“Gram,” Danny said, and she blinked a few times before turning her head to look up at him. “Do you understand everything the nurse just said?”

After a few seconds, she nodded.

“Okay,” he said, rubbing his hand over her arm. “Okay…you let me know when you’re ready.”

Gram took a deep breath before she said, “I need to use the powder room.”

“Alright,” he said, moving to help her up, and when he took a step with her, she shook her head.

“I’d like to go alone.”

Danny gradually released his hold on her, making sure she was steady on her feet. “Are you sure?”

She nodded, giving his hand a squeeze before she let go and started down the hall, and he kept his eyes on her until she turned the corner and was out of sight.

Danny lowered himself into the chair behind him, dropping his forehead to his clasped hands. And then Leah was standing in front of him, resting her hand on the back of his head.

Without lifting his head, he reached forward, wrapping his arms around her hips and pulling her to stand in between his legs before he buried his face in her abdomen.

“This is…” he whispered.

“I know,” she murmured, running her fingers through his hair before she leaned down and pressed her lips to his head, leaving them there as she added, “But he’ll never be gone, Danny. Because you still love him. And he’ll always exist through you because of that. They leave, baby, but they’re never gone.”

She straightened, and he lifted his head, resting his chin on her stomach as he stared up at her. She smiled a watery smile as she ran her fingers through his hair again. “You’re doing the right thing,” she whispered.

He nodded before pressing his face into her stomach again, and she stood there, caressing his hair until Gram returned from the bathroom.

“I’m ready,” she said softly, and Leah stepped back, allowing him to stand.

“Alright,” he said, running his hand over his eyes. “Let me just…I’ll…”

“I’ll go get them,” Leah interjected. “Stay here with her.”

He exhaled as Leah turned toward the nurses’ station, thankful for her offer; he didn’t think he’d be able to speak to anyone right now. He wasn’t even sure how he was still standing.

Gram came over and took his hand, holding it gently as they stood waiting for Leah to return.

A few minutes later, Dr. Racine turned the corner with the nurse named Amanda from earlier. He approached them and held out his hand, shaking Danny’s as he said something Danny didn’t hear. Instead, his eyes were on Leah where she stood a few feet away, her watery eyes pinned on him.

“I love you,” she mouthed.

“If you’ll follow me,” Dr. Racine said, pulling his attention from Leah, and Danny blinked quickly before he nodded.

The doctor and nurse walked a few steps ahead as he and Gram followed them into Bryan’s room.

This was usually the part where Danny could exhale; no matter how many times he walked through the ICU, it always unsettled him. Solemn faces. Voices barely above hushed whispers. No flowers. No balloons. Everything sterile. Angular. Cold. Machines beeping in a repetitive chorus of hope, or trilling in warning. Faces worn from vigils that had lasted days or weeks, or worse, the faces streaked with the tears of a vigil that had ended.

But then he’d get inside Bryan’s room, the door would close behind him, and he’d exhale. He’d pull up a chair and sit next to the bed, and he’d talk to his best friend as if they were sitting on the wall outside the shop having lunch. He’d tell him about his life, about work, about the guys. He’d tell him about the weather, about movies he’d seen. And most recently, he’d tell him about Leah.

It was a little piece of normal inside a cyclone of sorrow.

But today, as the door closed behind him, he didn’t exhale. He didn’t pull up a chair. He didn’t smile or talk or share.

He didn’t move at all.

Gram released his hand as Amanda guided her to the other side of the room, pulling up a chair for her to sit by Bryan’s bedside. Danny was still rooted to the floor as the doctor looked over the readouts on Bryan’s machines and the nurse helped Gram get comfortable in her chair. She said something to her that Danny couldn’t hear, and then Gram pressed her lips together before she nodded.

“Okay,” Amanda said, placing her hand on Gram’s shoulder before she turned to Dr. Racine, looking at him meaningfully.

Danny watched as he approached the side of the bed and took hold of the tube in Bryan’s mouth. When he stepped back a few seconds later, there was a small plastic cylinder still attached to Bryan’s lip by some medical tape, but the long, serpentine tube—the one Danny knew was sending life-giving oxygen into his lungs—was gone.

His eyes were drawn to Amanda on other side of the bed as she reached up and clicked a switch on the machine above Bryan’s head.

The drip. The thing that kept his blood pumping through his body.

Gone.

Something like panic fluttered in his chest, making it hard to breathe, and his eyes flew to Gram; she was sitting in the chair on the opposite side of the bed, smiling softly as she stroked her hand up and down Bryan’s arm.

He thought he’d made his peace with this. He’d known for a year now that Bryan wasn’t coming back. She was the one who had hoped. She was the one who had believed, against all odds, that one morning he would open his eyes. Danny had always known it was a pipe dream. He’d said his good-byes long before this.

So then why was this so hard?

Gram looked so calm—peaceful, even—and he felt like he was about to lose it. Like he wanted to pound his fists against the nearest object and scream until his throat was raw and bloody and his body collapsed in on itself.

The doctor slid a chair up to Bryan’s bedside opposite Gram, nodding at Danny before he walked to the other side of the room to consult with the nurse.

Danny walked the few steps over to the chair and sank down into it, pressing his hands into the tops of his thighs to try and stop them from trembling.

He stared at Bryan’s face, trying to make him appear. Trying to animate it. Trying to remember his mannerisms. His facial expressions. His laugh.

When Danny wasn’t with him, it was always so hard to do. He could conjure images, but the details were hazy, like looking at a picture on the bottom of a pool.

But with Bryan in front of him, everything was suddenly sharp. His impassive face provided the blank canvas for Danny to recreate image after image of his friend—happy, sad, confused, angry, amused—all crystal clear and perfect. Whenever he’d leave after a visit, Danny would always promise himself that this time, he wouldn’t forget. He’d replay the images in his mind like a slideshow as he drove home, trying to commit their clarity to permanent memory. But it was like trying to hold water in his fist.

He failed every time.

Bryan’s face was thinner than Danny’s memories, something he’d gradually grown accustomed to, but today his jaw was covered in a light five-o’clock shadow. Gram and the nurses had spent the last year keeping up a steady system of shaving him, cutting his hair, his fingernails.

Preserving him.

But no one had shaved him today.

Dr. Racine approached Gram’s side of the bed, placing his hand on her shoulder. “It won’t be too much longer now,” he said gently.

Danny straightened as his stomach jolted, sending bile up into the back of his throat.

No. NO.

His heart started racing, urging him to do something. Ask them to perform CPR. Beg them to hook the tube back up. Plead with them to restart the drip.

Don’t. Don’t go yet. Not yet.

His eyes darted to the monitor above the bed; the nurse had silenced it before she turned the drip off, but he could see the long green line, adorned with miniature spikes—tiny hills that crested with every beat of his heart.