Sam

It’s half past two. I sit down next to Maddie. My voice is cracking. I’m reading her A Song of Ice and Fire. George R. R. Martin’s epic tale will last us for a while, and I imagine her wanting to hear how it continues, refusing to die before we’ve finished, and then recovering so that she can read it herself.

Maybe it’s a stupid idea, but I don’t see what else I can do to detain her and bring her back. Occasionally when I’m drifting off to sleep, I can hear her in the maze of corridors behind the stage of The Nutcracker. She runs desperately through the wings, up and down stairs, calling my name. She calls for her mother and her father. I sit on the stage and wait. I cannot follow her into the labyrinth. I can only…

Hang on a second. What’s this? How long has this been going on?

“A bloody long time, mon ami. Now go!”

I’ve become so accustomed to my father’s dark pain and the tangible tension in the air by which I can tell he’s there, that I didn’t notice that there’s been a shift. His shimmering pain has turned to a gentle light, which is far more scary. It’s like the quiet that follows the final note of a symphony, the silence of a final exhalation, an empty room.

I hurriedly put down the book, get up, and open the curtain that has been drawn between C7 and Maddie. Eddie is still sleeping, with her hand on my father’s chest. I take a step closer, searching for him but not finding him.

“Dad?” I whisper. “Dad!” He’s gone. He’s no longer here!

One stride and I’m at his side, touching his hand. Please, please, let him merely be sleeping! Panic steals my breath. I check the machines. Pulse, heartbeat, sleep phase. Peaks and troughs and spikes. He’s alive, but he’s gone, I know it. His body is completely deserted.

It’s as if he has entered a zone that Dr. Saul didn’t sketch out. An unfamiliar zone between coma and death. An area between life and death, which no one has identified because it’s always moving.

I glance at Maddie, then back at my father, then at the heart monitors, and for one absurd moment I have the feeling that their two hearts are perfectly attuned, beating in time as if they were walking side by side. This moment lasts for a few seconds, but the lines suddenly diverge. Maddie’s heartbeat accelerates and my father’s slows down more and more.

I know what’s about to happen and yet I’m powerless to move or call out. It’s like a countdown to something, as my father’s heartbeat falters. Four, three, two, one, zero: everything happens exactly as planned, in every respect.