It would not be long now.

They had been waiting days that felt like years, then hours that felt like a lifetime.

They removed the hoses, tubes and wires that attached her to the machines that had kept her organs functioning far later than her brain had done. It was time now to let her truly rest.

When she took her last breath they would use her eyes, her heart, her liver, her kidneys, her lungs. Her death would have meaning for so many others who would live because she did not.

They waited to hear that last expelling of breath from her lungs.

© 2021 Deborah