Goodbye, Mr. Regret

Sallie hung up the phone and hurried toward the operating room.

She arrived to find Herbert holding Jessica upright while a nurse urged Jessica to sign the critical condition consent form.

Her grandfather had just come out of a coma-he was barely conscious, still weak and pale. Her father hadn't woken up yet. Jessica, shaken and distraught, was in no state to sign anything.

Sallie herself was far from calm; her palms were slick with cold sweat as she rushed down the hallway. But she forced herself to focus. She had to hold it together.

Herbert tried to reason with Jessica, his voice gentle but urgent. "Whenever a patient's in a life-threatening crisis, the doctors always ask for this consent form. It doesn't mean there's no hope. There's still a chance they can save him."

As a doctor himself, Herbert understood the situation all too well. It was protocol- grim as it sounded, the family had to sign, even if it meant the outlook was bleak. But the emergency team wouldn't stop trying.

Jessica's right hand trembled violently as she gripped the pen.

"We can't wait any longer," the nurse pressed, her tone clipped and insistent.

"I'll sign." Sallie stepped in, taking the pen from Jessica's shaking hand. She scanned the document-internal bleeding, old injuries aggravated by new trauma, a severe laceration on the forehead, and the threat of a fatal cerebral hemorrhage.

Her heart clenched painfully in her chest, but she forced herself to sign her name.

disappeared through the doors. The operating room doors swung shut with a heavy thud that echoed

her own

was cold and silent, the only movement coming from the light above the operating room

against the wall, drained of all strength. Herbert held onto her, but she felt weightless, as if gravity was dragging her downward and only his grip kept her

take you to sit down,"

shook her head. "I can't

lifting her feet seemed impossible. There

her that every hardship she faced was a stepping stone that would make her stronger, that one day

illness hadn't broken her. But the thought of Timothy dying-this pain cut deeper than her

tyto take her love back, but in these last few months, she hadn't managed to rip him from her heart. That love was etched into her very

that had illuminated her

heart-how it had changed her. In the four years that followed,

motion, builds

longer

more force that momentum