The Hour Before Departure

Morning reaches the hospital before it reaches the train.

I know because Shuyin’s face is gray with it when the room appears beyond the glass. The sky behind her is the color of water left in a basin overnight. The visitor’s chair is empty. Shuqiao stands beside the window with her coat folded over one arm, as if she has already decided they will not be staying.

The life-support form lies open on the shelf.

The thermos is beside it. The thread is still tied around its handle. The red hair tie rests in Shuyin’s palm.

I move toward the window, but the train does not slow. The display above the door reads TERMINAL APPROACHING. The letters remain steady now. They no longer flicker like a warning. They look like an appointment.

Shuyin sits beside my bed. She has changed clothes, though not slept. Her hair is gathered at the nape of her neck, and a crease from the hospital pillow marks one side of her cheek. She looks at my hand beneath the sheet for a long time before touching it.

“I brought the answer,” she says.

Her fingers close around the hair tie.

“I don’t know what to do with it.”

Shuqiao turns from the window. “You know what Fang said.”

“I know.”

“She won’t ask you to decide whether he lives. She’s asking whether you consent to continuing treatment that cannot bring him back.”

Shuyin looks at the form. “You make it sound simple.”

“It isn’t simple. It’s only clear.”

The words pass through the glass without reaching me. I read them from their mouths, from the angle of Shuqiao’s shoulders and the way Shuyin keeps her eyes lowered.

Fang Yiru enters with a tablet against her chest. She pauses when she sees the three of them, as though she has stepped into a room where someone is praying and cannot tell whether she should interrupt.

“Good morning,” she says.

No one answers at first.

Then Shuyin straightens. “I’ll sign it.”

The train seems to tilt beneath me.

Shuqiao closes her eyes. Fang sets the tablet down.

“Are you certain you understand what you’re agreeing to?” Fang asks.

“No.” Shuyin’s voice is small, but her mouth is firm. “I understand what you’ve told me. I understand that he isn’t waking. I understand that the machines are doing what his body cannot do. I understand that continuing them won’t give me the man who stood beside me yesterday, or last year, or six years ago.”

She looks at my face.

“I understand all of that.”

Her hand opens. The red hair tie lies across her palm like a faded line drawn between two places.

“What I don’t understand,” she says, “is how to leave while he might still be here.”

Shuqiao’s expression breaks for only a second. She turns away before I can see more.

Fang pulls the chair closer. “You can remain with him. We can keep him comfortable. You can say goodbye. There is no requirement that you leave the room.”

“Will he know?”

Fang does not answer immediately. Her eyes move to the monitor, then back to Shuyin.

“We can’t know what he hears.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“I know.” Fang’s voice softens. “There is no reliable way for me to tell you.”

Shuyin looks at me again. Her gaze is so direct that, for one impossible moment, I think the window has vanished.

I press both hands against it.

The train does not respond. Pain is already gathering under my ribs, but the hospital remains distant, held beyond the reach of my fingers. I can see the thermos. I can see the form. I can see the pen lying across the signature line.

I have spent every passage trying to tell her that I am here.

I have never told her what she should do with that fact.

Shuyin picks up the pen.

“Wait,” she says.

Shuqiao looks at her sharply. “What?”

“I need one more minute.”

“You’ve had all night.”

“I know.”

“No, you haven’t slept. You’ve been watching a thermos and asking it to make a decision neither of you can bear.”

Shuyin flinches. The soundless movement is worse than if she had shouted.

Shuqiao steps closer. “I’m not saying this because I don’t love him. I’m saying it because I do. He would hate what this is doing to you.”

Shuyin’s fingers tighten around the pen.

“I know what he would hate,” she says. “He would hate that you’re standing there pretending you’re not terrified.”

Shuqiao stops.

For the first time, the older sister looks toward the window. Not at me. At the reflection of herself in it.

“I am terrified,” she says. “That doesn’t make me wrong.”

“No.” Shuyin lowers her eyes. “It doesn’t.”

She signs.

The mark is small. It takes less than a second. A dark stroke beneath a line of printed words.

The train surges forward, and I fall against the glass.

Outside, the hospital begins to slide backward. The room enlarges in the window as we pass. Shuyin puts the pen down. Fang takes the form, but Shuyin catches her wrist.

“Not yet,” she says.

Fang waits.

“Let me stay until…” Shuyin looks toward the window. “Until the next hour.”

Fang’s face changes—not agreement, exactly, but compassion taking the shape of permission.

“We can wait an hour before we begin.”

Shuyin nods. She does not release Fang’s wrist until the doctor has promised it again.

Then she reaches for the thermos.

I force myself upright. The passengers remain seated, their faces pale and turned toward the front, but the entire carriage seems to lean with me. The distance between my hands and the hospital window is no longer measured in rooms. It is measured in whatever remains of the train’s route.

Shuyin places the thermos on the shelf. She sets the hair tie beside it. The folded form lies on the other side.

Her lips move.

“Tell me if I’m wrong.”

I do not know whether she means the machines, the decision, or the belief that has brought her to this shelf. Perhaps she means all of it.

I reach for the thermos.

Pain burns through my arms. The shelf trembles. The thread draws tight, pulling the thermos first toward the form, then away. I try to move it toward Shuyin, toward her hand, toward any answer that could spare her the responsibility.

It shifts a finger’s width.

She watches without breathing.

I push again.

The thermos moves past the form. The yellow tape turns toward her. The red hair tie trembles between us.

Then the thermos stops.

Not beside the paper. Not beside the signed line.

Beside the hair tie.

Shuyin’s face crumples, but she does not cry. She picks up the tie and loops it around the thermos handle. Her hands shake so badly that she has to try twice.

“You’re not telling me what to choose,” she whispers.

I press my palm to the window.

She lays her palm against the opposite side of the glass.

“I have to choose it,” she says.

The hospital recedes. Her hand remains there until the room turns dark.

The train enters a tunnel. The display above the door changes.

TERMINAL APPROACHING disappears.

For a moment, the panel is blank.

Then two words appear.

ARRIVING SOON.

At the far end of the carriage, the sealed doors begin to open. White light spills through the narrowing gap. I turn back toward the window, but the hospital is already gone.

Shuyin has signed the form. She has kept the hair tie.

And somewhere ahead, before the doors open fully, there is one last place this train can carry me.