He handed his spare house key to me, an outsider

The day Old Lu gave me his spare key, he said something I have never forgotten.

His heart was bad. Two stents, and he lived alone. We were forty-two that year. He came back from a follow-up at the hospital, stopped at my place on the way, dug a key out of his pocket and put it on the table. "The one for my apartment. If my phone ever goes unanswered, come in. Don't stand on ceremony."

I said it would not come to that, his phone was on twenty-four hours. He said, "A phone is dead. A person is alive. When something actually happens, the phone can't help you. The key can."

I put it on my keyring. It hung there four years and I never used it. We never talked about it either. It was too heavy; bringing it up felt like wishing for the worst.

Over those four years the key quietly changed meaning. One winter he was in the hospital again, stents again, and I sat with him three nights. The key pressed into my thigh through my pocket and turned into a small charm: as long as he was fine, it was only a key. Another time he was away for half a month and asked me to go over every other day and feed his fish. That was the first time I used it. Standing in his doorway with the door open, I understood that what he had handed over was not an emergency tool. A man who lives alone, giving away his front door key, is formally telling you: my life is yours to look at.

I knew that apartment the way you know a person. Books everywhere, cola and leftovers permanently in the fridge, and on the balcony the orchid his mother had left him, cared for more attentively than anything else in the flat. On the fish-feeding days I took out his rubbish and changed a dead bulb. When he came back he called me. "Tell the truth. Did you touch my things again?" I said I did, the bulb had gone, I put in a new one. There was a silence on the line. Then, "This feeling. Like there's somebody at home."

The real test came last year. At eleven one night he messaged me: "A bit stuffed up. Going to bed early." I wrote back "ok." Lying in bed, the thing kept nagging at me. Old Lu's messages were always long. Five words was not him. At one in the morning I still could not sleep. I called. No answer. I called again. No answer.

I was out of bed, car keys in hand, driving the way taxi drivers drive. I opened his door with the spare key. He was on the living room floor, barely conscious. When the ambulance came I was standing beside it with the key still in my fist, shaking like a man with a fever.

The doctor said afterward that half an hour later it would have been hard to say.

After he was discharged, Old Lu told his son he wanted to draw up a power of attorney, giving me the right to sign for his medical care. His son said there was no need for the trouble, he was out of town but he would come back the moment anything happened. Old Lu waved a hand. "Come back. Somebody still has to be at the door to open it. Xiao Ke has the key."

That key is still on my ring, worn bright. Sometimes when we drink he brings it up. "Giving you the key wasn't because I was afraid of dying. It was because I was afraid of dying indoors and nobody knowing. Your sister-in-law went early, my son is far away. What I have been afraid of my whole life isn't death. It's being dead for days while the orchid on the table dies of thirst and nobody notices."

I said, "Don't worry. The orchid's mine."

A spare key is the highest credential of trust one adult can give another. I have handed you the moment I might be at my worst, and I am certain you will be there.