There were a million reasons not to love this 25 year old. We dodged puddles of sewage to see him. Cockroaches scurried across the sidewalk, and as we entered his house the stench came at us like a tidal wave. There were a million reasons not to love his ever-present smile, which not even his last breath could take away. Loving him meant cursing the war that brought him to the squalor of the refugee camp. Loving him reminded you that poverty calls for death to arrive early. He joked and teased you, and you convulsed with laughter.
There were a million reasons not to love this 25 year old, but none of them mattered.
Everyone has a patient that tips them over the edge, and he was mine.