The bone broke as it squashed the tomato. The man felt the crack as he slid across the street. It was the third bone the man had broken. The other two were before he was ten. Weak bones were a side effect of the treatment. No. A symptom. He had rejected the treatment. The treatment had required daily hospital visits for six months with a twenty percent chance of survival. There were side effects from the treatment as well. Nasty ones. Vomiting, hair loss, depression. The doctors had told him to accept the treatment. It was “groundbreaking, revolutionary.” But the man had always been stubborn and old-fashioned. That was what his wife had told him. Ex-wife. She had kept his children tucked away in boarding school. He wrote them postcards every week. First California, then Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina, Paraguay, now Spain. His father had been a Spanish professor at Oxford. The man did not speak Spanish. His father never taught him. But the traveling had been nice. He told people he was a American University graduate on a semester abroad. If he looked too old to be a student, no one ever said anything. His disease had a kind side effect of weight loss. The pain of the broken bone echoed through his weakened body. The swelled arm was hidden by mashed tomatoes. “If you break any bones on your trip, it is very likely that you will need to be hospitalized for several days, and we will strongly suggest you reconsider the treatment,” the doctor had said. No. Hospitals were too clean, too perfect and gray, and they smelled so strongly of alcohol and blood and bile. No, the man would not go to another hospital.