C26 The Proposal in ICU

The monitors wouldn't stop beeping.

Zara hadn't slept in thirty-one hours. She sat hunched in the plastic chair beside the ICU bed, her hand wrapped around Milo's tiny one, watching his chest rise and fall under the thin hospital blanket. He was so small like this. So still. The boy who never stopped talking, who asked why the sky was blue while she was trying to pay rent, was quiet