Holding Hands

I spent the day holding my elderly friend's hand. She is now on hourly morphine shots and oxygen around the clock. Not sure how long her heart can handle racing at 170 bpm. There were some moments today when she stopped breathing for up to 30 seconds at a time. But no matter how low she seemed physically, no matter how unresponsive she was, every time I had to remove my hand from hers to do something her hand moved ever so slowly across the blankets searching for mine.