IF THERE is one thing Sam hates—more than my mother’s long-winded messages on our answering machine—it’s a scene. Turning his last day on earth into a circus would infuriate him, never mind the logistics. Due to the hundred plus people, the nurses quickly establish a three-visitors-at-a-time rule, in addition to me.

My mom is one of the first to visit. She hugs me then leans in and whispers something in Sam’s ear. His chest shakes with another spasm. I want to scream at her to get away from him. But I know damn well the message is for me.

As much as I recognize the need for people to see Sam one last time, it makes an excruciating experience even more exhausting. For the next few hours, I hug each visitor but soon realize I can’t keep this up. As the day progresses, I focus all my energy on Sam. And on us.

In the quieter moments, I gently trace the three small moles in a row on his forearm. I touch the crescent-shaped scar on the back of his hand. “Remember the burning shrimp, Sammy?” I whisper.

As a kid, he’d put his hand through an iron bar while punching his brother. He’d missed his brother and got the bed frame instead. When I first saw the scar, back when we were twenty, I’d told him it looked like he’d had a run-in with a deep-fried shrimp.

I run my fingers through his hair and gently scratch his scalp. Now, however, I can only touch the top of his head because…

“What the hell were you doing?” I ask him. “Why didn’t you look where you were stepping?”

But Sam had always said that coming home to me at the end of every shift was his top priority. What went wrong?

In the late afternoon, I find myself singing to him, through sobs, the old song, “You Are My Sunshine,” taught to me in the summer by the young daughter of my best friend, Jodie.

Around 6:00 p.m., Stan and his expectant wife, Megan, arrive from Vancouver. We stand, arms around each other, staring down at Sam and I recall a game the four of us had played on the Sea to Sky highway en route to Whistler, B.C. years ago. We had to come up with one word that described each person. I don’t remember anyone else’s answers except Stan’s word to describe Sam: solid.

I look at him now. A white sheet drapes his frame like a bad toga costume. Wires and tubes sprout out from his neck and chest. A catheter pisses for him while a respirator does his breathing. What will solid mean when there is, physically, no more Sam?

At 7:00 p.m., eleven hours after I first saw him in the ER, I watch a nurse lift up his eyelids one at a time to shine a light in. One pupil is a tiny speck; the other fully dilated. I fold into the nearest chair.

Around 9:00 p.m., my eldest brother, Ed, arrives from Northern Ontario. Since he’s missed the family meeting, he isn’t as up to par on Sam’s medical condition as the rest of us. He asks a nurse—not one of Sam’s regular ones—if they’re absolutely sure there’s no hope left.

She glances at her clipboard then back at Ed. “Well, I personally haven’t read his entire chart, but it says right here that his gray and white matter have mixed—so no, there’s no hope.”

When she sees the expression on my face, she back-peddles. “I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, am I?”

“Oh no, no,” I reply, waving my hand.

I understand Sam’s head hit the concrete hard enough to kill him but until now, it hadn’t registered that his brain is a goddamn tossed salad.

Then the organ transplant coordinator comes in. ‘Oh fuck,’ I think, now what organ do you want? But she hands me a teddy bear. I read his nametag: Hope.

“I just thought you might need someone to hug,” she says.

I throw my arms around her.

Just after ten, the doctor tells me an operating room hasn’t yet come available and it might still be a couple of hours. Good: more time with Sam.

“And because of the pneumonia,” he adds, “we’re concerned about the fluid building up in one of Sam’s lungs. We’d like to do a procedure to try and drain that.”

“Can I stay in here?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. We’re going to have to make an incision in his side, so it’s probably best if you wait in the hall.”

The poor guy is getting sliced and diced, poked and prodded. From a medical perspective, he’s already a collection of body parts versus a human whole.

When I walk out into the hallway, my youngest brother, Dale, is waiting for me. We walk toward the window together.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” I say, looking out over the city Sam had been so goddamn determined to serve. “All that schooling and volunteering and working at jobs he hated and then all those rejections by the different police services…”

I shake my head at the irony. He’d devoted eight years of his life—our life—trying to get on with this stupid police service before they actually hired him. Now, after only four years, he’s somehow managed to die in the line of duty. This is Canada; very few officers pass away on the job and as far as I can tell, it sounds like a freak accident.

“At least he went doing what he loved,” Dale says.

I turn to him.

“Sam never gave up,” he continues. “He was the most determined person I’ve ever met.”

I jerk my head toward Sam’s ICU room. “Yeah and look what that got him.”

Dale is quiet a moment. “The chief told me today that Sam was one of her stars.”

“Was,” I reply, “is the operative word here.”

“No,” says Dale, shaking his head. “I’d say star is.”

WHEN I’M allowed back in the room, it’s nearly eleven so I figure I better come up with some sort of strategy: an Ops plan for widowhood. I know I can physically survive without Sam for seven months because we’ve been apart that length of time before. In 1992—after we’d been dating three years and I’d just graduated from university—I’d gone backpacking on my own and made it as far as Hong Kong before I’d phoned Sam, sobbing about having made a mistake in leaving him behind.

“Bullshit,” he’d said. “You’ve always wanted to do this, so do it—and don’t come home until you’re ready. If we’re meant to be, then this time apart will let us know.”

“Don’t you miss me?”

“It’s been two days. Besides, it was nice watching Monday Night Football with the boys again.”

“Oh.”

“I’m kidding!” he’d said. “Just relax and enjoy your trip. You’re lucky to have this opportunity so quit whining and have some fun.”

I reach over and take Sam’s hand. No tension remains. “I’ll stick around for seven months,” I tell him, “but after that I’m not making any promises.”

Just after midnight, an operating room becomes available. I watch as a group of nurses and technicians prepare Sam’s body for the transfer. One person temporarily detaches him from the respirator while another manually forces air into his lungs through a device that looks like a plunger. I want to scream. He’s leaving me and there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it.

They wheel Sam out of his room and down the hall. I follow behind, right into the OR. When I turn around and see that several family members have followed us in, I scream at them instead: “Get out! Leave us alone!”

The medical personnel stare at me. But my crew of supporters high-tail it out of the operating room. I walk up to Sam, lean over and kiss him on the lips. “I love you.”

Then I take a deep breath, give him one last wave, turn around and walk out into the hallway full of family and friends. I start to thank people for staying but Dale puts his arm around me. “I think that’s enough for today. Let’s get you home.”

In silence we walk through the hospital corridors and out into the night.