We were waiting for a death investigator to arrive and inspect my mother's body when I realized something was seriously wrong with my father.

It had only been two hours since I hugged my mom for the last time—lying in bed as if asleep, her skin blue and cool against my own—but at this moment it felt like an entirely different lifetime. 

Paramedics had come and gone—commencing the baroque process of reporting my mother’s death by handing the case off to the NYPD and notifying the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. 

My dad had been coughing up blood all morning, but suddenly sweat started streaming down his forehead, and his skin turned a gray-blue. 

"Jen, I can't breathe," he gasped. His chest gurgled like an ancient air conditioner. I would later learn that was the sound of blood accumulating in his lungs. Two months later, this image and the immense feeling of fear still wash over me.

Standing in between my dad and two NYPD officers, who were required to stay with us and keep an eye on my mother's body, I blurted out, "Can you call an ambulance?" The officers told me that EMS would take 16 minutes. 

My heart was racing—16 minutes felt eternal. (Actually, it was average, according to EMS response times for life-threatening emergencies, which is itself a whole different problem.)

Each second felt excruciating. I tried to cue my father's breathing. There was blood coming out of his mouth now, dripping down his beard. Was I about to be organizing a double funeral?

"Where are they?" he wheezed.