A/N Yes, I know it’s been a long while. I’ve missed you lot too. Had to write a short story for my studies. Figured I’ll post it here.

He just lay there on the hospital bed. Still, unmoving. His face ashen; his mouth slightly parted; his eyes only half closed. My mother laid a trembling hand on his chest as if to wake him. When her touch didn’t spark any reaction, she moved it to his forehead, his mouth, his cheek. She cupped his face with both hands and peered into his dull, glossy eyes as if looking into his soul.

“Sunshine?” her quivering call was one of confusion, of seeking, of grief. “My sunshine?”

I stood watching, seemingly impassive as her voice cut through the flesh of my heart. My throat was too thick to swallow, to utter anything even if I had something to say – which I didn’t. All I could do was stand there watching as my mother’s world came crashing down on her. So I did.

The ward was full of uncomfortable people. That is the thing about death. The patients would sit wondering if they were next, the visitors nervously gazing at their loved ones wondering what they would do if they were the woman behind the curtains. What they would do if they were my mother.

My role was difficult to define. The man my mother called Sunshine had meant nothing to me. And, while I might not had wished for this to happen, his separation from my mother would most certainly be welcomed. Despite this, I felt my eyes tear up. I barely found the strength to move closer, to stretch out my hand and lay it on my mother’s shoulder. She had her face against his face, her tears dripped on him as if they were his own. The liquid seemed to briefly reanimate him. It unnerved me. The dead shed no tears and I could imagine those where his tears of parting and not hers.

“Mom, we need to go.”

“No, I don’t want to leave him here. I don’t want to leave him by himself.”

“But mom, you know he’s not here anymore.”

She seemed to ignore me for a long time – wiping his face, straightening his hair, closing those eyelids of his that kept peering at me almost jealously. I thought again about how different our perspectives were. I had walked into the ward 10 minutes before expecting to see death. She had been there when the doctor and nurses swarmed him, trying to save him. She had been taken to the nurses’ station just before the end, but had still been expecting to see him alive again.

“I know you’re right,” she finally whispered. “But… Can’t I just stay here with him?”

“No.”

The word came out of my lips without hesitation and with a surprising amount of authority. Part of me felt like the bad guy: coming in here and expecting her to leave without her beloved. It needed to be done though. For her sake…

“He is my everything. How am I going to get through this?”

She turned to me, her eyes still bright with tears, waiting for me to give her the answer. So desperate. So lost.

“One step at a time,” was all I could think to say.

It felt trite as I said it. My mind raced for something real, some strain of logic that could capture the validity of my words, but everything seemed to slip through my fingers. Nothing is ever solid in grief; there are no answers during death that makes a shred of sense.

She nodded in an almost absentminded fashion, turning back to him. Did she expect such a reply? Perhaps part of her did.

“You’re not supposed to go, you told me you wouldn’t,” she lay herself over him, whispering to him just loud enough for me to hear. “You can’t go; you can’t leave me here alone.”

“Mother...” I walked forward, laying my hand on her shoulder again. My fingers touched something soft and cold. I recoiled in horror, my body shooting chilly tendrils through my body as I processed what had just happened. I touched him! No, not a ‘him’. I touched it!

“I love you, my sunshine.” I heard her whisper to the body. I shook off my feeling of repulsion, wrapped my hand around her arm and gently began pulling her away. She finally allowed me to do so, moving towards the curtains. “I’m never going to see him again,” she told me, her eyes still wild with grief. “Can’t I stay here with him?”

“No,” I – the villain – said again.

I pulled her out of the ‘private’ enclosure, gesturing to her handbag which lay on a nearby seat. She picked it up, ignoring the stares of everyone else in the ward. The atmosphere thickened with an almost unbreakable silence as they all looked, pitied and wondered. I met a few of their eyes briefly, but nothing was exchanged in those looks. They were just as at a loss as I was.

Some nurses spoke to my mother, telling her how nothing could’ve been done; how unexpected it all was. They glanced at me curiously, not understanding the mix of emotion and emotionless-ness they were picking up. I did not care to explain to them. They then moved on towards the body where their grim task of preparing him still awaited them. I motioned my mother to the doorway, not wanting her to see what they were about to do.

As we neared the exit she glanced back at curtains behind which the body lay. Her eyes, though red rimmed, looked remarkably similar to Sunshine’s. They were dull, lifeless, and empty of hope or meaning.

“Goodbye,” she whispered again.

My heart cringed as I realized that it wasn’t only one person I was leaving behind on that hospital bed. I shook off the sensation, wrapped my arm around my mother’s shoulders and led her out.

Goodbye, my heart whispered to them both.