CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
STYX
Iwalk the halls ofthe hospital like a ghost. Maybe she didn’t die after all. Maybe I’m the one who coded on the floor. It sure feels like it.
I walk until my feet can no longer carry me. My wound aches, but I suspect the pain is dulled by the sheer torment of my heart cracking in two.
I push out into the garden. The icy air stings my face. It feels like a betrayal. Why should I get to breathe, to see, to feel, when she doesn’t?
A quiet sob escapes me, and I stare at the railing.
I could just jump. I could end it all now, climb up and let the wind take me. But the fall to the terrace below is only ten feet, fifteen at the most. Would it kill me, given how fragile my body is right now? Or would it just hurt like fuck and see me staying in this goddamn hospital for even longer?
I stagger to the railing and lean against it, bowing my head as I calculate the drop and the kind of damage it might do, or not do. And wouldn’t that be just my luck? Stuck here and slowly dying of internal bleeding from a broken heart and failed suicide attempt. Who knows? Maybe it would be worth it.
“Don’t do it.”
I straighten and look at the long-haired loser from my chemo sessions.Harley.
I swipe at my eyes with the heels of my hands. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
He steps closer and studies my bloody T-shirt, then he leans against the railing and looks down at the terrace below. “I built this place.”
I glare at him. “You built the hospital?”
“No. I built the gardens,” he says with a wistful smile. “I landscaped them so patients would have a place to come and see something beautiful in a time of such cruel brutality. Never expected I’d be seeking comfort in them less than a year later. Life’s fucked like that.”
I look at his stoic face, really look at it. He can’t be that much older than me. Twelve years? Maybe fourteen? Will I seem this put-together if I make it past twenty-five?
I guess we’ll never know. I don’t intend to make it through the fucking day without Stones.
I sniff as the Bay air assaults my nose and eyes. “Yeah, life is fucked. Cancer is fucked. Then you die, right?”
“Sometimes.” Harley’s smile is childlike, but there’s a sadness in it too. “And sometimes you live, but if you jump, you’ll never know.”
“Stones is dead,” I choke out.
“Ah shit.” Harley shakes his head. Tears prick his eyes, but he doesn’t cover them like I do mine. They fall, thick and fat over his lashes. “When?”
“I don’t know. Thirty, maybe forty minutes ago.” Another sob breaks free of my body. My stomach is in knots; my chest feels as if it’s completely caved in. Like she reached in and ripped the heart right through my fucking rib cage.
He pulls me into a hug, and I let him because I’m not sure I can hold myself up any longer.
“I don’t know how to live without her. I don’t want to live without her.”
“I know,” he whispers. “Believe me, kid, I know.”
I clutch this man to me who is all but a stranger, because I’m afraid if I don’t, I’ll jump, and I won’t care if death is brutal and slow. I won’t care if my parents cry over my motionless body as a machine breathes air into my lungs, or if they’re forced to switch off the machines after three weeks when there’s no brain activity. They deserve more than that.