The words left her lips easily. “This infection is going to kill you.”

He sat there looking tired. His face swollen from the round and slack jaw, to the protruding lips that were too large and weak to keep the saliva back, to the dull grey circles under his pleading eyes. There was a crater in his neck left by the ravenous cancer. It drained thick and putrid. The nurse had to stuff moist gauze into that cross section of a neck to create a substitute for flesh, in hopes of protecting the veins and arteries that should never be exposed.

A picture of him and his school age daughters on last year’s vacation sat on the piano. Their smiles screamed of the injustice and tragedy that was taking place. He wrote, “I want CPR if I start to die.” She answered, “It won’t work. You’ll die anyway.” I sat there listening and biting my lip, holding back the tears that would eventually burn my cheeks.

Two days later, I heard how it happened. Death came by means of that weak artery, too long exposed to air and infection. The blood escaped and he was gone.