The doctor's face is grim as he tells me what I've already known.
 
"At the moment, the machine is the only thing keeping her breathing. If she stays on the respirator, she can live for another five years or so. . ."
 
I tell him no. That won't be happening. It's something we decided a long time ago.
 
"All right," he says. "If that is truly your decision. Do you want to see her?"
 
Yes, of course. I can't leave now.
 
"All right," the doctor says. "I'll let you tell her, then."
 
I leave the small waiting room and walk down the hallway into her hospital room. She's lying on the bed with the tubes leading into the front of her throat. They had to do a tracheotomy and put a breathing tube in through the front of her throat, to prevent her tongue from closing up her airway. A stomach tube for feeding, after she stopped being able to swallow. Bedpan and colostomy bag, from not having enough control to get out of bed.
 
It's gross. It's disgusting. It's a remnant of a human being kept alive only through the most extreme means medical science has to offer.
 
It's my wife.
 
I sit down next to her and take her hand. She turns her head and looks at me in silence. Even that motion is so difficult for her, as she struggles to make her disobedient body obey her commands.
 
"The doctor says time is running out," I whisper. "You're not going to go off the respirator again this time. This is it."
 
I thought my voice would sound harsher. I thought I'd break down into tears saying this. But then, I've had years to prepare for this moment.
 
It's not easy. How could it be? But it's not a surprise.
 
"We knew this moment would come sooner or later," I say. "And we decided what we'd do when this time came. But now that that moment's come. . . it's so hard for me to say goodbye."
 
I squeeze my wife's hand tightly.
 
"I don't want to let you go," I whisper. "If I had it my way, I'd keep you here as long as I can. I'd throw my entire life, everything I own, into keeping you here with me for one more day. I'd do anything to see one more sunrise with you. To listen to one more song, to kiss you one more time. I'd give the world up just for one more golden hour. One more diamond minute. Like you always said."
 
Saki's eyes close. A tear runs down her cheek. I wipe it off with the back of my hand. I hope she doesn't see mine.
 
"Can you give me the strength to make this decision?" I whisper. "Can you keep me strong enough to hold to this course we've decided on?"
 
She squeezes my hand tightly and looks up at me. Her eyes are filled with love. . . and pain.
 
Nothing can take that love away from her, but maybe I can take away the pain.
 
I nod and rest my forehead against hers for a long while.
 
"I'll tell the doctor you're coming back home for hospice care," I say softly. "We'll do it then."
 
Saki nods silently.
 
I walk out of the room and tell the doctor of our decision.
 
-----
 
The man who comes to my home three days later does not advertise in any newspapers. He has no business card. He has no name that he will give me. He simply tells me what I needed to know.
 
"There will be no pain. There is no chance of failure," the man with the white hair and the hawklike nose says. "My methods are perfect. The guilt will fall upon me and me alone. So be at peace." His one eye regards me with sympathy. The other, behind his black eyepatch, sees nothing.
 
I nod. "Promise me that."
 
"You have my word," the man says.
 
Saki is waiting in the garden outside our house, among the flowers and the afternoon sunlight. This is the place we used to sit together and watch the sun set. This is the place we built together, the place we spent our lives together.
 
We've spent it alone. A genetic test had determined that my genes carried the markers of the same condition that was killing my wife. The chances of our children contracting it were low, but any chance was too high for my wife. Eventually, I came to see it her way as well.
 
She turns to the man as he walks with me into the garden. She nods to him. He nods back. She turns back to me, and with one last, supreme effort, raises her hand a bare inch and crooks one finger at me, gesturing for me to come closer.
 
I know what she wants.
 
I climb into her bed, pushing aside the tubes and wires, and I hold her close. She rests her head against my chest and closes her eyes. She is trembling with fear and sorrow.
 
I hold her as tightly as possible, holding her to my heart. "I'll be here the whole time," I whisper. "I'll never let you go. I'll stay here until the end, I promise," I say.
 
She nods to me. She holds me tight, like a drowning child holding onto a life preserver. I hold her just as closely.
 
The man reaches for the i.v.
 
He injects his serum into the flow of liquid.
 
I feel my wife's breathing slow.
 
Her eyes close.
 
She falls asleep in my arms.
 
The man puts aside the first hypodermic needle and picks up a second.
 
He makes a second injection.
 
I feel my wife's breathing stop.
 
She dies in my arms.
 
-----
 
"When the police come," the man says, "you will tell them that you saw me walking out of the garden. You will give them my description and report it as a murder. I will take the blame. I've been running from them long enough. One more death will mean nothing."
 
"Thank you," I say softly.
 
"You did the right thing, calling me," the man says. "Life is a gift, and it should be cherished, but a clean death is also a gift. This was the best thing you could have done for her."
 
"I know," I say.
 
The man nods to me. "Then I bid you good day, sir," he says, picking up his back and putting his black coat over his shoulders.
 
"Sir? I was wondering. . ."
 
"Yes?"
 
". . . I was wondering if you can do the same for me?"
 
The man frowns. "My treatments are only for those suffering from terminal illnesses," he says. "I do not treat the healthy."
 
"I have cardiac arrhythmia," I tell him. "Doesn't that count?"
 
"That's hardly a terminal illness," he says. "You can live a long life with that condition."
 
"Yes," I say. "But I don't want to."
 
"Hmph," the man with the white hair scoffs. "Then you have learned nothing from this."
 
He gets into his car and stops, his hands on the wheel. "I know a man. . . a complete fool of a man. . . who thinks that life is the most precious thing in the world. No matter if that life is full of pain and misery. To him, life is in itself an absolute good. To help his patient live one more day. . . that is his idea of what a doctor should do."
 
"I find him naive. Death is an inevitability, after all. There is no evil in a clean death, a good death. But I agree with him in one regard: as long as a chance for life exists, that chance is a risk worth taking.
 
He turns the key and starts up the engine of his car. "I can't change your mind, Mister Nakai," he says, "but remember this: there is beauty to be found even in darkness. Even grief can have its beautiful side. You have seen that beauty first-hand. In many ways, I envy you."
 
He closes the car door and drives away.
 
I walk back into the house.
 
In a few hours, the police will come and take my wife's body away. They will take her body to the crematorium, where it will be burned to ash and the ashes laid to rest. It will not matter. The thing in the garden is now an empty husk. The woman I loved is gone.
 
I wonder how they will find me when they come to take her away?