Sometimes you see something without really knowing what it is.

Yesterday, for instance, I was leaving my eye doctor’s office. I entered a hallway and headed toward the elevator. At the other end of the hall, I noticed an old man hunched over a cane. I couldn’t see his face, just the arc of his back, like an apostrophe. When I looked again, he appeared to be asleep, leaning against a wall, propped up on that cane.

But he wasn’t moving. At all.

As I approached the elevator, I wondered whether I was witnessing an ad hoc response to fatigue ”“ a sort of sleeping in place. I wondered if, in his younger days, he was one of those men you see in stores, sitting with a woman’s handbag, snoozing, while their wives are busy shopping.  Sleeping is, at bottom, the ultimate show of detachment. Still, the standing part had me stumped.

How tired must one be to fall asleep standing?

And why wasn’t this stooped and fragile man, sandwiched between a wall and a cane, falling over?

The sheer physics of the scene made no sense.

Then it dawned on me that something else might be going on here, and maybe I should do something, or notify someone. 

Before getting on the elevator, I needed to determine whether he was still among us.

So I cleared my throat emphatically, as a kind of test. On the one hand, I didn’t really want to disturb him ”“ more power to anyone who can catnap so providentially. On the other hand, disturbing him in some small, unremarkable, way was precisely my goal.

My cough didn’t have the impact of, say, water on a wilted plant, its stems and leaves visibly swelling.

But some part of the hunched figure down the hall shifted, ever so slightly.

Feeling relieved, if somewhat foolish, I boarded the elevator.

— Joan Silverman’s work has appeared in The Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, and Dallas Morning News. She lives in Kennebunk.