The Man at Table 14
For twenty-five years, my mornings began with the same sound—the quiet click of our front door before sunrise.
That was my father, Joe, heading out to work with the city’s sanitation crews.
While our neighborhood slept, he was already lifting heavy bins, navigating tight alleys, and keeping streets clean that most people never thought about twice. He always came home smelling like diesel and metal, exhausted down to his bones—but his first act was always the same.
He hugged me.
My mother died of cancer when I was three, and from that day forward, my father became my entire world. We lived in a small, aging apartment where the heat rattled all winter and the windows barely opened in summer. We didn’t have much, but we had stability—real, unshakable stability.
He never missed a school play.
He never forgot a birthday.
And he never once apologized for the fluorescent orange vest he wore to work.
“It’s honest work, Anna,” he used to say. “A city that can’t clean itself can’t breathe.”
I carried those words with me through medical school.
Years later, during residency, I met Ethan in a hospital elevator. He was calm, attentive—steady in a way that felt safe. When I told him what my father did for a living, I braced myself for the polite discomfort I’d seen before.
Continue reading on the next page…