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She walked softly over to the patient’s bed. His fever running high. The paramedics running frantically around, trying to lower it, to stop his struggling, against the bounds keeping him in place, not seeing her, standing there in the mist of them. She swept her hand gently over his brow. He was hot, sweating. She let her cool hand rest there, her icy hand. She watched as his temperature seemed to go down. His heart beat starting to slow, stumbling out of its rhythmic pattern. It was time. Bringing her other hand up, she cupped his cheek. He opened his lips and started to breathe, all easy like, the fever all but disappearing, as was his life. She watched as his breath slowed, she closed her eyes, allowing the tears to slip out of her eyes as she watched his life slip away into the air.

She heard the metallic beep of the monitor turn into one beep, long and piercing. She could hear the medics come running, pushing open the door, and taking out the shocks. She just watched. Letting them push through her, going through her as she watched. She closed her eyes and she let his life slip through their fingers, out of her own. She listened as they tried to bring his frail body back from the brink death, but he was already gone.

Opening her eyes, she turned her head, hands resting on the man’s brow, doctor still trying to save him. But he didn’t realize that he was here, standing behind her, gazing at his own body, as it jumped at each shock. Her hands raised and lowered with each arch of his body, but her hands remained on his face. “تيم وف دث, واحدة فورت-يغت.”

She let her hands slip silently off his face, and lowered her head to the man behind her, in a foreign country, with foreign words. The medics walking through her misty body, hearts shattered at the man they were unable to save, even though they had not known him.

“I’m dead, aren’t I?” She smiled silently, and he ran his gaze over the glistening tracks of tears on her face.

“Are you here to take me?”

She let her smile linger a little longer before disappearing, he was so calm. He shouldn’t be, his spirit should be restless, he had years left he was suppose to have lived. She slowly extended her arm, waiting for him to grasp her own, as he did, with no hesitation. He clutched her hand with great strength. She raised her head, and focused on his eyes. They were afraid. No one could be completely acceptable of her, though there were those like him who tried. But she could still see the fear. But no one else could tell if they saw him standing there, head upright, not even his closed friend. She had had years of practice, and it was always the same, if not concealed as well. Always the same fear, but most didn’t try to conceal it, most just outright showed it, begging, pleading.

But not he, he who died sooner than he should have. But he had lots of time to think about it, so many friends he had seen go. She raised her other hand, ignoring the sounds around her, and brought her other hand up to gently touch his temple. She hated war; it brought so many to their deaths before it was time, for them, for her. She smiled, her sad smile, tears shimmering on her cheeks. No one was here, surrounding him in this foreign country, to cry for him when he moved on. He was all alone.

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