The wires were a tangled mess on the floor.
Arthur had ripped them out with a strength that shouldn't have been there. Sarah found him slumped over the side of the bed, his face pale, his breath shallow.
"Don’t do this, Arthur!" she cried, her voice echoing in the dim night shift light.
She reattached the sensors, her fingers trembling. The chaotic beeping finally subsided into a rhythmic pulse. Arthur looked exhausted, a man who had fought a war and lost.
Sarah sat with him in the silence, the soft beeps the only sound in the ward. She understood now that Arthur wasn't afraid of dying. He was afraid of breaking a promise.
"You're not leaving her alone by staying, Arthur," she said. "You're carrying her with you. If you go now, who will remember the way she laughed? Who will tell the stories?"
He closed his eyes, and for the first time, a single tear escaped, tracing a path through the wrinkles of his cheek.