Reformation

23: The New Normal

The love of my life that I had spent so long looking for, gone. No more bright smile, no more sparkling eyes filled with joy and light. Dead. This wasn't a dream. No matter how much I sung, nothing changed. The heart monitor turned off, I heard doctors coming to the door and I pressed myself against the other door to avoid getting trampled. No tears streamed down my face, I was in shock.

I thought it was when you died that your life flashed before your eyes, not when someone else died. Then I realized, his life was my life, he was my everything.

I saw him that day in the forest, his arms up in surrender. His warm lips pressed against mine, the water lapping at our backs. In the forest, I was so mad at him, but he kissed me anyway and I knew he was the one. Jim punching him down the hill, he told me he was doing it to protect me. I was tied to a chair, his fingers untying my bonds as I pressed my lips against his. My head pressed against his bare chest as the stream trickled in front of us. Sleeping together for the first time, his arms wrapped around me as I trembled from a dream. Holding his bruised and bloody face after he beat up Jim for me. Him crying in the chair at the infirmary, thinking I was dead, the smell of blood and vomit filled the room. Waking up bare in bed with him. The cold metal slipping onto my finger. Him trying to steal the cookies from my pocket. His warm lips on my stomach. His embrace after his sister died. Watching him run with Jack. Him kissing me goodbye as I walked, with child, through a dark forest alone. Us falling to the ground together as a contraction came on. Him handing me my newborn son. Holding my hand as we sprinted over acid. His fingers about to unclip my bra as we hear a scream. Our fingers laced together, staring at each other through the bars of a fence.

"What do you bathe in?"

"Sorry, sugarbuns."

"Don't make me seduce you."

"I love you."

"God had really sent me an angel."

"I'm still contemplating where to hide your body."

"I was curious."

"Say hi to our son."

"How is Kiera?" His last words that I heard, were about his ex girlfriend.

One tear dripped down my cheek, then another, soon I was bawling my eyes out. I couldn't move, I couldn't think. Ryan was dead.

Guards pulled me into a wheelchair and pushed me down the hall. Hunter sobbed with me. He never even knew his dad. He will never know his mother either because I can't do this anymore. I'm not living without him. I have nobody.

"Arizona," Seymour said in a tender voice. "If we could borrow Hunter to conduct some tests-"

"No!" I screamed. "You think I'm vulnerable and you think I'll give him up! I'm not giving him up! You let Ryan die because of some fricking protocol! I'm not letting you touch my son ever! Leave me alone!"

I put Hunter back into the crib and collapsed into sobs on my own bed. I was stupid to think we were immortal, but he wasn't supposed to die so young, not like this.

I didn't sleep that night. I stared up at the ceiling, trying to hold on to his image that, the harder I tried to remember, kept slipping away. Seymour came in around eleven, but I still didn't move. Maybe if I could lay here forever it would all go away.

"I'm sorry for your loss." He said timidly. I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, forcing back tears again. "To express our condolences, your entire group has been let in, value or not. We are going to formally bury his body, would you like to watch?"

I don't think I could do it, but I wanted to see his face one last time before he went into the ground. I nodded, helping myself into a wheelchair, leaving Hunter. We went down the silent halls and came to a morgue. It was one of the largest rooms I have ever seen, bodies with stab wounds in their temple everywhere. Most looked fresh, but there were still some that had flies buzzing around their head and rotten skin. The whole place reeked horribly of death and blood.