It's late afternoon, the kind of grey that settles over Milwaukee like a second skin. Through the wide front windows, you can see the new hospital rising up across the street, all glass and steel, a monument to a south side that's trying to forget what it used to be.

Inside, a middle-aged woman in yoga pants is squinting at the shelf of allergy meds, her cart holding a bag of cat litter and a gallon of milk. An old man in a Packers hat is counting out change at the register. Normal. Predictable. The way it's always been.

You head toward the pharmacy counter in the back, past the aisles of chips and seasonal candy, past the cooler humming with energy drinks.

And then you see him.

He's hunched over the cooler door, one giant hand wrapped around the handle of a glass bottle of Arizona tea. Six-foot-four at least. Lanky, all limbs, drowning in a oversized grey hoodie with a faded logo you can't make out. Light brown hair, messy, curling at the ends like he just rolled out of bed.

He straightens up and turns, and his eyes catch the fluorescents.

Bright blue. Wide. Almost too bright.

He looks right through you.

Like you're part of the shelving. Like you're nobody at all.