It felt better than Nate expected to just give up after so long of fighting to stay alive. He didn’t even know why he had been fighting anymore. His parents were gone, and his extended family had all forgotten about him. The only people he talked to these days were from the insurance companies when they called for money he no longer had.

It had been so long since he had even gone outside his house that seeing his empty bank balance had been a relief of sorts. It had given him the excuse he didn’t even know he needed to give up.

It was a struggle to pull out the IV without tearing his paper-thin flesh. He left it to drip the mix of pain meds and whatever else they pumped into him on the floor. The oxygen tubes were next, a thankfully painless experience, as he simply pulled them away from his face.

It had been such a hassle to get the doctors to approve him to live at home. But it had been worth it, something that he believed now more than ever.

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If he was going to die, then he was going to do it outside watching the sunset.

Nate glanced at the small computer strapped to his wrist as he shakily stood up. It was tied into all the sensors they had jammed into his body years ago. Each one displaying a small graph that told him in real-time how poorly he was doing.

Without whatever was in the IV, he could already see the numbers dropping on some of them. It looked like the doctors had been lying to him. He didn’t have much time left as it was. If the simple act of removing it did this, then he hadn’t been long for the world, regardless.

What little doubts he had left fled in the light of this new information.

He grabbed his trusty cane and stood. He was eager to make his way outside and enjoy his last few hours in the sunshine and fresh air.

It was that eagerness that cost him what little time he had left.

The head of his cane slipped off the edge of the top stair, and in his weakened state, he was unable to do anything but fall.

At the age of thirty-four, Nathaniel Holmes, a man who was six-foot-one and weighed one hundred and twenty-five pounds, died. There was no one to mourn his passing.