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 ^{(it's beta!)}

He sat on the handrail, leaning against the window pane. Turning his head, he watched the cars below go by one by one until there were no more on the street. He wished Devon would say something. Anything.

"So now what?"

"We wait." Devon almost lit the cigarrete in his mouth, forgetting that he was in a hospital. An ancient nurse glared at him as she walked by. He put away the Zippo and crammed it back into his shirt pocket.

"We wait!? That's it!? Dad is dying. You can't fucking tell me to-" The nurse popped her head back around the corner. Gave him the goddamn evil eye. Zach grabbed his brother by the collar and pulled him into the corner. "You can't tell me to fucking wait. What the fuck does it mean to wait, huh? Dad's the one waiting to die. We gottta-"

Devon threw his cigarette on the ground. "We gotta what, huh? Gotta- gotta rub a magic lamp or something?" He was stuttering he was so pissed "Stop time? Find a fucking cure for cancer in two to three days!?! Goddamnit Zach, waiting is all there's left."

Zach sank back down against the window pane. Looking up, the sky seemed so peaceful. "Goddamnit. It ain't right." He picked up the cigarette and started twiddling it between his fingers. "Dad used to talk to me about times back home. Back home, there wasn't a whole lot of sickness. You just lived well and then just sorta, you know... Died."

Devon leaned against the railing. "Back home we werent' sick less we-" Their father began coughing violently inside the room, then stopped suddenly. Devon cringed. "We just knew fewer sicknesses."

Neither of them knew it at the time, but inside their father's room, a machine stopped beeping.

The brothers didn't say much for a long time. The old nurse walked by again. She almost looked sad for them.

Zach stood back up. "Hey bro. How thick do you think this pane is?" He pressed his thumb against the glass. "Dunno. Sixteenth. Maybe an eighth at the most. Why?" Zach looked back at him. He almost seemed serene in the dim hall lights. "Because I'd look stupid if I didn't do this right."

Down below, glass shards tinkled as they almost melted into the night air.

"The one thing I noticed while I was in that hallway was that in the dead of the night was that the only things I could hear were the beeps and coughs that came from the room. Nowhere else. There must have been a man fuckin' screaming to death in the next room 'cause Devon kept flicking his head that way but I couldn't hear shit. It was almost surreal. I sat there with my brother and I knew the A/C was on but swear on my life I was sweating my shirt off. I couldn't- I couldn't look at the door, knowing who was in there, and it was just torture. Torture. Just waiting for that beep or that cough or that... silence. And when I got up to go inside I could hear his breathing, his throat scratchy from the tube that was shoved into his lung and I couldn't do it and Devon looked at my like I was crazy and just heartless but I couldn't fucking do it. It scared me. And I remembered, that one last time before I broke the pane, I remembered for some bizarre reason Robin Williams sayin' something. Williams, of all people, saying that- it was something like how for some people, the term visiting hours didn't apply to them. God knows what or why but that comforted me- stopped me in a way. If only for a moment."

"I wish I could talk to Devon. Y'know that? He must hate my guts like no one's fuckin' business, but I wish I could see him again. Seems like forever, even if it was yesterday."

Zach got up and snuffed his cigarette against a velvet curtain. A man who sat across from him eyed him with a certain disapproval, but did nothing to stop him. As he stuck another cigarette into his mouth, he fumbled for a lighter. Devon still had it- the hospital. The man leaned forward and lit it for him, and Zach heard him speak for the first time in what had seemed like years.

"Yeah. I know."