The Sleeping Son.

For a week, Claire had been exhausted. Tears marked her son's pillow. His room was still littered with toys from the day of the accident and her memory was frozen on her last words to him. She'd grown tired of the mess and confronted him. Poor Danny. It'd been a bad day at work and she wasn't in the mood for backchat. She remembered her voice that day, rising like a wave coming to wipe out all the surfers in the bay. He was only Eight years old. He'd never heard his mother scream like that. He was afraid. He ran away. Darted like a rabbit that had discovered its hunter. She yelled after him madly. It had just been such a bad day. It wasn't his fault.

Tim sat at the desk in the study with paperwork as blank as the gaze that owned his eyes. A bottle of scotch sat by him where his wife refused to be. His mind was full of thoughts, but empty. His body full of feelings, but numb. He remembered the way Danny had looked in the hospital bed. So peaceful. As if he was merely sleeping. Tim didn't cry when at his son's side. He didn't do anything. He just sat and stared silently, the machines in the room filling the cold hospital air with a noise louder than war. Tim's eyes focused on his son and on the bed that slowly became a coffin.

Claire lay on Danny's bed. In the hospital he'd been unconscious, yet alive. As she stared at the vacant blue wall in his room, she was awake, but dead. Danny had once heard an Eminem song on the radio in the car on the way to school and fallen in love with it. He'd sing it all the time at home, getting most of the words wrong and occasionally the tune by accident. One day when shopping with his mother, Danny had seen a poster of Eminem and begged her to buy it for him. She'd refused. Her adult ears heard the meanings behind Eminem's lyrics and didn't agree with them. She didn't want her son exposed to such things, so her adult tongue lied that she couldn't afford it. When Danny asked if they could get it some other time she lied again, saying "maybe". Upon returning home, Danny immediately showed his mother where he would put the poster if it was his. The empty wall that now occupied her broken gaze. She could almost see him there, though gradually he faded, just like his scent, which had kept her in his bed ever since she and Tim had returned from the hospital.

Tim stared out the study window at the road. On the day of the accident, he'd been busy at the computer when the sound of his typing was muted by the heated tone in his wife's voice coming from the hall. He'd considered going out to see what the fuss was, but his deadline was nearing and he'd figured that she could handle it. By the time Danny opened the front door, Tim had reapplied his focus to the computer screen and was again consumed by the importance of his work. Since then, he'd only spoken to his wife once and that had been the most difficult conversation of his life.

Deep down, Claire blamed herself and that was why she couldn't speak to her husband. That was why she could barely look him in the eye. As she wrapped herself tightly in Danny's blanket, she tried to fight the images that had been invading her mind for the past seven days. The front door swinging open. The sun's rays roaring into the house like the light that beckons from the end of a tunnel. She'd gone to follow Danny, but in anger, not for his safety. In reality, she'd chased him away, his blonde hair, which he'd been trying to grow long, dancing in the wind as he carelessly ran out onto the road, which was usually quiet.

Tim hadn't slept for six nights. The type of man he was, he had no delusions. From the moment Danny had been rushed to the hospital, Tim had known. He'd tried to convince himself otherwise, but the words of the Doctor, as well as the concluded look on Danny's still face, told him a truth that he couldn't deny. A truth that he knew he'd eventually have to impart on his wife. She knew just as well as he did, but her shock wouldn't allow her to accept it. When she saw her sleeping son, her reality was owned by a wish, a hope, a prayer that if she gave it enough time, everything would be okay. In the ten years that Tim and his wife had been married, they'd never spent so much time together without saying a word, as they did in that hospital room. They'd only come close once, when Danny was born and they watched, frozen in time, captivated by the beautiful being they'd created.

Claire remembered the sound. She couldn't forget it. Tires screeching, screaming, the car's horn blaring as if the machine had grown a heart and was desperately urging Danny away. She remembered Danny stopping, alarmed. If he had've kept running, perhaps he would've survived. That was the thought that had eaten away at her most. If that stupid, fucking driver had've just acted as if nothing were happening, perhaps nothing would have. She saw Danny hit. She heard the car halt drastically. Her feet wouldn't lift. Her body wouldn't carry her out to the scene. It was as if she'd become the focus of a photographed tragedy taken for the papers.

Out the study window, Tim stared at the front yard. He'd kicked the football with Danny there all the time. It wasn't a big yard but Danny's kicks rarely went over five metres. When they went wayward, out onto the road, Tim would casually jog out and retrieve the ball. Danny loved football. Every Sunday, Tim took him to VicKick where he would play games and go through training drills with all the other kids. Danny couldn't wait to receive his certificate.

Claire hadn't prayed since she was a child. By Danny's side, it was all she did. If her eyes weren't fixed on Danny, imploring him to wake, they were on the floor - anywhere but on her husband. She couldn't help but think that he blamed her for all of this. The way he'd treated the driver of the vehicle that struck Danny proved it. He didn't scream, he didn't act out violently. He was almost composed when he called for the ambulance. If he didn't blame the driver for the accident, there was only one other person he could blame, she thought. And as she lay in her son's bed, the events that led to his final breath played and replayed in her mind. She recalled the words she'd heard this morning. The words the doctor had told both her and Tim.

"Danny's chances of recovery are slim at best. In all honesty, and I do hate to say this, I can not foresee your son coming out of this coma."

Tim always knew that the ultimatum would come and that he'd be the one that had to make the hard decision. He knew that Claire would argue desperately against him but that in the end she'd submit. Even worse, he knew that she would probably never forgive him for being the one to force her hand.

She was bawling uncontrollably, shaking her head. Her hands covered her eyes as Tim spoke the words he'd been unwittingly planning all week.

"We can't leave him like this. The machines are living for him. We can't just let time go by in the vain hope that a miracle will someday happen. We've got to let Danny die with dignity. You know what I'm saying is true, we've just... we've got to let him go."

In the study, going back over the words he'd used to convince his wife, Tim reached the bottom of his bottle of scotch and, for the first time since the accident, felt a tear gently snake down his cheek.

In Danny's room, Claire buried her head under his pillow and again began wailing in an uncontrollable fit. Worse than the accident, worse than the yelling that preceded it, was the fact that when she could've fought to keep her poor baby alive, she relented and allowed a stranger to flick the switch. A human being that she'd nursed in her womb for nine months and raised for Eight years, and it only took seven days for her to give up on him.