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With her hand on his, she notices that it is warm and rigid, in contrast to the cold and slow rise of his chest. She wonders if his heart still beats for her, if his mind is full of love; if it is not already an empty void.
Sweat glistens on his face, and his skin is pale and sick. His breath moves out of him as if it is an act of preservation rather than an act of survival, with his blood rushing in all the wrong areas. He is unmoving and ghostly, but could have been akin to the moon itself in all its' helpless beauty.
And like the sun, she would've given him all the light she had to help him glow in perfect radiance.
She was day, he was night. But neither could exist without one another, or they would be doomed to an existence of perpetual desolation.
With every rise and fall of his chest, she wonders if his blood knows that it moves in vain, to support a body that will never awaken or stir. Would it rather hide in his vacant heart, knowing he will never open those eyes with a newborn burst of life, or wake up and sleepily ask her why he's in an unfamiliar room with flowers on his bedside. Ask her why she looks so tired and defeated, as if she hasn't slept in a thousand years.
She leans down and kisses his eyelids tenderly, reminiscing the times when he'd ask her why she loved him so much, on nights when there had been nothing wrong with the world.
And each time, without fail, she'd tell him, “Because you are my sun.”
And now, she could laugh at the irony of it. Whatever that was left of him had died, leaving behind an empty shell that would never dream or breathe freely. The body, attached to many wires and machinery that she would never comprehend, lay in front of her with eyes that would never reflect the sun in its' gaze again.
The flames within him had extinguished and withered, leaving behind ash and only a memory of its' powerful light.
But even yet, it had been a while since he'd been unresponsive to the world around him. From hushed whispers in the hallways and distant nods from doctors, she knew that that the ash in him must be dwindling, too. Soon, there would be nothing left.
Nothing for her to stare at blankly, or curse at with a shaking form. Nothing to beg to awaken, to laugh at as if this had been a heartless prank, or to shake as if this unmoving state was merely a restful sleep after a long night. Nothing.
As much as she liked to turn a blind eye to all this, it was painfully obvious by the way he turned a sickly yellow after a while, a vast change from the usually warm tone of his skin. The way his breathing slowly turned laboured and ragged.
Even worse, his heartbeat seemed to dull with each passing day, and the sounds of the machines seemed to taunt at her increasingly slower and slower.
She understood that all things must come to an end, but she could never understand why. Some days, she wondered if it an act of a detached god, or the will of a cruel world.
And on other days, when she would be tearfully hunched over his body, gripping his hands in a desperate prayer, she'd wonder why his end had to be so painfully drawn out. So, so terribly slow and agonising.
And yet, why did she suffer when he did not; blissfully unaware of his looming death.
Why did he live if only to die before they would grow old and grey with each other, with lives full of meaning and colour rather than this permanent grey in her heart?
She vowed she'd never let him leave again. And yet, here she is, watching as he drifts away whilst she can do nothing but to watch. She can grasp for him as much as she wants, with fingers that will not even graze his collar, but she knows that he is slipping away for good. And inevitably, she will be alone again.
But she will make it. And she will be okay. Even if not for a little while. She will rise and she will set for as long as it takes, to be with him for as long as she can. To keep the tides coming and going and to provide light in this everlasting darkness.
Maybe one day she will join him. Perhaps she will meet him in another lifetime. But for now, she'll sit comfortably in this white, plastic chair, at his side, replacing the flowers and drawing the curtains over and over until the day his chest falls for the last time. Never to rise again, like the sun.