He fell again today. Damn it but he had been so careful lately. He hadn't fallen since that time at his daughter's place when he was there for one of the grand kiddie's birthday's. Four or five weeks ago. Well, except for that one time about two weeks ago at the picture show. But that didn't count. There was an awful lot of noise and confusion there. People all in zig-zag cues and going in all different directions. Kids running around everywhere. He hadn't even noticed the additional rug in front of the ticket window. It was practically the same damn color as the carpet beneath it. They tried to disguise the damn thing and he tripped over it. If they need to have two damn rugs they should make them contrasting colors by God! Luckily he had been able to catch hold of the ticket window ledge and keep himself from going all the way down. 
 
     But today he did go all the way down. He was in the waiting room at his doctor's office. A simple blood draw for lab tests. They wanted to make sure his sugar was in check and that his cholesterol was at a safe level. Just a simple blood test that he gets three times a year now. The lab tests had been coming back good the last fifteen months or so. That was good, they told him. He'd been real good with his diet. Eating more fruits and vegetables, high fiber cereals and grains. He'd been staying away from sugar, red meat and alcohol. He was exercising more too. He'd been walking two miles every evening, three miles some evenings but his left shoulder began to ache on that longer walk so he didn't do that so often.
 
   Golly, what he wouldn't give for a nice, thick T-Bone steak. Rare. Smother it with onions and mushrooms. Yes-siree Bob! That there is a real man's dinner. What was that old military expression? Big as an Army blanket, thick as a Boson's mate and tender as a Yeoman striker. Oh-yeah! Serve me up one of those! And a couple of pints of good ale to wash it down please. Bring it on!
 
  Today when they called his name in the waiting room he stood up, things got a little gray and fuzzy, and then he was on the floor on all fours. How embarrassing! All those people standing around him, looking at him.
 
   "Sir! Are you ok? Are you alright? Hello, can you hear me sir? Are you ok? Sir?
 
   "Yes, yes damn it all! I'm fine. Just lost my balance is all. I'm fine."
 
   They helped him up, got him seated and then a young Hispanic girl in pink scrubs appeared with a blood pressure cuff. When did medical personnel start wearing pink uniforms? Was that a uniform or a costume? The next thing he knew he was in a wheel chair and being rolled back to an examining room. He could have just died from the embarrassment. How humiliating!
 
   They gave him a drink of fruit juice, took his blood pressure two or three times then drew blood for the lab work he had originally come for. They looked in his eyes, ears and had him open his mouth so they could look down his throat. What they expected to see in his throat he couldn’t begin to guess. After a few minutes someone wheeled him back out to the waiting room where a volunteer was waiting to help him back to the van for the ride home.
 
   He refused to allow them to wheel him out of the medical office building in that chair.
 
   "I can walk there just fine. Thank you." He told the volunteer. "I'm ok." He added.
 
   And he did. He walked out of the medical building to the parking lot and climbed into the van with no help from anyone. "I'm fine." He said again, to no one in particular.
 
   But he did feel a bit “fuzzy” again on the ride home. It was a good thing he was sitting down.
 
   I'm about done. The thought crept into his mind later, back in his small apartment. Seventy-eight on my last birthday. Just two months ago now. Seventy-fucking-eight!  He was thinking. How in hell did I get to be seventy-eight years old? My God!
 
   A tired, weary grin crept across his sad and wrinkled face as he thought. Stick a freakin' fork in me Doris. I'm about freakin' done!
 
   Doris had been his wife of more than fifty years. Cancer got her about two and a half years ago. He thanks God almost daily that it was quick. It was very painful for her but it was over less than three months after she was first diagnosed. Early spring it was. The flowers were blooming, the birds were singing and Doris was in the ground. I so miss you my friend.
 
   He stands at the armoire for a full minute, one hand on the drawer handle, before pulling open the top drawer. He reaches in and way to the back left hand corner. He feels the bulk of the gun laying back there wrapped in an old hand towel. He pulls the bundle forward and out. He carries it to the little computer desk in the corner of the room.
 
   No computer ever sat on or near this desk though. Not as long as he and Doris had owned it anyway. They never had any damn computer. Never missed it either. He could never understand what all the hullabaloo and hoopla over these computers was all about.

   Banking on line? What the devil would you do that for? What ‘line’ is that anyway? How would you know that you were actually dealing with your bank? No thank you. I'll write a check, put it in an envelope, stamp it and drop it in the U.S. Mail. They've been delivering mail for well over a hundred years now. I think they've got it figured out. I'm going to go on trusting the U.S. Government to get my checks where they need to be. You betch-ya. On-line banking my ass!
 
   He lowers himself carefully onto the little chair there by the desk and slowly unwraps the gun. It's fully loaded with high velocity magnum rounds.
 
    Now, this is a real gun. He's thinking. It's a Smith & Wesson .357 magnum.
 

   Smith & Wesson have been around for a long time my friend. Yes they have. They were making hand guns back in the days when a man walked around with a loaded gun in a holster at his side at all times. Real men those were. Real guns for real men. They lived hard and fast and often died young those men did. Many of them went out in a blaze of gun fire, the smell of cordite and hot lead in the air. You betch-ya.
 
   None of those men ever left a room in a wheel chair. By God!
 
   The gun is oily to his touch and heavier than he remembers. He slowly turns it so that he is looking at the large, black, unblinking eye at the business end of the guns barrel.  

   I ain’t scared’a-you.