I sat alone beside my husband in his hospital room. Other rooms echoed with voices and laughter — ours was silent. When the doctor quietly said, “He’s gone,” he handed me an envelope my husband had left behind. Inside were just five words: “Open the safe. You’ll understand.”

The rhythmic, metronomic beeping of the heart monitor had become the new rhythm of my life, a cruel substitute for my own heartbeat. For seven days and seven nights, I had sat in that uncomfortable, cracked vinyl chair beside Carlton’s hospital bed, my world shrinking to the four sterile walls of Room 314. I watched his chest rise and fall with a mechanical precision that offered no comfort, only a constant, gut-wrenching reminder of the machines that were keeping