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I can’t stop seeing it.

Even after I run out of the bathroom and dial 911. Even after the paramedics arrive and declare there’s nothing to be done. Even after they wheel the stretcher out of Mr. Zimmerly’s house with a sheet covering his face.

“You okay, Mr. Porter?” a young police officer dressed in blues asks me.

I startle as the doors to the ambulance slam shut. Of course, when it drives away, there won’t be any sirens. There’s no urgency. I knew it the second I found my neighbor lying on the floor of his bathroom, a pool of blood around his head.

“Uh-huh,” I mumble, even though I’m not. I wish somebody would wrap a blanket around me or something, because I can’t stop shaking. It’s humiliating.

“These things happen,” the cop says with an air of authority, even though he looks barely older than twenty. “He was ninety-three years old. He must’ve slipped in the bathroom and hit his head. We see it all the time.”

Ninety-three. Jesus, I had no idea he was that old. “Uh-huh,” I say again.

He squints at me. “You got someone to be with you?”

I have absolutely no one, but I don’t need to tell this police officer my life story. “I have a roommate” is all I say.

He nods like that’s good enough. I’m sure he has a busy night ahead of him, and the last thing he wants to do is babysit a thirty-two-year-old man. Besides, I’ll be fine. Yes, seeing that dead body was a shock. I’m going to have nightmares tonight. But I’ll be okay.

Unlike Mr. Zimmerly.

“So I gotta just confirm with you one more time…” The officer pulls what looks like a small iPad out of his jacket. “Why were you in Mr. Zimmerly’s house?”

“I was worried,” I say. “He never brought his trash bin inside, and he’s really anal about that. I knew something had to be wrong.”

I don’t need to tell him that I knocked on my neighbor’s door with the intention of giving him hell.

The officer nods sympathetically. “Yeah. I got a neighbor like that too. So…do you have the key to his house?”

“No. The door was open.”

“Open?”

“Unlocked, I mean.”

“Does he usually leave it unlocked?”

“I have no idea.”

“So when you noticed it was unlocked, you went in?”

I nod. “I just wanted to make sure he was okay, but then I saw there was some food he left on the kitchen counter. And I saw the light on in the bathroom, and I…”

I find myself getting choked up. I don’t know why. I didn’t even like that bastard.

“It’s okay.” The officer taps at the screen of the iPad and stuffs it back in his jacket. “I think that’s enough.”

I nod, unable to speak.

“I’ll be giving his daughter a call,” he tells me. “I’ll let her know what happened.”

“Mr. Zimmerly had a daughter?”

“Looks like it,” he confirms. “She lives all the way out in California. Guess they didn’t see each other much.”

I never saw one person coming in or out of Mr. Zimmerly’s house in the time I’ve known him. Certainly not a woman young enough to be his daughter. (Although I suppose given his age, any daughter would be at least in her sixties.) He had a whole family I never knew about, yet it seemed nobody cared about him at all.

Somehow, I think about Krista. And how I imagined building a life with her. Without her, I have nobody. The same way Mr. Zimmerly had nobody.

Great. I’m going to end up bitter and alone and obsessed with garbage until one day, I drop dead in my own bathroom.

As soon as the last of the entourage leaves my block, I take out my phone. I tap out a message to Krista:

Mr. Zimmerly died.

I am heartened by the fact that a few bubbles appear on the screen, indicating that she might be responding. Although I have been fooled by those bubbles before.

But then a response pops up:

I’m sorry. Are you OK?

Kind of shaken. At least I don’t have to worry about the garbage bins anymore.

She writes back:

Silver lining.

She’s talking to me. This is a really good sign. Maybe she’s done having her space and she’s ready to come back. While I’ve got her attention, I type into the screen:

I miss you.

The bubbles appear again. They flash on the screen over and over as I stand there, holding my breath, waiting for her to respond.

But she never does.