Fresh off her shift, a hospital was the last place Fiona wanted to be. There were far better options. Especially on a Friday night. And especially after the kind of shifts she’d been having. The natural choice would be the TGI Friday’s right around the corner from her hospital. She wouldn’t even have to drive there. Just walk straight out of the door and take a right. And then take a seat at the bar, maybe order something ridiculous like a blooming onion, or calorific like bacon cheese fries. Plus numerous gin and tonics.

Since no one she knew would be caught dead in there, she’d be left alone in relative peace. Just her and that college-boy bartender. A perfect escape for her to drown her sorrows with the cheap, non-threatening atmosphere, the shitty drinks, the frosted tipped bartender.

Or she could drive straight to another hospital, through an hour’s worth of traffic, to go check on how close her sister was to dying today. How dead her brain had already become, the rate of deterioration from visit to visit.

Her sister had been hit by a car while training for a half marathon, running five miles every morning until that one morning when a texting teen decided that her social life was more important than life itself for someone else. They said she went flying in the air, ten or twenty feet backward, and then landed on her head. She sprang back up somehow, like a headless chicken perhaps, a bundle of energy stored in the nerves operating in some basic primal reaction to the blow. But it was short lived, and she collapsed back down within seconds. And that was the only walking she’d ever done since the crash. Probably the last time she’d done a lot of other things too, like talking, or looking at something with some semblance of understanding and consciousness. Or even breathing on her own. For now that was taken care of by a machine. Everything was taken care of.

“Yes,” said her nurse cheerfully. “She’s comfortable. She has everything she needs. And she gets a lot of visitors.”

She was the popular sister. The pretty one. News anchor for a small-market news channel.

“She had a good day,” said the nurse, checking and re-checking her sister’s charts.

Fiona didn’t want to let on that she was a nurse herself, and that she knew the ins and outs, and what the words on the charts actually meant. She also knew what it was like to have nothing real to say to a family member, and thus, “She had a good day.” Fiona herself used a whole arsenal of those in her shift just a few hours ago.

She’s doing well. She’s comfortable. She had a good day.

This was the kind of stuff you’d say for someone who couldn’t say it themselves, that is, if what they said would actually correspond to it. She looked down at her broken sister with pity, wondering just how good a day she could’ve possibly had.

What would her sister have really said about her day?

Did she even know what a day was anymore?

Did she know who Fiona was?

“Look,” the nurse said, pointing to some uptick in her live EEG reading. “She remembers you. She hears your voice.”

It was a little too hopeful. And while it was nice, and no doubt made with good intentions, it was deceiving and unprofessional.

“She likes getting visitors,” said the nurse, still admiring the feeble hints of brain activity from the EEG.

It wasn’t necessarily wrong to lie to visitors like that.

What was she supposed to say? The truth?

Or how about nothing at all? The job would certainly be a lot easier that way.

“Thanks.” Fiona smiled at the nice nurse. “Thanks for taking care of her.”

She didn’t have any gifts or chocolates. Just a thanks, from one nurse to another.

“Oh, don’t even mention it, Sweetie,” said the nurse as she finished rearranging the sheets over her sister’s motionless body. “I’ll let the doctor know you’re here.”

When the nurse and her good-natured comments left the room, it was the sound of her sister’s beeping EEG that took over. And of her ventilator, the sucking sound of air whistling through the tubes. More beeping, more air, the whole thing passing for “breathing.” She followed these tubes, starting at her sister’s white and cracked lips, down to her chest, along the bed, and into a machine. And then Fiona followed another lifeline, a little cord that went from the machine, spiraling down along one of its legs, and then on the floor toward an outlet in the wall. It all came down to that little plug, some little piece of rubber and plastic and wiring. It all came down to a decision, to when it should be unplugged.

Fiona looked back to her sister’s face, her pale cheeks still spotted with a few of those youthful freckles she’d always try covering up before telecasts, her muscles completely relaxed. Her mouth seemingly almost curved up in a gentle smile.

There was a knock at the door. The doctor. A small, brown-skinned man with a soft and pleasant face. He spoke with an Indian accent, greeting Fiona and then, very quietly, expressing his sympathies about the situation.

“A terrible tragedy, yes. But we are all doing our best. Including her.”

Or was it a Pakistani accent?

Fiona wasn’t sure about the difference.

“Channel 7, yes?”

Yes. She was on her second year with the road crew of Channel 7, driving around to this or that inconsequential news event. Small-time stuff for the newbie, things she could handle. Stories like cats in trees or the outrage surrounding the police raid of a 12-year-old’s lemonade stand.

The doctor was doing something with one of the electrodes attached to the cap on her sister’s head. He applied a jellylike substance to the end of it, and then placed it back against her forehead. “Yes,” he said again. “Very beautiful. Very talented.”

Fiona nodded. “And she was a good sister.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” he said, wiping his jellied fingertips on his white coat. “Would you like to see her brain activity?” He took out a tablet and began sliding through some pages. “I have it condensed, so you can see.”

Fiona leaned in and took a look at his screen. It was a long chart of squiggly lines, almost like sheet music. But instead of notation, there were the peaks and valleys of her brain activity throughout her stay at the hospital.

“As you see,” he said, zooming in to the early days. “There has been progress. An increase in most faculties.” He slid the screen over, jumping a week ahead, where the mountain peaks began to taper off, the concerto having already reached its climax. “And then, they plateau, as you see.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I see.”

And then he skipped forward another week, the current week, to where the music got even quieter, the melodies dipping lower and lower.

“Is that bad?” asked Fiona.

“We expect it to pick up,” he said, sliding the screen to the end, to today. “Since she’s plateaued, it will go in cycles. And the activity itself, even down here, is still very promising.”

Fiona nodded.

“She’s fighting,” he said, putting away the tablet. “She’s still fighting.”

Fiona looked at her sister again, sending her whatever mental energy she could, whatever she could do to tell her to keep fighting.

“We’ve tried testing her breathing, by turning off the machine.” He was shaking his head sadly. “But not yet. Sometimes they’ll start breathing, but . . .” He looked at her sister. “But not yet.”

Fiona had never heard of that before, or seen anything like it at her hospital. It was hard for her to imagine, almost like holding a sleeping puppy underwater to make sure it was alive. She tried not to show her confusion, or protest about it, but maybe she didn’t do a good enough job. The doctor gave her a strange little look.

“She wasn’t in any discomfort,” he said.

Fiona couldn’t help but think that was a lie. She probably was in discomfort, but just didn’t know it.

“And it’s a controlled experiment, with many people here, helping.” He was nodding casually, as if to attach some normalcy to what he was saying. “Just something we do.”

Her sister’s beeping had been steady the whole time, her lines from the EEG traveling along the same plateau. How much longer would they keep this up? It wasn’t her place to answer, of course. But it was definitely her place to wonder.

By law, it would be up to her parents. They had the exclusive cord-unplugging rights. But they haven’t even talked about it yet, at least to Fiona or any other members of the family.

If it was up to Fiona, they’d at least be talking about it.

Maybe the discussion happened at night, in bed, in privacy, and probably in tears.

“How much longer should we be doing this?” Fiona asked the doctor, glad that she could pretend that she was just a normal civilian.

“Well,” he said, taking a big breath. “It’s a very . . . philosophical matter. And religious. Are you religious?”

“No.”

“Is she?”

“No.”

“Life, naturally, wants to continue,” said the doctor. “Like electricity, it wants to continue through whatever it can until it can be grounded. Or like water flowing down a mountain.” He rolled his eyes. “But I think I’m getting too . . .”

“No, no, it’s fine.”

“What I should say is that her body wants to survive. See her heart here—he pointed to the readout—“see her mind.” His finger traced the lines of her EEG. “See what happens when we shine a light.” He took a small penlight from his breast pocket, leaned over her sister, and flashed it at her closed eyes.

Fiona stepped forward to see the response, if any.

Her sister, under the light, moved her head slightly. It was so slight, but monumental.

“See?” He turned off the light. “She responds to stimulus. To light. And voices.”

“Yeah . . .”

“Your sister is very much alive. It can be difficult to see that at times, I know. But she’s alive.”

“How do I convince her insurance about that?”

“Excuse me?”

She really shouldn’t get into it.

“I shouldn’t really comment on . . . insurance,” the doctor said. Of course not.

“I know, I know . . .” She knew better than that.

“Sadly, some insurance companies give up sooner than others.”

Fiona was well aware of that. As well as some hospitals viewing patients like her sister as carbon footprints, a drain of the hospital’s resources. Or even worse, as “beating-heart cadavers.” There had been a number of occasions already this year where the plug was pulled too early. Sometimes for profit.

“She’s an organ donor,” said Fiona.

“Yes?”

“Do you harvest organs here?” she asked.

“Of course. Every hospital does. Where else do you expect it to happen?”

“I mean, do you profit from it?”

“Excuse me?” he said again. This time he seemed to know more about what she asked. And this time he seemed more displeased.

“I understand that some hospitals profit. And I heard about one hospital, right here in DC, where they harvested too early. The patient woke up without organs.”

“That happened . . . somewhere else. And I of course don’t want to comment on it.”

No one wanted to comment on it. They had mistakenly—if not fraudulently—pronounced a patient dead, claiming she had irreversible brain damage. That she’d suffered cardiac arrest. They began slicing away even with the patient’s heart still beating.

“I don’t talk about other hospitals,” said the doctor. “I don’t care about other hospitals. I just care about the Hippocratic Oath. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course.” Who, aside from Dr. Jack Kevorkian and the infamous Nazi doctors, would be against such a basic ethical principle? “First, do no harm,” she said, repeating part of the oath. “Right?”

“Actually no,” said the doctor. “That part is actually a misconception. It’s not in the Greek original. Although there is something about rejecting harm and mischief.”

Fiona frowned. That wasn’t as comforting as the doctor thought.