The Measure

by Nikki Erlick

There I was, thinking that I had brought hundreds of people back from the edge of death. That I had confronted death and won. And then I found out that maybe I hadn’t. Maybe I had only saved the ones who weren’t going to die anyway, the ones who still had more time on their strings. And, as for the other ones who I tried to save and failed, maybe they couldn’t have been saved. No doctor could have helped them.”

in the arms of his mother, under the hand of his father, and everything that needed to be said was said in the silence, in their touch.