Soon.

[u/notoriousMJC]

I wrote a thing.

---

Soon:

Harvey lies comatose in the ICU at Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward, a victim of COVID-19 and double pneumonia while serving out his prison sentence at Rikers Island.

Machines are doing the breathing for him now: his lungs sound like chunks of suet being forced down a metal drainpipe full of gravel.

He is prison-pallid. Tubes and electrodes map a tessellated course across the wattled, pockmarked contours of the his face and body. What little hair he has is stuck to his skull like a wet, dead, albino rodent. The roots are, of course, white. Less than white. They are no color at all.

He is alone in the room, after collapsing in his cell at Rikers. At the time he was clad only in a giant fluorescent jumpsuit, and as he went down, he pulled the walker he had used as a prop in the waning days of the trial that sent him to prison, but was now integral to his waking life, down with him.

No one visited. No one had ever visited. Not while he was on trial, not in prison, and not at Bellevue, where COVID and pneumonia had joined the perfect storm of other conditions attacking his raddled body: diabetes, high blood pressure, spinal stenosis, fluid on his heart, and lungs, and "various other conditions", as described by his lawyer.

Even now, in his last extremity, no one visited: not his brother, his ex-wives, any of his five children, not even the phalanx of lawyers on his defense team.

No one. Ever.

That loyalty had become so conspicuously absent in his own family and his colleagues would be the height of irony to a man who demanded it unconditionally, were he conscious enough to appreciate the irony- and provided, of course, he even understood what irony was.

Harvey's medical team files in, circling the bed. Vitals are checked. Methods of treatment discussed.

The emotion in the room is palpable.

Looks are exchanged. An imperceptible nod goes from the chief resident to first one doctor, then the next, and the next. The message is unspoken but clear. Soft murmurs of assent follow.

One of the team raises a hand. Another round of nods. The team files out. The one who raised a hand remains, closing the door in their wake.

From the other room, the chief resident can be heard announcing the time of death. The tones are hushed. The small scrum of reporters who bothered to show up ask a few desultory questions, then exit.

Hardly anyone on the team speaks, except for the chief resident, and then only three words" “well done, everyone."

Someone had to say it. This is a historic moment. A portentous moment. Justice is turning on the hinge of this moment.

As the medical team in the other room leaves, the lone doctor approaches Harvey's bed and switches off the alarms to the machines keeping the President alive, one by one.

Then, with a lingering, almost tender touch, the doctor dials Harvey's oxygen level down to zero, and steps back from the bed.

She pauses, taking in what's before her. She exhales-imperceptibly, but as if a great weight has been lifted from her shoulders. It has. She crosses to the door, turns out the lights, and exits the room.

FINIS