Pushcart 2026 L: Dave Newman, “The Last Thing that Happened Before I Became a Med Tech” from New World Writing Quarterly, January 2024

Adrian Bradbury: Wrestling With Myself I ran into Dawn Reedy at the Big Lots in Beckley. We’d dated when we were teenagers but I hadn’t seen her since high school. I was buying canned pasta. I was buying fish sticks and bread. I’d just blown my nose into a napkin and stuffed the napkin into my pocket. It all sounded louder than I’d intended. Dawn was a lawyer with two kids, both young — one on hip, the other holding her hand. I saw them and recognized her and tried to bolt but she said, “Hey,” and waved so I smiled and changed direction. Adulthood is mostly lies and mistakes until the lies and mistakes become something else. I don’t know how I knew she was a lawyer. This was dinnertime but I’d just woken up. I was hungover and pretty sick with dope. I was confused on first read. Not about what was happening – that’s clear enough – but about what wasn’t being said, what was being felt, what the motivations were. And I got confused about details, details some of which are important, and…