She stands there in the doorway of the hospital room, short gasping breaths heaving out of her trembling mouth. Doctors in white coats and nurses in scrubs with cute animals on them bustle around in hallway behind her. Muffled sounds don't quite reach her ears; hands touch her, but she is too numb to feel them. All she sees is the body on the table.

She should be wearing her scrubs, because she is covered in blood. Stains like that won't come out; she knows, because she's tried before, after assisting in surgeries (she's learned to just throw out the ruined uniforms now). So, with all this blood, she should be wearing scrubs, instead of the dress. The blue one, the one he loves because it dipped low in the back and it brought out the color of her eyes.

He loves loved that dress.

Her lipstick matches the bloodstains. Funny, she had almost chosen the light pink shade for their date tonight (celebrating three years together), because she hadn't been quite sure that the berry-red tint went with her dress. It certainly matches now. And it will match the black dress hanging in the back of her closet, worn only once before, when she said goodbye to the only other man she has loved. Never has she wanted her father alive more than in this moment, to hold her, to catch her when she falls, because it's all she can do to stay standing right now as she stares at the body on the table.

She needs to call his sister, to tell her about the car running the red light and slamming into them, about the terrifying trip to the hospital, how the doctors had said we did everything we could. She had screamed at them: do you know who my mother is? Try again! They knew it was no use; so did she, but he couldn't be dead.

The body is on the table. She can see the large hands covered in callouses and the broad shoulders that carried more weight than they should've had to in this life, the freckles that she loved to trace with the tip of her finger and the lips that had kissed her so passionately only hours ago. The only thing she can't see is his eyes, and she doesn't want to. She is so used to seeing his eyes dance with laughter, shine with joy, simmer with frustration, glitter with amusement, blaze with love. She can't picture them any way other than alive. If she sees them as they are now—cold, empty, dead—then the doctors were right.

They did everything they could, and it hadn't been enough.