An old man is dying. The hospital smells of bleach and death, something he has always hated. It is clean, too clean, and the blinding flourescent lights make his sickly skin appear almost translucent. His room is buzzing with the constant in and out of doctors and nurses, but the man has never felt more alone. He has no wife, no children to keep him company in his dying hours. Only the drone of the machines and the unsteady beep of the heart monitor fill the silence. He slips in and out of consciousness, unaware of the nurse who slips quietly behind the flimsy privacy curtain. It is past visiting hours, and she, half-changed from her scrubs, should not be there. Her husband and toddler await her at home, but she wants to linger at the bedside of this stranger a little longer. She reaches carefully for his hand; the wrinkled skin and slim fingers feel fragile in her delicate grasp. She watches the shaky rise and fall of his chest as she settles into the plastic hospital chair for the night.
No one should have to die alone.
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