards the grate where it fell through the cracks into the drain sewer. His assailant had expected no resistance. Then Stuart comprehended he was not only a small man, but he had greater physical strength. Even as he bled from the wounds from the knife slashes, Stuart saw the fear in his eyes. Still, he handed him the wristwatch and told him to keep it. He asked him to leave him alone; he had no other cash or valuables.

Stuart’s assailant slipped away with the watch into the night of Queen Street. The wristwatch had been a distraction, and it attracted the attention and eyes of people, who cherished pricey material possessions and luxury goods, some of whom he normally would have avoided. Random strangers asked him about the watch, a starter for conversations, but he was of reticent and taciturn nature in public, in the city.

He realized his assailant could have used the watch more. Despite his injury and bleeding, he felt a tinge of exhilaration, euphoria, as if he had become liberated, emancipated.

This legacy of Jan faded away into the night. Still, he hoped she survived so he could entertain and even amuse her about the fate of the wristwatch whose shiny fine face annoyed him when he could not read the time in the darkness of his bedroom amid sleep. Dizzy, lightheaded, he felt like he was ready to lose consciousness. He tentatively stepped towards the bright entrance of the fast-food restaurant open twenty-four hours a day on the grimy street corner in the dark night at the edge of Chinatown and the garment district, in a city, which, he once believed, as a bright-eyed newcomer, held such promise and hope for youth with aspirations and dreams.