A few minutes passed before the doctor finally emerged from Temperance's room. His pale face was drawn and damp with sweat, and a few strands of thinning gray hair hung limply over his eyes. His strong hands had once forced life back into so many people, but the pitiful look he offered her was enough to tell Angela that the fight to save her friend was over.
"I'm sorry." He laid a hand comfortingly on the young woman's shoulder, and she nodded, knowing that they had done all they could….all they knew how to do.
"I know." She whispered. Her dark eyes were filled to the brim with fresh tears. "So…is she…?" Angela couldn't even bring herself to say the word. She didn't have to. The doctor nodded back, squeezing her shoulder gently.
"I'm afraid so. She's been unresponsive for some time now. I've given the nurse permission to call it." Angela told him that she understood, but said nothing else, her mind too numb to form a thought. All she knew was that she wanted to be at Tempe's side. She wanted to hold her hand, to talk to her...if only so her best friend would know that she hadn't been abandoned. She looked longingly at the door behind them and then turned back to the doctor, wiping the dampness from her cheeks.
"So,um...can I?"
"Sure," he nodded, motioning her toward the room with one hand. "Go ahead." As soon as she left his side, the doctor made his way to the nurse's station, and Angela waited until he had picked up another chart and disappeared around the corner before she reached for the door. Turning the knob, she pushed the heavy door out of her way, and took a small step into the room. Instantly, she felt a curtain of cold, sterile air surround her.
Tempe looked so pale. Her body was taught and lifeless as she lay in her hospital bed, surrounded by a mass of tubes and wires, and Angela found herself taken aback by the unnatural stillness. Her arms and legs stretched stiffly toward the wall, and her hair formed a dark halo around her head, the auburn locks starkly contrasting with the bleached white of her skin.
She looks just like a porcelain doll...
As the strange thought lingered in her mind, Angela circled the bed, eventually finding her way to the visitor's chair by the window. She sat down stiffly and took one of Tempe's hands in her own, the slight touch sending a sudden chill through her fingers. Absently, she began to rub at her bare arm.
"I can't believe you, Tempe." Angela whispered. She still hadn't managed to look at her best friend. Her gaze was fixed pitifully on the heart monitor overhead...and the flat green line that slid silently across the screen. "How could you leave us like this?"
Tears slid from the corners of her eyes, and she had to press her lips together to keep from sobbing. Slowly, she let her eyes drift from the monitor and back to the bed. One look at her best friend's face, and she could feel herself falling apart.
"How could you?" Angela demanded. Her voice was raw with unbridled anger, anger she hadn't even realized was there, and she let it spill out recklessly, knowing there was no one there to hear it. "What are we supposed to do now? We need you, Temperance! You need to come back to us!"
Please," she pleaded, more to God, or whoever it was that was listening, then to her friend. "Please come back..."
And then, she cried. Angela lay her head down next to Tempe's on the pillow and crumpled the damp sheets in her fist, allowing all that she had held back those past few weeks (the fear and grief and utter despair) to come crashing down on her in waves.
With each breath, her chest heaved, and her fingers tightened their grip on Tempe's body, as if letting her go meant that she would fade all the more quickly into oblivion.
As her sobs shattered the three a.m. silence, and wallowed in the emptiness of the abandoned hospital corridor, a tiny sound echoed inside the room.
Beep................beep.............