The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell

by Robert Dugoni

Life is either a collision of random events, like billiard balls during a break careening off and into one another, or if you are so inclined to believe, our predetermined fate—what my mother took such great comfort in calling God’s will.

I decided, for no rational reason, that I hated that room with its mustard-yellow walls and poorly disguised cheap pressboard cabinets. I slid off the table and paced the orange linoleum, imagining what Eva might say when she arrived home from her East Coast flight to find I had changed my mind.

“Not rare, Doctor,” my mother corrected. “Extraordinary.”

Our skin, our hair, and our eyes are simply the shell that surrounds our soul, and our soul is who we are. What counts is on the inside.”