THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN

Ahnna looked wearily at the wall clock. Two AM. Nobody had been able to pry her loose from Alistair's side, not when she'd been told he might not make it through the night. And now it was two. The wee hours. She'd heard that people on the verge of death often died in the wee hours. But not Alistair. No. Not him. That's why she was there, why she was holding on to his hand so desperately. She would sit with him, hold him fast to this world with the sheer power of her love, and he would make it through to the dawn. He would. He had to. He simply...had to.

The minutes seemed to stretch forever, long, solid, heavy minutes, marked by the sounds of his monitors, of his ventilator. Mechanical, impersonal sounds that had nothing to do with her struggle with the forces of life and death. Those forces were sharp, pulsing like the vein in her temple. Primeval forces more akin to splitting continents and heaving seas, darkness being divided from light. Every ounce of her went into every minute. He would not die. He would not.

Nurses came and went, soft nebulous shadows brushing past her, checking the monitors, checking him. If they spoke to her she neither cared nor remembered. Nothing existed but that he not die.

She remembered him as he was, as he should be, as he would be again. He sat on the edge of the bed on their wedding night, looking at her as she stood before him, that expression of gentle, tender awe on his face. He stood with her on the bridge over
the millpond, staring down at that single fish he'd named. He lay on his back in the grass near the blue iris, Merry standing with her paws on his chest, licking his face while he laughed. He stood on Christmas Eve at the front of the church, telling the story of Joseph's heart that night. She remembered them all, all the scenes of his alivenesss, and she sent them through her hands into his, each a little piece of why he must hold on, why he must not go, must not leave her in a world unbearable without the light of his presence.

There were no windows in the ICU room. It lay somewhere deep in the innards of the hospital. So her eyes, watching for the coming of the dawn, had only the sterile black hands on the white face of the plain, round wall clock by which to judge the slow passing of time. Black and white. Yes, it all came down to something as simple as that. Death...or life. And Alistair was trapped somewhere in between, a foot on either bank of the small stream that marked their boundary. She stood on the side where tiny yellow buttercups nodded among the grasses, holding onto his hand, straining backwards in her attempt to
tip his balance toward her, to keep whatever held his hand in the darkness of the opposite bank from taking him away.

Black and white as the second hand jerked its way around and yet around again, marking all the smallest intervals of her battle. And, outside, a filmy pink finger of hazy cloud began to spread across the sky, backed by palest aqua in which the morning star still shown. A nurse came in, checked the monitors, and turned to Ahnna, saying something she didn't hear. The nurse lay a hand on Ahnna's shoulder, "Mrs. Harris?" she tried again. "Did you understand what I said?"

Ahnna tipped her head up toward the nurse. "His vitals have improved," the nurse smiled. "Looks like he's taken a turn for the better."

Ahnna simply blinked slowly then turned to look again at the clock. Six AM.