He was the last. Old and wizened, he counted down his final days, his final hours on earth. He lay in his bed, the rain drumming monotonously on the window. Night came. He pressed the button to call the aide. The aide appeared at his bedside. Every night, the old man had the same request. The aide went to the window and briefly pulled aside the curtains. He peered outside. He turned to the old man and shook his head. The sky remained overcast, as it had since the day the old man had fallen ill. After briefly fiddling with the intravenous equipment, the aide left the room. The old man was alone again.

He stared at the window. He felt no pain. The medications worked well. But they made him weak. Or perhaps it was just his condition. He slipped in and out of a dreamlike state.

He recalled his colleagues, the others like him. Never a large group, their number had progressively decreased over the years. One by one they had fallen. The next-to-last one had died three years ago. Meanwhile, he hung on while the world moved past him. He reviewed his cherished memories. No one else on the planet shared those precious memories. Soon they would be gone.

He was the last. But he had not been the first. He, like all his colleagues, had wanted to be first, but that envy didn’t last long. He often wished there had been others, many others. He knew someday there would be, but, as long as he had lived, still it was not long enough for that to happen. This surprised him, even now.

He sensed that tonight was the night, the final night. Outside the rain had stopped. The old man looked to the window. There was light there.

He had been too weak to walk, too weak to move for days now. Nevertheless, he pulled himself up, grabbing onto the bed-rails. He knew he had enough strength to get over the rails, onto the floor.

The light in the window increased. He pulled out his intravenous line. The entry point in his arm started bleeding. He ignored it. The pump whirled along automatically, spilling drops of medicated water onto the floor.

He got a leg over the rail, then his shoulders. The distance to the floor wasn’t great, but from his vantage point, it looked like he was perched on top of a giant cliff. He took a deep breath and hurled himself over the railing.

Some time later the aide, making his rounds, entered the room. He was surprised that the old man in his weakened condition had been able to escape the confines of his bed. His body lay a few feet away, next to the wall, beneath the window. The curtains had been torn down from their rods. The rain had stopped. The clouds had retreated. The night was clear.

The old man lay on his back. The light of the full moon lit his face, for the last time.

David Mann is a retired cardiac electrophysiologist and blogs at EP Studios.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com