“Okay, you got it. If it goes on too long, hit the nursing button and we’ll intervene.” The doctor nodded and swept the drape back. “Good luck.”

As the curtain swung shut, Vin squeezed Gretchen’s hand with urgency, because he didn’t know how much time they had.

“I want you to tell me the truth.”

“Always.”

“What happened with Jim? Did he…?”

The hard swallow she took before she answered told him everything, and to spare her from having to put out the words, he kissed her hand again. “Shh, it’s all right. You don’t have to say it—”

“He was your friend. I’m so sorry—”

“I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to.” Vin rubbed the beating pulse at her wrist with his thumb. “I’m so glad you’re still here. For your son. For me. Jim did an incredibly selfless, heroic thing, and as much as I wish he hadn’t died because of it, I’m very grateful for what he did.”

She dropped her head and nodded, her curling hair falling forward. As he drew circles over the fine bones of her wrist, he traced the glossy waves with his eyes. Jim’s final action on earth had left one hell of a legacy, namely a life to be lived…and a son who still had his mother…and a lover whose heart hadn’t been shattered by loss.

A fine legacy.

“He was a real man.” Vin cleared his throat. “That one…was a real man.”

They sat in silence together, he flat on the gurney, she on a plastic chair, their hands linked tightly—just as the man who had saved her life had put them together over his chest.

On the other side of the gray-and-blue curtain, people rush-rush-rushed along, their voices overlapping, their shoes shuffling by, their shoulders brushing the drape and causing it to swing from the metal hooks it hung from.

He and Gretchen, on the other hand, were motionless.

Death did that to a person, Vin thought. Stopped them in their place in the midst of the great tumble and scramble of their life, isolating them in still silence. In the instant it took hold, it changed everything, but its effect was like that of a car slamming into a wall—what was inside kept on going because the shit didn’t know better…with the result being utter chaos: All the clothes the person had worn became some kind of history exhibit to be cleaned out by a weepy nearest-and-dearest…and their magazine subscriptions and account reports and dental reminders went from “correspondence” to “junk mail”…and the place where they lived went from being a home to a house.

Everything stopped…and nothing was what it had been.