“I love you,” breathed the already dead father.

The son nodded, wells in his eyes, the weak and wrinkled hand clinched in his own slips into lifelessness and the doctor wheels his father away. Sagged in his chair in the seemingly empty waiting room, the son stares blankly, reminiscing. Hands fell from the son’s shoulders; comforting words are offered to now deaf ears, the son still blankly stairs. The discussion of a surgeon and nurses’ weekend plan interrupts the rhythm of ambulance sirens that has allowed the son to phase out others. Thoughts of a failing surgery race inward and are quickly tossed aside. Others in the room disappear; the son is now truly alone as a star with no world to illuminate. The all-consuming darkness of distraught fills the son. Loud speakers shout a coding in room 271, nurses and doctors race by with surgeons close at hand. A doctor glides into the room where now slumps a heavyhearted man. This man, this son, a father himself, looks up to address the doctor and be told what he already knows; they’ve lost his father, they were too late.

The doctor, puzzled by the smile creeping to this strangers mouth, again glides but this time out of the room, proceeding to tell the family right out side that their grandfather has made it through a triple bi-pass. A tear slaloms his cheek as a smirk graces the son’s lips. Although depression is overbearing, thoughts only of his father’s last words reverberate in the son’s mind.

“I love you too dad,” comes the son’s answer to an ever-present father.