A Passing

Two angels of death, one elder and one younger, trailed behind the family as they took up their vigil at the bedside of the dying man. Yellow raiments cascaded in flowing waves over their white coats, and they held their slender blue hands clasped neatly at their waists. Quiet, placid masks obscured their features. Most of the man's medications had been stopped, allowing his blood pressure to fall, but his heart was strong and kept beating. He had been in a coma for many days, kept alive by numerous medications at ever-increasing doses and a tireless ventilator.

Softly, the two figures glided between the room and the monitors outside, their delicate footfalls weighted with solemnity, their eyes focusing now on the patient, now on the numbers. In time the elder nodded, and the family vacated the room. The curtain was drawn, and the ventilator's steady hum and intermittent whistle fell silent.

The family filed back into the room, stroking the dying man's hands and face. In two minutes, the elder put her ear to the stillness, and, catching the wife's eye, nodded again, her face a mask of perfect calm. The finality of death struck like a silent clap of thunder, and in its wake the wife keened her sorrow.

The younger found she could no longer hold up her mask under the onslaught of wailing, and it crashed to the ground as tears fell from her eyes. She lifted the edge of her yellow robe to wipe at her face in a gesture both coarse and childishly innocent. She managed to adhere to her face again the broken remnants of her mask as the elder led her from the room, leaving the family in the lily hands of the priest.

After the curtain was drawn and the door closed, the elder turned her face to the younger. Her mask had sustained a neat hairline fracture, and fell to the floor as her voice quietly pronounced, in harsh fricative tones, "This is the part that sucks."