Today's OneWord: Flattened

My hopes had been flattened upon entering the hospital room. Evan, contrary to everyone else's optimism, was getting worse, not better. I swore that the number of tubes surrounding him increased, the hum of the machines keeping him alive becoming more and more unbearable the closer I stepped to him. It was all the more disorienting, therefore, when he smiled at me from beneath his feeding apparatus and flashed me a lazy thumbs up.