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father’s vital signs and heart rhythm.
Luc’s heart was beating alarmingly slow. Forrest clung onto hop e. His gaze moved to his mother, her usual rosy complexion
now pale and sunken. Charles stood on the other side of the bed, tall and
powerfully built like his son. He nodded at Forrest, his face grim.
    “A tourist was on a
scooter, drunk as a bat.” His mothe r spoke softly
into the silence. “Your father sw-werved to avoid him....and...w-went head-on
into a tree.” Her voice cracked on the words.
    He didn’t have to ask,
no seatbelt. They’ve had many arguments over the use of the safety device.
Wrapping his arms around his mother, Forrest looked
down at his father on the hospital bed and his breath caught. Fifty-nine years
young, his father was the poster child for health. Having worked on the farm
for so long, he was naturally big and sturdy, but at this moment, he looked frail, sickly and gray. Tubes and IV inserted in
his pale skin, the only thing connecting him to earth.
    Forrest glanced around
the room . E verything was expectedly
sterile, and yet a faint smell of death hung in the air.
    “Intracerebral
hemorrhage we were told,” Charles’ said in a low
muffled tone. “Luc had a stroke as he was transported here.”
    He nodded at Jason’s
father. Forrest was all too familiar with the medical term. Intracerebral
hemorrhage was caused by an artery in the brain bursting and creating localized bleeding in the surrounding tissues.
This bleeding killed brain cells and could lead to coma and death. His eyes
went to the slow blip of his father’s heart on the monitor. The mortality rate
for this type of injury was over forty percen t.
    Heart hammering
painfully in his chest, Forrest’s breathing went from quick to next to nothing.
He dropped his gaze to the linoleum tiles. Even though the floor was scrubbed
spotlessly, he could see all the tears that were ever shed on it.
    “Forrest.” Hi s father’s voice split on his name.
    He quickly moved
closer. “I’m here, Dad.”
    He watched his father
fight to open his eyes, when he finally succeeded, he smiled. A weak smile. Hope slipped.
    “I waited for you.”
    Forrest grasped his
father’s hand in his. “Don ’t talk. Relax, we ’re here.” A doctor until the very end, his voice sounded
deceptively calm, no hint of the panic and fear eating him up.
    “We?”
    He nodded. “Mom and
Charles are here as well.”
    Charles peeled himself
away from the wall and came to stand next to Forrest.
His mother followed. His father’s gaze slowly floated from each of them, a
smile on his face.
    “Thank you.” His
father said to his wife and Charles. “Thank
you for giving me my son .” He focused on Forrest. “ I
love you.” He smiled once more, too k one last jagged
breath and slipped away into an endless sleep.
    Forrest stood
absolutely still, silent and frozen, as if his brain short-circuited and needed
to be rebooted. Around him, everything was in fast-forward while he was
motionless in the middle of it all. The monitor
continued with the loud buzzing sound.
    Code blue! Code blue! The hospital code used to indicate a
patient requiring immediate resuscitation echoed in the speaker. Soon the door
swung open, fast, high-pitched voices spitting out medic al terms: Push epi, pupils blown, intubation. The words flew around him;
he recognized each one of the terms. He’d spent countless hours with his nose
buried in medical books. But suddenly he understood why people called it
medical jargon because none of t he words made any
sense. Until the doctor spoke, “Time of death, three-fifteen p.m.”
    Forrest’s soul
shriveled.
    He stepped back. An
arm filled with life and strength dropped on his shoulder. “I’m okay,” he told
Charles, but his voice trembled.
    “Let’s go to the waiting room.”
    He nodded. Standing
next to his father’s best friend, he clutched his mother’s hand and the three
of them walked out to the waiting room where the rest of the