John ran through the park that morning. He was wearing his training suit and his sports shoes. His watch on his wrist, counting the seconds to the end of the race. It was getting harder and harder every time. He would stop more often for deep breaths in the fresh air, he would look at the watch every five minutes. Two more minutes. The end. He sat down on a bench in front of the lake and watched the ducks.

"What am I doing?" articulated John.

"Jogging!?" came an answer from nowhere.

"Oh, sorry. I wasn't asking you."

"Maybe you should see a doctor."

"Thanks for the tip."

The conversation ended with the person giving him a piercing look and John started walking home. It was 8 o'clock. Monday. He wasn't hurrying and he wanted to have a coffee somewhere, away from the terribly white kitchen of his. There was a small bar in his neighbourhood and it was empty and open. Of course, the coffee tasted and almost looked like the boiled water it was made of, but he drank it anyway. Luckily the view to Central Park was filling in the blanks left by the drink. After twenty minutes, he got up and left.

"Hey, stop! You have to pay for the coffee!"

"Oh, sorry. You know it tasted awful. Here you are."

"Still, you can't leave without paying."

"Bye."

He couldn't help thinking of the new week, of work, of every little thing that formed his life. He couldn't help feeling distracted, reviewing in his mind pictures he saw in a travelling agency, documentaries on TV or that book at the bookshop. Nothing was related to what he was actually doing each and every day. "Where was that agency?" Trying to remember the place, his flashbacks indicated a corner of a street and a blue building, he bumped on a border. Suddenly, his face was warm and red. His nose hurt. He was alive. He got up and looked into a window on the right. He called an ambulance and went to the hospital, then home. No work, no jogging, no activity, just rest, the eyes fixed on the only white wall of the living room, inert, for twenty-four hours.