There are so many things I'll take with me from here. Everything I did, everything I learned. All the people. I have a photo album inside, and all of their faces are right there. The ones I shared everyday life with, and the ones we helped. The ones who were already gone, and the ones I got to see off, before they went somewhere else. The ones I only got to know a little, and yet I got to be there for their grand exit. It's such a precious thing, Helen, such an honor. It's tearing me apart.

Mike's breath was almost invisible. Almost imperceptibly his chest rose and fell. Rose and fell.
Margaret held her hand on it. She couldn't feel it, but knew that deep inside was a heart holding on to the last impulses of life, even though Mike himself had gone somewhere else. Or maybe there was still a small sliver of him in there, maybe he could still feel. So she kept her hand on his chest. To see him off.

It had been a long time since he spoke. Before his voice started to wind down there had been flames of memories. Igniting, burning brightly, and fading. A family trip to the beach. The scent of molasses cookies baking in his grandmother's kitchen. The State Fair where he first kissed the girl who was now his fiancée. She had tasted like cotton candy. The sound of rain in the chestnut tree outside his bedroom. The early morning only a couple of days ago when he stood guard over his sleeping comrades out on patrol, and a deer came walking in the stillness. So close to him that he could see the breath coming out of its nose in the chilly morning air, the muscles of its hind twitching.
Small glimpses of a life.
They lived inside Margaret now, and she would keep them safe. Keep them safe for Mike.

"I'm tired," he had mumbled.

"I know. You should get some sleep."

"I'll see you in my dreams." His lips hardly moved anymore.

Then there was silence.

His chest rose and fell. Rose and fell. Margaret reached her other hand out to stroke his hair.
Behind them, someone opened the door and stepped inside, and with them, they took the smell of burning garbage. Garbage burning day, and they wanted to get an early start, as usual.
Why couldn't anything in this place ever be dignified? Pristine. Why couldn't Mike's last breaths be filled with the scent of molasses cookies, his ears filled with the sound of rain?

His chest rose and fell. Rose and fell. And then it didn't rise again.

Margaret held her own breath and put two fingers against Mike's neck. Then his wrist. Nothing.
She exhaled and let her hand rest against his chest again.

"I'll see you in my dreams too, Mike," she whispered.

She looked up at BJ where he sat at the desk, bent over some papers. She tried to find her voice to call him over, but all that came out was a sigh. Or maybe it was a moan. Maybe it was the last tiny spark of Mike, traveling up from his stubborn, beautiful heart, up through his chest, through her hand, and out through her mouth. Maybe that's how it worked between the dead and those who were there to see them off.

BJ must have felt it, somehow, because he looked up and met her eyes. She nodded. He nodded too, got up, and made his way over to them. To her, it was only her now.

She stared at the clock on the wall when BJ called it. So strange, every day the exact time passes. The time you will one day cease to exist. Every single day, but you don't know it.
Time was a thief. It could be measured between phone calls. The last moment of quiet before the bomb hit. It could stretch into an eternity and it could coil in on itself to almost nothing.
When someone dies from sickness, that death happens a thousand times before the actual moment, one loss at a time. The loss of a favorite song whistled, the quirks that once annoyed you, but you would give anything to have back, or a booming laugh gone quiet. And for some, it's over all at once.
Whether you get to say goodbye or not, it doesn't give you any peace, though.

BJ sat down across from her, and they rested in silence for a little while. A couple of nurses moved around the room, and one of the wounded coughed. Outside a jeep started. Normal, ordinary sounds of morning.

"You should get some sleep," BJ said. "I can't even remember what this room looks like without you in it."

"Yeah."

She didn't move. Kept picking at the sheet covering Mike's form, kept adjusting it in tiny ways. The corpsmen needed to take him away, the other patients shouldn't be exposed to the body, they shouldn't have to see it. But for just a little while longer, she needed to stay with him.

"He was gonna be a farmer," she said.

"Really?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Get married too. This time yesterday, all of that was still going to happen and now it's not anymore."

"I know." BJ leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "But at least he had someone there. So many just perish out there, but Mike, he had someone with him. You made sure he could hold on to those things, the farm and the wife were still real for him when he passed away. "

She felt the pinpricks of tears behind her eyes and shook her head.

"It doesn't change anything, though, does it?"

"It does, Margaret, it did change something for him. I saw you smile at him long after his eyes closed for the last time, and if that's not a proper send-off, I don't know what is. He got a couple of extra hours to spend with someone who wanted nothing but the best for him, that is so much more than most will ever get."

Margaret looked at BJ and felt her eyes flood over. She nodded. Maybe it was something, maybe it had made a tiny bit of difference. For her friend Mike. She knew he had made a difference for her.

"Get some rest. For real, this must be your third shift straight."

She sniffled and wiped her eyes. Yes, it was time to go. The mascara she had put on yesterday, or was it the day before that, was crumbling in her eyes, and it stung. She felt grimy all over.

"I will," she said and stood up. BJ did too.

"Good. Good night, Margaret. Or good morning, whatever you choose."

"Who even knows anymore?"

"I know I don't."

He smiled and gave her a nod before walking away.

Margaret moved her chair out of the way to make it easier for the corpsmen. Before she left, she gently touched Mike's chest again.

"Thank you," she whispered, "for letting me spend some time with you. Safe travels."

The pale light of dawn made the compound look surreal. She bent her head back and looked up at the sky, she so rarely even did that anymore, not in the light. She wanted to see stars, wanted one of them to burn bright, sending one last message to those left behind. But she didn't see any stars, they had faded away.
She saw a pillar of smoke billowing up from the burning pile of garbage. It wasn't dignified, it wasn't pristine. It covered everything in a haze, it gave the lamps a soft shimmer. It was hard to tell what time of day it was, dawn or dusk. Time was a thief, robbing you of night and day, of a sense of reality. One night in Korea equaled a lifetime. It robbed you of the life you were supposed to have lived, if things had been different.
But if time was a thief, maybe it could also give back, somehow. Maybe somewhere, in a small corner of existence, Mike was eight years old, sitting in his grandmother's kitchen, waiting for the molasses cookies to bake. The sweet smell filling his head, not burning garbage. Somewhere, he was kissing his girl at the State Fair, his ears filled with laughter and happy shrieks from the roller coaster.
Somewhere he could hear the sound of rain in the chestnut tree, and somewhere he was sitting next to a deer in the stillness of dawn.
Maybe all those things were true. Maybe somewhere behind the smoke, a star was burning bright. Burning so bright because of how special it was, a beautiful visitor that couldn't stay for long.
At least he had been there. At least he would live in the heart of a young woman. In the eye of a deer. In the soul of a tired nurse who had once seen things so clearly, but now everything was covered in a haze. A nurse who should get some sleep because tomorrow was already here, and soon new stars would burn bright in the sky.

Margaret pulled her cardigan closer around her and started to walk toward her tent. She hoped sleep would find her. She would very much like to dream and see her friend Mike. Maybe they could sit in his grandmother's kitchen together and eat cookies.

She would very much like that.

Author's Note:

I've always loved the scene in "Letters", where Margaret sits with the dying soldier. The way she chooses to go back and sit with him, and the way she smiles at him while clearly fighting back tears is just so beautiful. In this chapter, I wanted to expand on that scene, see what happened after he passed away.