She smiled at as she heard the door slowly shut and heard the familiar sound of shuffling come close to her bed. She turned her head over and opened her weary old eyes, and smiled warmly at Carl as he frowned at her, in sadness. "Hi Ellie," he said as he sat down in a chair placed next to her bed. "Hi honey," she said quietly. Her now dim colored blue eyes traveled up the string in Carl's hand to the ceiling and she laughed quietly to herself at the inflated, yellow, helium balloon. "Just like old times," she whispered, barely audible to Carl's ears, even with the help of a hearing aid. Carl bit his lip in sadness, hating how she looked now. How she sounded now. The pale blue hospital gown seemed to make her pale skin glow bright, and sickly. Her long hair, usually in a bun or under a bandanna, surrounded her hair in a tangled, grey halo. Her eyes, always so full of life and energy, seemed to be dimming, like the frail life in her olden bode. As tears threatened to reveal his emotion, he felt a small hand unsteadily land on his face. He looked down at his wife, and friend, and couldn't help but smile as more tears fell down his face as she smiled childishly, her round cheeks pushing a few wrinkles up. He held her other hand, which was embedded with vines of vital substances, needed to keep her alive. His large hands were oddly soft and gentle with her small dainty ones, and would have surprised others. But they didn't mind. Ellie always said it was another secret they shared, like the many others they had told in their youth, and even their adulthood. A small hand wiped away the tears on Carl's wrinkled cheeks. "I love you," she said to him, her voice tearing away the last of what remained of the awkward silence. "I love you too," he replied in his gruff voice. He grabbed the hand on his cheek and planted a soft kiss on the back of it. Ellie sighed in calm content, as the soft-hearted shepherd of sleep made his way across her mind, with his soft fluffy herd of dream sheep covered it's land. Carl held her hand with both hands, cupping it like a child you caught a butterfly and never wished to let it go, but sadly knew he would. The beeping of the heart monitor soon became one of the only sound heard. At least to anyone other than Carl. To him the only sounds he could hear was Ellie's near-silent sleeping, falling into the rhythm of the electronic heart beat. And soon, just like the the short and shrill beeps, it too would stop.