The doctors told me it was a sudden infection. Fast. Aggressive. The kind that moves too quickly for anyone to stop.
One day he was laughing and running around the hospital room, and the next… he was gone.
At least, that’s what I believed.
I remember sitting in a hospital chair, unable to breathe through the shock while nurses rushed through crowded hallways around me. A storm had knocked out part of the hospital’s systems that night. Everything was chaotic. Staff members were handling paperwork manually, checking wristbands by flashlight, and trying to keep things under control.
I was exhausted. Numb. Broken.
A nurse named Marla stayed close to me the entire time. She spoke softly, held my shoulder, and kept telling me to rest.
When it came time to say goodbye, she quietly told me:
“Don’t look too long. It’s better to remember him as he was.”
