I had a dear friend in the hospital, ICU to be exact for five days and when he said he was getting out, I told him I would pick him up after work and take him home. He is actually my roomie and it was the least I could do for him. He had stayed in afib for a solid five days and even though I knew for a fact he was not going to die, I just kept doubting myself and my gift.  So I proceeded to enter his room when I stopped and stared at the neighbors room. He was hooked up to feeding tubes, and other machines. I knew he was not doing good but even though he was lying there motionless, the machines barely pumping artificial life into his body, he was very much alive, standing beside his hospital bed, looking at his lifeless body. He was not alone. He had his departed loves ones standing next to him also looking down at his bedside.

I turned to look away at my friend in his bed, and then turned around to ask the nurse, if she didn’t mind, what was wrong with the man next door? She ignored me. Patient confidentiality. Ah, I forgot about the privacy laws. So, when I turned back around, he was still there but his relatives were not. Soon after, before I left the hospital, he had left as well.

I had thought about telling the nurse that he was there standing outside his body but then I thought, she was a trauma ER nurse, she had seen it all. Who is to say she did not see what I saw earlier.