The old man reached up with feeble hands. His unseeing eyes briefly lit up.

A weak smile broke on his face, “You’ve come,” he breathed, as his life finally escaped the diseased chains that had held him captive.

“It happens,” the nurse gently comforted the old man’s inconsolable wife, “chemicals in the dying brain sometimes cause the patient to have, well, visions.”

And, as she was about to start writing up the final report with the time of death, a single brilliantly-white feather floated, as if from out of nowhere, and landed softly on the bed.