The nurse bought food for a homeless man every evening, but one day the old man suddenly grabbed her hand and said: “Girl, you’ve fed me so many times, so I ask you — don’t go home the usual way today, tomorrow morning I’ll explain everything…” 

The next morning, the girl learned something terrible from the old man.

Amanda closed the door of the staff entrance behind her and leaned against the cold concrete wall for a moment. After a twelve-hour shift, her legs ached badly. It was about eight in the evening. Darkness had already tightly wrapped around the grounds of the regional hospital.

Amanda automatically felt for the keys to her rented apartment in her pocket and headed toward the side gate, trying not to think about anything.

Three months earlier, those keys had become the only thing she took from her previous life. Everything else — the furniture, the dishes, even the photographs — had been left with her ex-husband.

Now she had a small one-room apartment on the outskirts, creaking radiators, and the smell of cabbage from the neighboring apartment. A nurse’s salary barely covered expenses, but she felt no regret.

Right by the fence, as always, he was sitting there. An elderly homeless man with a gray beard and tired yet attentive eyes, wrapped in an old padded jacket.

He had appeared there at the end of August and since then had become part of her evening route. Every day Amanda bought him dinner and hot tea.

They exchanged a few words, the man thanked her quietly and sincerely, and in a strange way it made her loneliness less heavy.

That evening the shift had been especially hard. Amanda went into the hospital cafeteria, took the food and tea, and walked out toward the gate. The old man was waiting, but today he was different. His shoulders were tense, and his gaze kept sliding behind her back, into the darkness of the street.

She handed him the bag, but the man pushed it aside and suddenly gripped her hand tightly. Amanda flinched and was about to pull it away when she heard his voice — low, strained, completely unlike his usual one.

“Girl, you’ve fed me so many times,” he said without letting go. “Let me repay you. Don’t go home the usual way today. Go through the city center, take a detour. Right now. Tomorrow morning I’ll explain everything.”

Amanda’s heart began to pound. She stared at him in confusion, not understanding whether he was joking or had lost his mind. But there was neither madness nor pleading in his eyes. There was fear. Amanda didn’t argue. She nodded silently, turned around, and walked away quickly, feeling everything inside her tighten with terror.

That evening she really did take another route, winding for a long time through the lit streets. And the next day the old man told her a horrifying truth  Continuation in the first comment 

“Why?” she whispered the next day.

The old man looked around and spoke even more quietly.

“Because they’re watching you. Not for the first day. I saw them myself. Three of them. They were standing over there,” he nodded toward the dark alley, “and they thought I was sleeping. Your husband said you live alone, that you come home late, and that it’s dark outside anyway. They were discussing how to make sure your body wouldn’t be found right away. The apartment is in your name, and he needs it.”

Amanda felt the cold rising from her fingertips to her throat. She remembered the past weeks: strange shadows behind her, the feeling of someone else’s gaze, her pace quickening when someone followed her for too long.

“I overheard everything by accident,” the man continued. “To them, I was just old trash. But I remembered every word.”

At last he released her hand and added almost in a whisper:

“They were waiting for you there,” the old man said. “Until late at night. Then they left. You did the right thing by listening to me.”