The Last Warmth

Heather saw the hospital elevator doors sliding shut and shoved her hand in just in time. The metal edges bumped her knuckles. Inside, her brother Adam sat in a wheelchair, pale but restless, turning the thin plastic bracelet on his wrist like it was a puzzle he meant to crack open.

“You’re late,” he said.

“You’re impossible,” she said, catching her breath as she took the handles and pushed him toward the garden terrace.

The hallway smelled like antiseptic and chicken soup from the visitor kitchenette.

They rode in silence past the nurses’ station where a nurse with pink glasses typed notes without looking up. A TV hummed with the evening news. A meteorologist gestured at a map full of fake sunshine while Adam kept rolling the bracelet until it left a faint red line on his skin.

“You could try pretending to rest,” Heather said.

“I rested yesterday.”

“For twelve minutes.”

He gave a small shrug as if to say twelve minutes was generous.

They reached the terrace doors. The cold air hit them hard, sharp and honest. It smelled faintly like snow even though the forecast kept insisting spring had started. The city was settling into evening, windows glowing like stitched beads across the skyline. Cars crawled along the avenue, headlights blending into one long blurred ribbon.

Adam breathed in deep, as if he could swallow the whole view and keep it.

“They told me not to take you outside,” Heather said. She let the breath after the sentence drift out slower than usual.

“They tell you lots of things,” he replied.

“Most of them boring.”

She nudged his shoulder. “I brought the playlist you made in high school. The one you swore would change music forever.”

He groaned. “Burn it.”

“Too late.” She pressed play on her phone.

A messy guitar riff filled the terrace. The sound bounced off the brick walls, uneven but alive. Adam laughed, the real kind that shook his chest, then winced and pressed a palm over his ribs.

Heather lowered the volume. “That’s the first laugh I’ve heard from you in days.” She let the smile sit on her face a fraction longer than she meant to before looking back at the city.

“Then here.” Adam straightened a little, fighting gravity. “I’ve got one more.”

He turned his face toward her. Not forced.

Not brave. Just honest. A soft, crooked smile that still looked like the sixteen-year-old version of him, troublemaker and dreamer rolled into one.

She had seen versions of his smile all her life. Loud ones. Lopsided ones. Fake ones for photos. Smiles that came before bad ideas. Smiles that apologized without words.

But this one held everything he didn’t have breath to say.

She memorized it in one blink. Then she shifted her weight, a small, quiet reset.

They stayed outside longer than they should have. The air grew colder. The guitar riff slipped into an old punk song that made them both laugh again, quieter this time. A nurse stepped onto the terrace twice, both times pretending she was only checking the plants. She hovered near the rosemary bush long enough that even the leaves seemed uncomfortable.

Adam closed his eyes for a moment, face tilted up like he wanted the sky to lay a hand on him. Heather watched him breathe. Each rise of his chest was smaller than the last time she had checked. She tried not to count.

“Remember when you tried to start a band?” she said. The first word skimmed out a little faster than she intended.

“I didn’t try to start a band,” he said, eyes still closed. “I started a band.”

“A band that broke up during its first rehearsal.”

“That’s still a band.”

“You threw the drummer out a window.”

“It was a ground floor window.”

“You still threw him.”

Adam huffed a smile. “He threw my lyric notebook first.”

The memory tugged a laugh out of her.

She tightened the blanket around his shoulders, letting her hand rest there for a heartbeat before pulling it away.

“Do you still write?” she asked.

He opened his eyes. For a second, she saw something like regret flicker there.

“Not really,” he said. “Hard to write when your hands shake.”

Heather nodded once, slow. She didn’t speak again until he was finished.

A gust of wind pushed at them. Heather pulled the blanket higher on his shoulders.

He didn’t protest.

Eventually the music ended, and so did the day. The last pink edge of sunset fell behind a row of apartments. Heather gathered the blanket around Adam's shoulders.

“You tired?” she asked.

“A little.”

She smoothed the blanket once, then once more before letting go.

The nurse called them back in with a soft voice that carried no argument. Heather pushed him toward the elevator. The wheels clicked over the tiled threshold. Adam leaned his head back, eyes half closed.

“Thanks,” he whispered.

“For what?”

“For letting me choose the view.”

In the elevator, the fluorescent light washed over him, making every angle of his face sharper. Heather blinked at the floor numbers rising, the kind of slow blink that passes for patience.

Back in his room, the nurse switched out the blanket, tucking it around him with practiced hands. Adam tried to make a joke about being wrapped like a burrito but halfway through, he lost the breath for it. The nurse smiled without pity, thanked him for the attempt, and dimmed the overhead lights.

The monitors settled into a quiet rhythm, steady but thin. Heather sat in the corner chair, her coat still on, her fingers still cold from the terrace. The room felt smaller now.

Or quieter. Or both.

Adam's breathing softened. She watched his chest rise and fall like someone tracing a slow pattern on water. He blinked slower each time. The shadows from the hallway lights crept along the floor as the building shifted into night mode.

A volunteer passed by the door pushing a cart of puzzles and crosswords. Something cheerful played from a speaker on the cart, the kind of easy music meant to fill silence without touching anything real. The cart rolled away, and the silence returned.

Heather replayed the moment on the terrace. The real laugh. The guitar riff drifting into the wind. The final curve of his mouth.

Simple. Soft. His last smile, handed to her like a small, warm secret.

She held it.

She held it long after the nurse left. Long after the monitors changed their rhythm.

Long after the quiet stretched into something else. She held it because it was all she could carry, and because some things stay warm even when the world goes cold.

Outside, the city kept moving. Ambulances came and went. Elevators chimed.

Somewhere down the hall, someone cried into a paper cup. Somewhere else, a newborn screamed its first note.

But in Adam's room, everything stilled.

Heather leaned forward, elbows on her knees, hands clasped tight. She looked at her brother, at the boy who once jumped into lakes before checking the water temperature, who believed every day could crack open into something new, who once told her he would live to ninety and still complain.

“I’m here,” she whispered. Her voice was steady, but the words landed with a softness that hadn’t been there earlier.

Even when the room answered with silence. Even when the night stretched on.

Even when the warmth she held was the last of him.