We don’t know when it will be fixed...

“We don't know when or of it can be fixed”, said the man in the white coat to the couple standing at the doorway. The man at the door had his fist clenched tight under his jaw, and his other hand around his wife's shoulder. She was balling silently with blue eye shadow running down her face. Her eyes were closed tightly as were his, both of them not wanting to look forwards or anywhere to be exact. She found comfort in her her own thoughts and thinking about a different form of reality, and this man was only ruining it with his lecture.

“It is a complex task, too complex which is why we seriously advice against it.”, carried on the man in white as he walked around the room with a stick in his hand poking and pushing parts of paper stuck on the wall. He talked authoritatively as he moved, an air of arrogance in his voice as he explained matter of factly the decisions he could or could not make, and the time-scales involved. Everything just seemed to difficult for the man to accomplish it seemed, the gig was finally up maybe. They had been waiting 7 years and nothing had changed, what was the point of coming here just to listen to the man in white yabber on endlessly every week with words they knew little about.

Sarah the lady in the doorway, didn't want to hear all this, she just wanted to know if it would, if it could, be okay, but the man was talking in tongues like some Southern Baptist preacher.

Awaiting Jesus to come and fill the room with the holy spirit and lifting them all up to permanent happiness. “Praise the Lord, let it be, let it be”, she imagined him dancing around the room like James Brown, standing on tip toes, and thrusting out his groin in the direction of the couple. He span the stick in his hand and put it to the floor to dance round it as if he had turned a snake into a dancing poll.

Imagination, it was the key to getting through an ordeal like this, Sarah had found, and hers was a bit wild at times. It must be all the Diazepam and Zopiclone the GP had her on. Her brain was fuzzy at the best of times.

“What we must do is procrastinate some more, as we talk in a posh dialect and use words far out of the common lexicon”, was all that John the man whose fingers were about to snap as he was squeezing his fist so tight, could hear from the man's lecturing. The man in white was jibber jabbering, and he hated jibber jabber, common – simple – words.

Why was it so bloody difficult to communicate on the same level was all he could think as the man procrastinated some more. He wanted to recoil his arm and punch the man in white but Sarah would be disappointed with his actions if he had. She was far too emotional, he had to take charge of the situation but how could he when he had no clue what to do. How could he help her when he couldn't help the situation himself.

“So Mr and Mr Johnson what would you like me to do?” the man in white had stopped his speech and was now pointing the stick directly at them. John opened his eyes.

J'accusé, the man in white seem to be suggesting with his stick stretched out almost in reach for John to swipe at it and grab it from his hand.

Accuse us, we had nothing to do with it he thought to himself as he looked along the stick at eye line height straight into the man in whites eyes, I'll show you the accused he thought to himself.

“Well?”, the man in white said again. Not one word had left the pairs mouth since he had started his lecture on the intricacies and dilemma’s that he faced. He needed an answer, people's life’s were literally depending on it. He clicked his fingers. It brought them both out of their trances.

Sarah's eyes slowly opened and she looked at the bed along with John, as they saw the man they used to call their son, lying in front of them. Tubes coming out of every vein and orifice possible. Bags pulsed with air and others slowly drip dropped filled with liquids. It was a mad scientists experiment gone wrong but there was no doubting it. 

Their son Richard lay in a brain dead coma in front of them, half his cranium cut away to expose the brain tissue beneath due to a dural venous thrombosis of the right transverse and sigmoid sinus, that extended fully into the internal jugular vein. A very complex term for what was basically a big blood clot in his brain. They had to cut the skull away to release the pressure otherwise it would have burst, alas even after attempting this procedure he had suffered a severe stroke and gone into a coma. However just seeing his brain exposed was a sight not to be taken in lightly.

His lips were drooping to one side and his face seemed pale and saggy. He was no longer their son but as the man in white seemed to make out, purely now just a bag of organs, with name tags of other patients on each one. The salesman in white was trying his best to convince them that now was the time to sell. Was it? Was it really time to give up on him?

“We have two people in need of kidney's or else they will die by the night, and his lungs are perfectly healthy and would be used wisely for a man who suffered from exposure to asbestos and is now slowly choking to death” he walked around the bed and pointed his stick directly at Richard's heart. “As for his heart it would be wisely used by young man we have out here who has been on the waiting list for almost two years.” He carried on around the bed totalling up the organs for sale to other patients.

Sarah, could no longer recognise her son lying there in the bed. He was as the doctor seemed to suggest, just a container of organs, waiting to be implanted in other people in need of them.

“It has been 7 years now love.” said John to Sarah and kissed her on the forehead. She looked at him in the eyes and smiled. “Okay, let's do it.”.

“He's not coming back is he?” John asked one more time, “No, I'm afraid he isn't capable of returning to anything like what you knew”, the consultant responded. “You may one day, with a lot of prayer, and a sprinkle of miracles get an autonomous nervous twitch that you will no doubt wrongly assume as a sign of life, but I can assure you now it won't be. I'm afraid your son is no longer coming back.”

“Okay go ahead, pull the plug.” John said.

“Fantastic.” said the doctor in white, he seemed a little too enthusiastic, John half expected a tent to rise in his pants by his demeanour. The doctor who then seemed to realise the seriousness of the decision he had just forced the couple into added: “I mean, I am extremely sorry at your loss”, he came a little closer and put his stick down on top of the table at the end of the bed. “I promise he won't feel any pain at all.” he added.

“He better not”, said John, and eye balled the man direct for a few seconds.

“Do you want to be here whilst we turn off the breathing equipment?”

Sarah looked up into Johns eyes once again. “No” she said. He was no longer her son, and as the doctor had clearly made out over the past few minutes. He was now no more than a bag of meat, ready to be dished out to other people in need of a meal. She didn't want to see him die just to be dished out like a Christmas Turkey for other patients to eat.

She wanted to remember him the way she used to, as a five year old running around the house tearing up paper, or as a teenager getting his first girlfriend and bringing her home to meet them. She couldn't handle being there at the end, when his life force would finally drain away, if there was anything left of him inside to be taken anyway. It was only the ventilator that was keeping him alive and he depended on it just to survive in some sort of brain dead state, unable to breath on his own, he was not really human any more. She didn't want to fill her head with the memory of him dying in front of her.

“We will be fine, just get it done”, said John, as Sarah went over to the bed and kissed her son one last time on the forehead. This was closely followed by her husband who did the same. He picked up Richard's limp left hand and went to shake it but there was no muscle contraction. It just fell back limp, to the bed. He could take no more and the couple walked out of the room as the preacher praised the Lord and sang Hallelujah, his sales pitch finally done.

The couple walked down the corridor towards the entrance. Had they just been sold out of the last moments with their son by that man’s scientific babble, or was he no longer even there. Not even a spirit left in the room to say goodbye to anyway?

It didn't matter there was no coming back now. They held hands and walked out of the white sterile hospital into the sunset lit entrance for the last time and a new found sense of freedom as a heavy weight was lifted by angels from their shoulders at the door.

“We did the right thing.” John said as they walked outside. “Did we?” replied Sarah.

John had to think, he wasn't sure any more, but he was sure of one thing as he looked back over his shoulder towards the hospital, it was most definitely too late to do anything about it now. 

The man in white would already be carving him up for other patients.

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