A young lady, Molly, took a black homeless man home and allowed him to shower in her bathroom. But when he finished showering, Molly fainted. When she saw this on a bitterly cold January night, Molly headed home after her evening shift feeling the biting cold, even through her thick winter jacket. She got off a train and stopped by a drugstore to buy some medications for her worsening gastric reflux. Afterward, she decided to walk the remaining distance to her apartment......Read The Full Article>>.....Read The Full Article>>
While walking through a public park just a stone’s throw from her place, she noticed a man covered in a blanket crouched on a park bench. Molly was petrified to find the homeless man sleeping outside in such freezing weather conditions. Being the kind woman that she was, Molly threw her coat over to the homeless man and saw that he was shivering under the dirty, torn blanket that he covered himself with. Sensing Molly’s presence, the homeless man quickly turned towards her and smiled at her, expecting some alms.
Molly immediately noted that he looked filthy; she could swear that he hadn’t had a bath in weeks. Nevertheless, his smile did it for Molly. Something inside told her that fate had put the man in her path for some special reason, and she immediately felt an inexplicable urge to help him.
The 26-year-old Molly worked as an accountant in a new accountancy firm that was still trying to find its feet in the highly competitive market. The demanding job paid only a little; still, Molly managed to make time to volunteer for charitable works, especially in church schools and orphanages. She also donated largely to charitable causes, both at home and abroad. In fact, Molly had always felt that helping people was her main calling in life. But little did she know that her particular gesture of kindness that cold winter night was about to reveal a mystery that would change her life forever.
When the man spoke, Molly noticed that he looked possibly older than his real age. Her eyes then slowly traveled to his gray, unkempt beard and hair that made him look like a time traveler from the 18th century. His clothes were also tattered; the man looked like he desperately needed a warm bath, a warm soup, and a warm, clean bed to sleep in for the night.
Molly thought to herself, the homeless man quickly sat up from the bench and kept smiling at Molly, expecting some money from her. Molly stood there smiling back, trying to figure out how to tell him what she had in mind. With an expectant look, the man asked, “Anything for an old homeless beggar?”
Molly replied that she had no money to give but had something else to offer. The man’s expression turned to disappointment, but he told Molly to go ahead and make her offer. Molly then moved closer, sat down on the bench beside him, and slowly and politely explained her plan to take him home with her for the night, let him use her bathroom for a warm bath, and prepare a nice hot soup for him.
The homeless man was shocked. After Molly finished talking, no one had ever made such an unusual and generous offer to him since he started sleeping on the streets. He seemed to contemplate for a while before he gladly accepted Molly’s offer with a wide smile. Molly was visibly pleased that he did so.
The man stood up from the bench, dusted himself off, and made to fold the torn and dirty-looking blanket. But Molly, who was already standing, stopped the man from doing so with a promise that she would get him a better and cleaner blanket. The man gazed at Molly with a puzzled expression, as if he wouldn’t believe her offer. After a moment, he left his blanket behind and led the way out of the park, with Molly closely following him.
The duo got talking as they slowly walked to Molly’s place. She introduced herself to the homeless man, who told her that his name was Jimmy and that he had been living on the streets for the past two decades. But when Molly asked Jimmy why he was forced to start living on the streets, he answered that it was just fate, but didn’t go into details. She decided not to press on with the question for the time being, at least.
Soon enough, the odd pair arrived at Molly’s modest apartment. Jimmy was stunned to be inside such a clean and well-furnished home; it had been ages since he stepped into such a nice home. Jimmy was so mesmerized that he didn’t dare touch anything inside the house unless Molly told him to.
Molly first showed Jimmy the bathroom and told him to help himself. Molly also brought a soap, sponge, towel, shaving razor, and lotion from her storeroom and handed them all over to him. She then politely told Jimmy he could use the shaving stick and shaving lotion to shave if he wanted to. Molly even offered Jimmy a pair of large sweatpants she had and offered to wash his clothes in the washing machine, dry, and iron them before he left in the morning.
Molly encouraged Jimmy to take as much time as he needed in the bathroom while she prepared hot soup and pasta for him in the kitchen. Jimmy was surprised at Molly’s kindness; he never once thought that kind people like her still existed since he started living a hard life on the streets. Jimmy felt like all this was some sort of a dream, which he would surely soon wake up from to face the cold reality back on the streets.
Still, the homeless man thanked Molly for her kindness before he walked into the bathroom with all the stuff she had handed over to him. Molly promptly walked into the kitchen to start preparing the meals, and soon the delicious aroma of boiling hot soup wafted all around the house.
About 45 minutes later, Molly was waiting at the dining table with hot plates of soup and pasta covered. She started to wonder why Jimmy was taking so long in the bathroom. Then she realized Jimmy must have decided to enjoy using the bathtub for as long as possible, like a child experiencing swimming in a pool for the very first time. The realization brought a smile to Molly’s face as she recalled how she used to swim in the bathtub as a kid.
Molly was still smiling when the bathroom door creaked open, and Jimmy stepped into the dining area in the pair of pajamas that she had handed him. His hair and beard were meticulously shaved, and his once filthy face was scrupulously cleaned. Jimmy now looked like a completely different person from the homeless man Molly had found curled up on the park bench barely an hour ago.
As Jimmy approached the dining table, Molly took a long, hard look at him. Her mouth was wide open, and the perplexed expression crossed her face before she collapsed on the floor and fainted.
Jimmy was stunned beyond belief the moment he saw Molly collapsed on the tiled floor like a pack of cards. He rushed over to her at once and started shaking her while shouting her name, but there was no response from her whatsoever. Unaware of what else to do in such a situation, Jimmy immediately ran outside the apartment and started screaming for help at the top of his voice.
Fortunately, two male neighbors heard the scream for help and came rushing over to Jimmy. We quickly led them into the house. Soon enough, one of the neighbors brought his car around. Then the trio lifted the unconscious Molly into the car and zoomed off to a nearby hospital.
At the hospital, Molly was rushed into the emergency unit where she was revived by the doctors. Afterward, the chief doctor informed Jimmy, who was anxiously pacing around the waiting room, that Molly had fainted as a result of intense shock.
“Intense shock?” Jimmy blurted out, with a worried look on his face. Then he rushed into the hospital room where Molly was.
Molly opened her eyes just in time to find Jimmy smiling down at her, ever so warmly. It took Molly a few minutes to fully remember what had happened and where she was. But when she finally did, something astonishing happened, and it all traced back to Molly’s childhood.
Molly was raised by a single mom named Beverly. She was an only child. Beverly, who worked as a highly paid clerk, gave Molly everything she ever needed while growing up. She was the center of Beverly’s universe. As Molly grew, she developed a strong bond with her mom; she cherished and adored Beverly.
Molly studied accountancy in school and graduated with good grades. Unfortunately, lucrative jobs were quite hard to secure at the time of her graduation, as her country was going through an economic recession. So Molly had to settle for the new accountancy firm job that she was working at when she met Jimmy. The wage at the firm wasn’t mouthwatering, but to Molly, half a loaf was better than none. She had always vowed not to depend financially on her mom any longer than necessary.
Growing up, Molly noticed something odd about her mom. She never mentioned Molly’s biological father. Beverly’s silence about him almost suggested Molly had been conceived through immaculate conception. However, Molly knew she had a father and was eager to learn more about him.
During dinner one late evening when Molly was 16 years old, she finally summoned the courage to ask her mom about her biological father. At first, Beverly pretended not to have heard Molly’s question and simply continued with their meal. But Molly wasn’t about to give up so easily. She had waited for years for that particular answer, so she repeated the question to her mom.
Suddenly, Beverly burst into tears and told Molly that her father, Paul, had died in a ghastly accident when she was only 2 years old. Molly’s countenance turned gloomy immediately. Not because of the information about her father’s demise more than a decade earlier, but because she felt overwhelmed with guilt for causing her mom to cry.
Promptly, Molly stood up and went over to her mom, hugged Beverly, consoled her with soothing words.
, and vowed never to open her wounds by asking about her father again. Beverly stopped sobbing, and mother and daughter remained in a tight embrace for quite a long while afterward. Molly never brought up the issue again. She realized her mother was all she had and loved her even more.
Unfortunately, their relationship was cut short when Beverly got diagnosed with ovarian cancer and eventually lost the battle to the disease. Molly was 23 then. She was heartbroken. She had lost her father and now her mom. She felt completely alone in the world.
So, imagine the shock Molly felt when Jimmy walked out of the bathroom and she recognized him as her father, the same one she believed had died when she was only two.
“Dad!” Molly screamed at Jimmy. “But my mom told me you were long dead!” She continued, looking extremely stunned and confused at the same time.
Jimmy’s smile faded away at once. Without saying a word, he backed away from Molly’s bed, like something on the bed had just stung him hard. Then Jimmy slumped into a nearby seat and remained silent for long, trying to recover from the shock.
Molly sat up on her bed and continued staring at Jimmy in absolute bewilderment, wondering if she had just made a big mistake by identifying him as her father.
At long last, Jimmy blurted out, “Yes, my little angel. I don’t blame Beverly for lying to you. She must have been ashamed of my sad story.”
“What sad story?” Molly immediately asked Jimmy in a pleading tone.
Jimmy bent his head and covered it with his palms for a while before he cleared his throat and started telling Molly his story.
According to Jimmy’s story, he married Beverly immediately after their graduation. The duo had been living in peace until tragedy struck. For him, Jimmy had secured a huge loan from the insurance firm he was working for at the time to invest in a new online quick money-making scheme. It was his best friend and colleague, John, who had introduced him to the scheme, which promised a whopping 30% return on investment in just 2 weeks.
Jimmy pulled all his resources together and invested $750,000 in the scheme, only to discover, to his utter dismay, barely 3 weeks later, that it was just a Ponzi scheme and a massive fraud. That’s how Jimmy’s money went down the drain in just a twinkle of an eye.
Jimmy became so depressed about his loss that he contemplated taking his own life. Soon enough, he mixed with the wrong gang, dabbled in drugs, and became an addict. Gradually, he turned into a shadow of his former self. Beverly tried her very best to save Jimmy, but all to no avail. He was already neck-deep in the abyss of self-destruction.
Jimmy explained to Molly that he couldn’t remember how it had happened, but one morning, he had woken up from what he thought was sleep, only to find himself in a psychiatric hospital. Jimmy later learned that he had suffered a total mental breakdown at his office the previous afternoon. He had started screaming that he was hearing and seeing things, and his colleagues had no choice but to call an ambulance.
Jimmy’s drug habit had led to severe hallucinations, causing him to lose his mind. The ambulance rushed him to the psychiatric hospital, where he was quickly sedated due to his extreme agitation. Jimmy spent the next 3 years in the psychiatric hospital, being treated for psychosis. According to him, Beverly never visited him once during his stay there. He told Molly that he sensed Beverly was ashamed of having a psychotic man as a husband.
After 3 years, Jimmy was convinced he had fully recovered and repeatedly requested his release. But the authorities refused, fearing he hadn’t fully healed. He grew tired of the asylum, which he described as more like a prison than a mental rehabilitation center. Determined to escape, Jimmy resolved to take matters into his own hands, believing that if he didn’t act, he might be confined there for the rest of his life.
One rainy night, Jimmy stole a medic’s gown and umbrella from the changing room while the medic was in the bathroom. He quickly put on the gown over his shirt and shorts, and with the umbrella covering most of his face, stepped outside into the pouring rain and dashed for the main gate.
When he reached the main gate, Jimmy waved at the security guard on duty, who waved back at him. He then opened the smaller pedestrian gate by himself and stepped outside the asylum for the first time in over 3 years. Once outside the gate, Jimmy quickly discarded the medic’s gown and broke into a run. He ran for what seemed like ages.
Jimmy told Molly that he only stopped running when he was sure that he had put some great distance between himself and the asylum. That’s how Jimmy ended up living on the streets. He first joined the street gang that stole and sold cars. The gang’s leader, Mario, named him Jimmy after his beloved late best friend and colleague whom Jimmy resembled. Jimmy loved the new name and decided to keep it.
Four years later, Jimmy left the gang after one of its members was shot dead by the cops during a foiled car theft operation. He then survived on the streets by begging for alms and doing menial jobs.
Jimmy revealed to Molly that he never forgot about her. He even visited the house he had shared with Beverly one night in disguise but found neither Beverly nor Molly there. He sensed that Beverly must have heard about his escape from the asylum and, fearing he would come looking for her, had moved away with little Molly.
At this point, Molly mentioned that she remembered her mom moving them into a new house far from their previous home without any prior notice or explanation. This happened when Molly was around 7 or 8 years old.
Jimmy disclosed to Molly that Beverly was undoubtedly too ashamed to tell her the truth that her father had lost his mind and escaped from a mental asylum. Hence, he was forced to lie to her that he had died in an accident.
One question begged for an answer though: how was Molly able to recognize Jimmy after two decades? Molly explained that she had never found a single picture of him until Beverly died. After Beverly’s death, Molly was clearing the apartment one morning before handing it over to the landlord. While in the attic, she found an old small photo album. The album was covered with cobwebs and dust which had accumulated over the years. Molly wiped it off, and when she opened the album, she was stunned to find it filled with her parents’ loving pictures. It was the first time she had ever seen a picture of her biological father. Beverly had accidentally forgotten the album there.
Molly kept the small album with her and always looked at the pictures whenever she thought of her parents, especially the father she never knew. And it was that very image of her father that had been ingrained in her memory that she recognized the moment Jimmy stepped out of the bathroom, well-shaved and washed. Jimmy had gotten a little older, but Molly instinctively knew she was looking at the man in the pictures, once she saw him, despite his changed appearance.
She fainted out of shock because she had always believed her father was dead, as Beverly had led her to believe.
After Molly finished speaking, Jimmy quickly went over to her bed, sat down by her side, and embraced her tightly. Jimmy just couldn’t contain his tears amidst sobs. He told Molly that he had always prayed and believed that she would come back to him one day.
In the end, it was her kindness and generous heart that eventually led her back to him. Molly cried too; it was such an emotional reunion between father and daughter after more than two decades apart.
The following day, Molly was discharged from the hospital. Jimmy started staying with her, and they built a beautiful relationship that blossomed over time. With her help and support, he eventually found a permanent job cleaning the offices where she worked. He moved into a small but nice one-bedroom apartment nearby. He made sure it was close to Molly and he never went too far. He wouldn’t lose her twice, and she was happy about that.
