𝑨𝒍𝒍 𝑻𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝑰𝒔 𝑮𝒐𝒍𝒅| 3

31: Empty

Dedicated to sseasaltss for this beautiful beautiful cover 🥺❤️
☁️☁️

"An empty road, an empty house
A hole inside my heart."
*

Asa

My heart, cracked in half as I surveyed the entire room in front of me.

There was a bed. An empty bed with clean white sheets and fluffed pillows, propped with ECG monitors and dialysis machines that must have operated until a few hours ago. There was the sickening smell of antiseptic. Get well soon cards and flowers graced every corner around the bed, table and windowsills.

There was a bed. An empty bed.

I squinted, trying to readjust to the darkness. The chilly air rattled my bones as I walked softly into the hospital room, every step seeming like a thousand years.

I saw him.

I saw the shape of him, slumped in a corner. Tired. Vulnerable. Broken.

He was crouched at the darkest corner of the room. Knees to his chest, arms wrapped around his legs, head bowed, his entire body shaking.

I wish I could count the broken pieces of my heart right now, piece them back together and hand him my beating heart.

"Kam–"

He stopped. Froze.

I walked slowly. He didn't want to see me. He didn't want me to see him in this pitiful, agonizing state.

I wanted to cry into his heart.

"Kam–" My lips wouldn't stop trembling. I knelt in front of him.

He wouldn't look up. He wouldn't look me in the eyes but the tremble in his voice squeezed my heart painfully. "Please. Please. Please. Go. Just go. Please. I don't want you to see me like this. Please. Please. Please."

His skin was burning. I knew this because my fingers were weaving into his hair. My arms were wrapping around him as I held him close to my heart.

Don't tell me to go. Don't tell me to leave you. I can't. I won't.

"It's okay." I assured him in a broken whisper. "Cry all you want."

Those simple words seemed to break open his dam and he was spilling out tears, sobs and gasps and crying into my chest, his fists, red and balled, the harshest, agonizing, excruciating sounds, ripping out of his chest and skewering me in the heart.

I'd never seen him like this. I'd never thought I'd see him like this. He has never been like this. And the pain the pain the pain was unbearable. My hands fisted around his shirt, pulling him closer and closer to me until there were no spaces between our bodies. Until there were no distances between our bones. Not a single punctuation separated us.

And he was falling apart and into my arms. Crying and choking and gasping for air and clutching at me like I was his lifeline.

The room was empty, with the exception of the two of us, inverted and juxtaposed.

And a bed. An empty bed, with machines that once sustained life and cards and flowers, bursting with hope of recovery.

Kam's grandfather was no more.

_

Kam was not himself when we left the room, went down the elevator and into the downstairs lobby.