The ICU corridor was a tunnel of silence until the alarms shattered it.
Through the glass panel, Sarah saw Arthur aggressively pulling at his wires. She ran in, the door swinging open with a heavy thud.
"Stop this right now!" she commanded.
The alarms subsided as she reattached the sensors. Arthur lay weak and still, his eyes fixed on the empty chair beside the bed.
""I stayed here after she died," he said, his voice a ghost of a sound. "Every single night. I thought if I stayed long enough, the room would give her back. But it only keeps taking.""
Sarah sat with him, the soft zoom of the monitor the only sound in the room. She realized that Arthur was a prisoner of his own hope.
"The room can't give her back, Arthur," Sarah said softly. "But you can take her with you when you leave. She's not in the chair. She's in the memories."