Can I have your opinions on how to end this chapter please?
1. "My mother's eyes were still open. But her chest was no longer moving and the fingers on her right hand were poised as though waiting for someone to take her hand."
OR
2. "My mother's eyes were still open. But her chest was no longer moving and the finger on her right hand were poised as though waiting for someone to take her hand. As the doctor would later put it "That was that for Claudia Solus,"
Personally, I prefer the first but feel it is unfinished. If it were my mother's hand, I would instinctively reach out and take it, and as my fingers closed around hers for the last time, I would be reminded of the child I would always be.
I agree with Jennifer. Leave the reader with any final thoughts they may be left with...
My mother's eyes were still open but her chest was no longer moving and the fingers on her right hand were poised, as though waiting for someone to take her hand.
I would use the first. The ending has a poignancy to it. Her hand in its last movement. Almost alive. The terrible abruptness of death. It captures how strange death is in its initial moment. The person, their body, those last movements are still apparent, as if they are alive - and a moment ago they were.
To bring in the doctor distracts from it.
Also, the doctor would have to be very callous and unprofessional to make such a flippant comment at such a moment.
For me the doctor's statement is at odds with what has just happened and it trivialises what was, until that moment, a strangely beautiful observation.