He resumed his pacing just outside the door furiously muttering to himself that this, as twice before, would be the end. The man inside the room lay motionless. His skin as gray as the walls that surrounded him. The son was curled uncomfortably in a chair nearby waking every so often to listen for the comforting rhythm of the breathing machine.
She too paced outside his door but this time her steps were even more deliberate than before. At this place, her mutterings, born out of selfishness and self-possession, had become even more furious. Why, she asked, had death not come more quickly? This place would keep him alive forever, she moaned. She needed to move on and nothing less than death would resolve the problem. She needed absolution and death would bring that too. She would become the handsome widow who would mourn her way into their hearts.
Finding a donor had proven elusive. Others had come and gone taking their new lives with them but he remained in each place only to wait another day and then another and another. As death drew closer she prayed hard for his demise but death would not come. She would make her peace with God later. HE would understand now as HE had understood before. She would be forgiven for her errant ways. She was special as always.
They were constant companions outside his door. Though unbeknownst to each other, their goal was singular and strikingly similar. But death did not come and they cursed the machines that pumped life into the man. He lived on and waited with his son beside him. The seasons changed from spring to summer and the father and son drew closer as the days grew shorter. A donor would come whispered the son and all would be well.
We all prayed for the man to live, if only to make her life even more miserable than it had been before. She did not deserve better. In fact, her deal with God was an illusion. A lie really, but that was her mess to clean up if she could. We didn’t care at all what happened to her so long as she was given a life sentence for her evil deeds.
The whoosh of the gurney surprised her as she sat slumped in a hard wooden chair. The whirl of activity made him angry because it was clear that death would not come today. The lights were bright and then the darkness came and then it was light again.
The man lives on with a gently used, but much needed piece of humanity. She lives on too with even less humanity than she had before.