I wanted to argue. I wanted to scream that I knew the difference between a spasm and a message. But the words stuck in my throat because… maybe he was right. Maybe I had imagined it. I’d been sitting in this room every night for over three years, holding Meera’s hand, talking to her, reading her favorite books until my voice gave out. Maybe my brain was finally cracking under the strain of grief.

Derek checked her vitals. Everything was normal. The heart rate was steady at 72. Blood pressure 110 over 70. He adjusted her IV drip, patted my shoulder, and told me to try to get some sleep.

I nodded, but I didn’t leave. I never left.

My wife, Claudia, had stopped visiting six months ago. She said she couldn’t bear seeing our daughter like this anymore—a husk of the vibrant girl she used to be. She said the doctors were right, that the accident had destroyed too much of her brain, that keeping her on life support was just prolonging everyone’s suffering.

We’d separated over it. She moved in with her sister. I stayed. Someone had to stay.

Meera was fifteen when it happened. Sophomore year. First-chair violin. Varsity soccer. Then, one October afternoon, she collapsed during practice. Just dropped on the field like a marionette whose strings had been cut. By the time the ambulance arrived, she wasn’t breathing. Anoxic brain injury. Oxygen deprivation. The neurologist said she’d likely never wake up.