The Crow of Connemara by Stephen Leigh

only factual. Colin wondered how many times she’d said something similar to other families. “I know that you’re looking at him and he seems to be alive. You see his chest rising and falling and can see his heartbeat on the monitor. But on an EEG, looking for brain activity—and we did that last night and this morning as well—you’d see no electrical activity at all. That isn’t the case for coma patients, and a coma patient would have had responses to the other tests we’ve done.” She took a long breath, and her voice changed, a warmth and sympathy entering her tone and attitude. “I’m truly sorry and I know how hard this is for all of you. But I can tell you that there isn’t any clinical evidence of recovery from a patient who has met all the criteria for brain death. None. I promise you that if I had
any
uncertainty, any at all, I would tell you to wait and let nature take its course. But with your father’s situation . . . If I were to take him off the ventilator, he would stop breathing, and he’d die within a very few minutes. This way, with the transplant team, some good will come from his death. I hope that can be of comfort to you.”
    Colin watched his father’s chest, which lifted once, then slowly fell. The ventilator hissed in time to the breath. The tableau would be fixed in Colin’s mind: all of them leaning forward over the bed; his mother whispering to his father as Tommy put his arm around her. “Tom, you just rest now. I’ll miss you, darling. I love you. I love you so much . . .” Her voice broke and she began to cry, an aching, terrible sound that, contagious, rippled around the room. Colin’s eyes filled with tears, blurring the scene, and his breath shuddered. He felt someone’s hand on his back and didn’t know who it was and didn’t care. The comfort was all he craved.
    â€œI’ll wait outside while you say your good-byes,” Dr. Pearse said. “Call me when you’re ready for us to take him.”
    She left the room, closing the door behind her. Father Frank rose from his chair and went to the head of the bed to intone the Last Rites. Colin’s mother gave a sharp, birdlike cry of pain as she listened. She bent over the body, kissing her husband softly as Tommy held her. Colin heard Jen crying hard, and he started to go to her, but she had already turned into Aaron’s embrace. For a moment, Colin felt adrift, alone in the midst of a terrible pit of black grief, but then Aunt Patty found him; he let her hug him, comforting him as she might have when he was a child. He let himself cry then, fully, pulling away from her several gulping breaths later, wiping at his eyes. He looked at his father lying warm and breathing and empty on the bed; at his mother sitting now in a chair someone had brought her next to the bed, still clutching his father’s hand.
    â€œGo on,” she said to the room. “All of you should tell him good-bye.”
    One by one, they made their way to the head of the bed to whisper their last words to him. Colin hung back, watching as Harris came forward to pat his father’s hand. “You’d have won, Tom,” he said. “Now it’ll be Tommy. I’ll make sure of that.”
    Colin went up last. He touched his father’s hand, still impossibly warm. His eyes filled with tears again, blurring his vision. The ventilator chuffed; his father’s chest rose. “Sorry, Dad,” he said, knowing the others were listening to him. “I’m so sorry . . .” His voice choked and he stepped back. “Sorry,” he repeated. Aunt Patty put her arm around his waist and he leaned into her as he glanced at his mother, who was crying also. She nodded to him.
    For an instant, as if he’d been somehow transported outside of himself, Colin caught a glimpse of himself on some shore, looking out over