Gone
The only noise in the room came from the constant beep of the heart monitor and the ventilator keeping him alive. The patient was in fact an inmate from the local federal prison. He head had been bashed in until he was inches away from death. Prison guards and doctor fought to keep him alive but he had been without oxygen for too long. He was brain dead. He wasn't going to wake up.
Coulson had received a call from the director of the prison telling what had happened. Coulson didn't know what to say. He was shock yet part of him wasn't surprised because of the prisoner's past. Coulson only told on other person-May. She didn't have much to say since she had a sheer hatred towards prisoner and made her opinion perfectly clear to what she thought Coulson should do. Coulson had a decision to make. Pull the plug or hope for some miracle would happen.
Coulson decided to check out the prisoner's cell to help him make his decision. After spending almost two years in the one cell most prisoners would have picture from magazines or even pictures of or from their family on the walls but the walls in that cell where completely bare. The bed had been neatly made and what appeared to be a notebook laid on top of the pillow. Coulson examined the note book:
They keep interrogating me even though I have nothing to tell them.
They won't listen to me.
I've been thinking about them, her, a lot recently.
I got 3 broken ribs during my interrogation today.
Therapist says I'm getting better but it doesn't feel like it.
I want to apologies but they would never listen to me and if they did they would never believe me.
Therapist says I should write them all a letter which I do but I'll never send them.
They still interrogate me, I think they do it just to the can harm me.
They'll never realise I was only a foot soldier in it all.
I give up.
It's not like any would care.
I should have died a long time ago. I wish I had. The world would have been a better place.
Coulson closed the notebook after reading the last entry. He had made his decision but he wasn't going to tell them because the prisoner was right they wouldn't care.
Coulson asked to have a couple of minutes alone with the prisoner before the doctor turned the ventilator off. Coulson stood at the side of the hospital bed just staring down at the man. The whole left hand side of his face was swollen and bruised it was so bad that you couldn't even recognise him. When the doctor entered the room to switch off the ventilator, Coulson stood outside. Coulson watched, through the small window in the door, the heartbeat of the prisoner begin to slow down. The words from the notebook were running through his head.
Maybe the prisoner was right Coulson thought. If the prisoner had asked to apologise to them, they wouldn't have listened they wouldn't have even gone to the prison in attempt to hear the apology. If he had sent the letters he had written they would have need ripped up without being read. Could he have been just a foot soldier? Coulson thought. It was possible but no one would believe that theory. As the heartbeat continued to slow Coulson believe that he was doing the right thing. The doctor had assured him the prisoner was brain dead and ran tests to back herself up. Coulson had asked Simmons to look over the test results and the scientist agreed the doctor diagnosed.
"It's so sad." Simmons had commented as she read through the test results. Coulson hadn't told her who the patient was just that he was doing a favour for a friend.
Coulson was brought out of his thoughts has he heard heart monitor flat line. The prisoner was right. Grant Douglas Ward died alone with no one to care about him. He had killed himself. Ward had bashed his head repeatedly of the wall in his cell just after writing his last entry,
I've let her go.