I was feeding my strength to him, I was literally letting it seep through my skin to his. As strong as I was it was barely enough to hold the yawning darkness at the other edge of the bed at bay. Any minute now the edge of the sheet would silently slip into this vast space and then he would roll away from me, gracefully arms above his head like a ballerina, into that hole and there cease to exist. Fine, dusky shadows, ink on the surface of water undulated and crept closer, touching the sterilized sheets, and brushing the bare skin of his back. When these wisps retreated ever so slightly I could see a black stain where they had touched him. I held him closer, willing the hot, tightly packed core reserves in my body to break apart and fill him with heat that would drive the shadows away. Even as my eyes glazed over and the pressure in my head mounted and I tried desperately to force energy out of myself, I felt him slipping away. No, slipping away was a term used in too many books, too many narrated movie death scenes. He was by no means slipping away, instead he was dissipating, evaporating even as I gripped him closer. My nails dug into the skin on his arms drawing blood, I held this as proof that he couldn't be dying; see here! Blood! It flowed still from his shoulder as well, the gaping wound there was hidden by endless amounts of bandage that would continue to be soaked. I pressed my palm to his face, and but he no longer felt my touch. Closing my eyes, I felt for him in my mind. He was there, just a faint flicker at the other side of a very dark, very cold room, and then all at once it was gone. The light flicked out and after the silence came a roar. The roar was like a rush of wind in a vast, empty, damp cave. With that roar came emptiness and I felt myself thrown from his head. It was closed off and sealed, because it no longer existed. His body, which had been so still and so weak for so long now had long ago welcomed death but just now, in that millisecond, his mind had accepted it as well, and I had witnessed it. I was alone in my own mind. It felt like I had been shut up in a small windowless room and every agonizing second I was aware that there were no rooms beyond this one, I felt the lack of his presence even more strongly than I had felt it when it was there. I wanted to scream, I wanted to claw a hole in my forehead first shredding the skin, and then scraping through the bone, lastly emptying my head of the soft mass of my brain. Such was my pain in those first few moments of absolute silence.