When the sun went down, I saw the man on the sidewalk. He had fallen onto his suitcase with a shopping bag at his feet. The light turned green. A car honked behind me. I drove ahead, but a pedestrian walked past the man, so Kate and I agreed we should stop to check on the man.

Walking back to the intersection, cars drove by the man on his back, lying on his oversized rolling suitcase.

“Nobody cares,” I said, feeling like we were good people who could make time for a stranger. We could call an ambulance. We could take his luggage to his wife, and even bring her flowers, if he was dead.

We walked up to the guy. His mouth was open, and he was breathing. He looked about thirty years old, scruffy beard, dirty cargo pants, a heavy winter jacket, and a ball cap. I tapped his worn Chuck Taylors with my hikers.

“Hey, dude?”

He didn’t respond. Kate leaned over him, shook his shoulder, and said, “Are you okay?”

“Don’t put your face so close,” I said. Because even though we were very far from the East Side, and there were water bottles and a Red Bull inside his Ikea bag, and he looked like someone I’d see around the studios, like a grip or one of the special effect guys, he also looked like a tweaker who could wake up startled and jab her with a wet needle. “I’ll call an ambulance.”

“9-1-1, police, fire, or ambulance?”

“Ambulance.”

I told the woman where we were—outside a Church’s Chicken, and described the unconscious man.

“Is he breathing?” she asked.

“His belly is moving up and down.”

“Tell me every time he takes a breath.”

“In… out… In… out… In… out,” I said.

“Is he flat on his back?”

“Yes, he’s flat on his suitcase.”

“I need you to put him on the ground, place one hand on his forehead and the other on his chin and tilt his head back to clear the airways.”

But looking closely at his face, I saw the brown around his crusty lips, the rogue tooth grown out of the roof of his mouth, the rotten teeth and the bleeding gums.

“His head’s already tilted back, and his breathing is excellent,” I said. “And he really is flat on his back. It’s a great big suitcase.”

“Okay, is he still breathing?”

And then I couldn’t tell if he was breathing anymore—if my repulsion had killed the guy. I knew if I told her he wasn’t breathing, she’d say I’d have to put my mouth on his. I’d have to taste whatever trouble was on his lips—the meth, the puke, the Church’s Chicken BBQ sauce.

“Sir, is he still breathing?”

“I… can’t tell anymore.”

“Can you see his chest? Can you feel?”

I couldn’t answer, because the undertow had dragged me inside the dead man’s mouth—into the putrid breath where my cold father lay in his coffin, into the darkness of my mother’s ashes, into silenced screaming of my best friend’s decapitated body.

“Sir, is he still breathing?”

“I can’t tell anymore,” I said.

“He’s still breathing,” Kate said, pointing at his belly.

“He’s breathing,” I said. “I couldn’t see it from where I’d moved.”

The sirens were loud. I hadn’t even heard them approach. “The ambulance is here,” I said.

“Stay with me until they’re with him.”

The paramedics stepped out of the ambulance. They carried kits with them—things to give mouth to mouth without hesitation. Kate and I moved aside. The paramedics shook his shoulders, violently. “Hey! Hey!”

The guy lifted his head and opened his eyes.

“Oh, now you wake up?”

The paramedics said we could leave. Walking back to the car, I said to Kate, “I don’t think I tried hard enough to wake him.”

“You did tell me to get away from him.”

“I didn’t want him to bite you.”

It was night, and looking back, I couldn’t see the man and the paramedics, and nobody—not even Kate—could see my shame.