Behind me, the heart monitor inside the operating room began to accelerate. I stumbled to my grandmother's bedside. Her chest rose and fell in labored, shallow gasps. A grayish pallor was creeping from her fingertips inward.
"No, Grandma, no!" I screamed toward the corridor. "Help! Can someone please save my grandmother!"
No one answered.
"Grandma, what do I do..." I clutched her hand, helpless, feeling her life drain away through my fingers.
The monitor beeped faster and faster until, after one thin, broken breath rattled from her throat, it flatlined into a single, endless wail.
Grandma was gone.
The last person in this world who loved me had been taken from me too.
I didn't know how long I sat there before murmured voices drifted down the corridor.
"They pulled every doctor in the hospital over there, and it turned out to be nothing!"
"It wasn't even morning sickness. But Mr. Stephens still demanded an explanation..."
So Julie had tossed out a casual complaint about feeling dizzy, and he'd severed my grandmother's lifeline without blinking.
That was the truth behind my grandmother's senseless death.