The hospital hums low,
machines sighing like tired ghosts.
Fluorescent lights burn above,
unforgiving,
casting sterile shadows
on the cracked edges of a fragile world.
She grips his hand—
small, pale, too still—
like it is the last branch
before the fall.
Her whispers are jagged.
"You are my heart. My breath.
If you go, I go too."
Her tears stain his fingers,
as if baptizing him
with her desperation.
But his eyes,
those vast, knowing pools,
carry an ancient grief
no child should bear.
"Mom, we both know," he says,
his voice soft as paper crumbling,
"this fight—
it is not mine to win."
He does not cry.
His strength is in surrender.
A calm the world cannot forgive.
"No!" she howls,
her sobs rising like sirens,
crashing against walls
that cannot echo the love she spills.
"You are my everything.
Without you, there is nothing."
He looks at her,
tender and broken,
as if he has held her pain
since the day he was born.
"Then I will fight," he lies.
"For you, I will try."
And she believes him,
because hope
is the only thing crueler than grief.
The machines scream first—
a flat, ceaseless wail.
His chest stills,
and her world follows.
