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her to kill Henry? Was he insane?
    Gardner glanced up and down the hall, then turned back to face her. ”Is there someone I can call to be with you right now?” he asked. ”Someone who can sit with you, help you make the right decision? A husband perhaps?”
    Debbie barely refrained from hitting the man. ”My husband died of lung cancer several years ago. It’s just Henry and me. I don’t need help making the right decision. I’ve already made it. We’re NOT turning off his life support!”
    “I understand, Mrs. Harris. You want to do what’s right for your son.”
    “Damn right I do!”
    “Then you should seriously consider what I said.”
    To give him credit, Gardner didn’t look away from her when he said it, Debbie thought. At least he had the balls to face her even if he was talking nonsense.
    The doctor rose from his seat. ”I’ve got some other patients to look after, so I need to get going. I’ll send up a nurse and perhaps the chaplain to sit with you a bit, all right?”
    But Debbie wasn’t listening. She was staring into her son’s room, staring at her son lying there in that hospital bed, and thinking there was no way in God’s creation that she could ever pull the plug on him...

    # # #

    Two hours later.
    Debbie was sitting in a chair in the corner of the hospital room, half-asleep, when a shadow passed across the nearby window.
    It took her dozing mind a moment to register that she’d seen something and by the time she pushed herself upright to take a closer look, it was gone. All she was left with was the lingering image of a large, manlike shape with wings.
    Wings? Yeah, right.
    She shook her head as if to clear it of such a ridiculous notion.
    You’re losing it, girl.
    She got up and walked over to the edge of the window, where she leaned against the wall next to it and stood peering out into the night. With the lights off in the room behind her, it was easy to see the hospital parking lot spread out below. Of course, the big arc lights set up around the lot’s perimeter helped in that regard as well.
    Debbie stared at those lights for a moment, thinking.
    A bird must have passed in front of those lights, she thought. The distance probably made the shadow look bigger.
    She searched the sky outside, but couldn’t see anything past the arc lights.
    If it had been a bird, it was probably long gone by now.
    She turned away, shaking her head at her own foolishness, and headed back to her seat.
    Behind her, the window exploded inward with a thundering crash.
    Debbie screamed and fell to the floor in shocked surprise, as glass was flung in every direction from the impact. The sudden pain she felt in several places told her that she hadn’t escaped unscathed, but a quick check told her that none of her injuries were too serious. The fact that she was off to the side of the window had no doubt shielded her from most of the debris.
    Henry!
    The realization that her son’s bed was directly in front of the window brought her scrambling to her feet, but when she turned in that direction she received her second shock that night.
    A figure stood over Henry’s bed, a figure with large leathery wings that swept out to either side and rose at their tips almost to the ceiling.
    Debbie screamed at the sight – she couldn’t help it – and the thing standing over Henry whirled around to face her. In the light from the shattered window Debbie could see that it was a woman in her mid-thirties, with a narrow face framed by chestnut-colored hair dressed in jeans and a tattered t-shirt. She would have been beautiful, possibly exceptionally so, if it wasn’t for the eyes that stared out of that face, eyes as black as pitch with no sclera or pupil. Just the sight of them made Debbie’s blood run cold and she found herself overwhelmed with fear, struggling even to breathe in the face of it. Her body went rigid, unable to move even the slightest muscle, and she could feel panic building up inside her with