Chapter 16. Wednesday.

Clare O’Neil looked at her watch. Four AM. She had persuaded her husband to go home and was now sitting alone in Jim's room. For the hundredth time, she closed her eyes, desperately seeking sleep. As had been the pattern of the night, memories of Jim filled the void - tender moments long forgotten, years that had flown by too quickly. She looked back at Jim, then at the monitors blinking by his side. On one, a thin green line traced a slow heartbeat as regular peaks and long troughs. Each peak gave her hope for the future; each trough fed her fear that the next peak would not be reached.

4:45 AM. She was still awake, practically suffocated by the confines of the small room. The walls were closing in on her, and her breaths came slow and labored. The relentless humming from the monitors rang loud in her ears, worse than a jet aircraft passing overhead. She yearned for morning and an end to the deathly stillness of the night. A new day would undoubtedly bring renewed hope.

A sudden high-pitched beep startled her. On one of the monitors, a green peak scrolled off the screen. None followed. She hurried to the bed. Jim looked to be asleep. She said his name and reached for his hand. It was cold. Another alarm sounded. The door flew open, and the lights came on. Jim’s face was white, his lips blue.

A nurse rushed in.

"Please, Mrs. O’Neil, can you step back?"

Clare moved away and leaned against the wall, the high-pitched beep ringing in her ears, screaming out certain disaster. A second nurse and a doctor joined the frantic activity around Jim's bed. Clare felt detached, an observer of events unfolding, not a participant and certainly not a mother. She glanced at the cursed monitor that had recorded her son's end as precisely as a seismograph records the onset of an earthquake. She prayed for a peak to break the low green line that moved unbroken across the screen.