“Something’s happened to Spencer. He’s at GW, and it’s not good. He’s… They’re saying he’s brain dead.”

“No. Sam. My God!”

“We thought you’d want to know.”

“I’m coming.”

“We’re in the ICU waiting room.”

“Okay. Tell Angela… I’m coming.”

The line went dead, and Sam closed her phone, wishing there was something she could do to turn back the clock, to keep this from happening to her sister, niece and nephew. “Mom is coming.”

As tears ran down her face, Angela stared blankly at the wall. What did she care who was coming when the only one she wanted was gone forever?

Chapter Two

At seven o’clock that evening, the doctors asked to speak to Angela and Spencer’s family in a private conference room. Angela asked Brenda, Tracy, Mike, Sam, Nick and Harry to come with her and Spencer’s family.

When they were seated at the large table, the doctor who’d been with them all day turned to Angela. “Mrs. Radcliffe, I’m very sorry to have to tell you that your husband has suffered a catastrophic injury to his brain due to oxygen deprivation. We’ve run extensive tests and have confirmed there’s no brain activity, which means he’s unable to sustain life on his own without the advanced measures currently being taken to keep him alive. We believe the damage to his brain had already been done when he was found unresponsive.”

Spencer’s mother broke down into sobs as his father tried to comfort her.

Sam wiped away tears as she attempted to wrap her head around the fact that Spencer was all but dead.

“What do we do now?” Angela asked, looking to Harry.

“If he was my family member,” Harry said gently, “I would stop life support and allow him to pass away peacefully, but that has to be your decision.”

Angela looked to Sam and Tracy, her eyes wild. “I can’t decide that. How do I decide that?”

How did anyone make such a decision? Sam tried to imagine herself in the same situation and couldn’t. She simply couldn’t go there. “What would Spencer want you to do?”

Angela buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“He’d never want to be kept alive artificially,” Mr. Radcliffe, Spencer’s dad, said. “Remember when my brother was on life support, and we had to make this same decision? Spence said then that being attached to machines is no way to live.”

“He said that?” Angela asked, seeming to brighten a bit at hearing that Spencer had expressed an opinion on the matter.

“He did, honey.”

Angela’s face was red and swollen, her brown eyes puffy from crying for hours, her light brown hair a mess of tangles. “If that’s what he would’ve wanted, then I suppose we have to let him go. I just don’t know how I’m supposed to do that.”

“We’ll be right there with you,” Tracy said as tears slid down her cheeks. “Every step of the way.”