He's turned the corner

He's turned the corner
someone whispered, and
I wondered in which direction he went
because it seemed to me
he was going nowhere
pinned down as he was
by the weight of his treatment
lines snaking from vein to bottle
     and back again
bells and whistles of nuclear medicine
falling quiet and white in the ICU

he's turned the corner
the voice insists
and I turned to see him 
shuffling from the shadows
toward the light while
     on the screen
a flat line stretches
into infinity