We wait.

Knocking on the heavy, solid oak door with my left hand, my right on the handle, I slowly push the door open as I have done hundreds of times. It is dark in the room, with a soft glow from the donated vintage lamp on the bedside table. I can make out his face, as the majority of the lamps dull yellow glow falls onto his sunken cheek. Eyes wide open, jaw hanging and moving slightly with each breath. Each breath that sounds like it will be the last. The fluid floating in the back of his throat, making bubbles as he struggles to inhale and struggles even more to exhale.

My feet hardly touch the floor. They make no noise. I am no ballerina, thanks to my sweet tooth the pounds attached to my body like a lego to a foot in the middle of the night. Still, after years on the night shift, and the strong desire not to wake up families who can't bear to leave their loved ones to go home after dark, I have perfected an undetectable gait.

As I walk closer I reach into my scrub pocket and withdraw the prepped syringe. With a well known concoction in my world. Morphine, Lorazepam and Robinol. No, I am not going to kill him. I am only going to make sure his journey is a comfortable journey.

As I reach the side of the bed I lean in, the cold metal side rail pressing into my waist. His eyes, wide open, yet empty. A sort of glaze hazes the once ice blue eyes.

"Hi Mr. Bailey" I say in a voice as soft as my steps were. As I lay the syringe on the bedside table. I place one hand on his bony shoulder with my right hand and take his hand with my left. I give it a gentle squeeze. I know he won't respond but I still speak to him. Because who am I to say he doesn’t know I am here?

Mr Bailey I have your medicine ok?

A breath seemed to get caught in mid air, paused, and then after three long seconds completed its path out of his body. I waited. And waited. Then watched as his small bloated belly heaved and he inhaled with every bit of strength his poor body could gather in the moment. His eyebrows came to life and tried to meet one another in the middle of his brow. A sign of pain. His head tilted back and appeared stiff as a board.

Another gurgle escaped his throat but louder this time. I lowered the head of his bed and gently started pulling the sheet under him toward me, then walked around the other side of the bed and reached over to grab his hip and shoulder to roll him.

“Girl, why didn’t you call me?”

Anita the nursing assistant walked in and finished the job for me, because she knew damn well she did it better.

“I didn’t want to bother you silly” I said. Together we finished raising his head, fluffing his pillows and I prepped his IV, as Anita wiped his forehead and swabbed out his mouth.

“Is the wife here?” She asked

“No, she left,” I said sadly.

Nothing, to me, was more sad than someone dying alone. I know it is easy for me to feel that way. Not everyone wants a death watch. So they say. But to me, the thought of someone holding my hand when my time comes helps ease the pure anxiety I have when I think of my own demise.

“Should I call her?”

“Does she want to be here when he goes?” Anita stood there, hands on hips, with her portable fan around her neck, beads of sweat on her high forehead. Anita was a tall curvy woman, with more family and man drama than anyone I knew, yet she was the best, most compassionate person I had the pleasure to work with.

“I don’t think so.” I sighed. “I am going to sit with him for a few, it won’t be long”

“O.K. I will watch the desk.”

Anita walked out and I sat on the pleather recliner next to the bed. On the t.v. was the classical music channel, playing so called “relaxing classical piano” but it literally hurt my ears it was so high pitched. I flipped the channel until I found some nature sounds with pretty birds and rain drops.

“There, that's better, right Mr Bailey?” I felt his wrist, clammy, cool, his pulse barely there, if even barely.

I took an alcohol wipe and again scrubbed the end of the iv line in his scrawny, bruised hand. My eyes traveled up to his inner elbow, bruises of every shade visible even in the vintage light. Fragile, dehydrated elderly skin hanging on to his emaciated arm for dear life. Skin tears with their edges taped together by some poor hospital nurse who probably had a million other tasks to do. I looked at the bandage on his neck, where they held pressure after removing the tubes delivering critical medications directly into the large vessel right above his heart. Bruises peeking out of the top of his hospital gown. So much evidence of a long hospital stay full of suffering, desperate tests, painful procedures, and eventually lost hope.

I do not miss it. Watching those patients suffer. Running every minute of those 12 hour shifts that turned into 14 hour shifts because there was no time to do the 5 hours of charting they expected from us. The bedside drama, moms screaming at us to save their babies. The dreadful hollers and cries of confused 95 year olds with broken necks tied to the beds so they wouldn't paralyze themselves. The toxic, evil co workers who are too miserable to leave and just take it out on everyone else.

Now I am here holding his hand, watching as his struggle turns into comfort. Both of us escaped from that hellish place they called a hospital. We had very different journeys to get here tonight. Before today, we had no idea that other existed, no idea that our simple lives would be brought together here tonight, his last night living. But now here we are, and now we wait, both of us in our own version of peace, together.