Alternate Ending - The Fault In Our Stars

Chapter 25

(Chapter Twenty-Five Page 301)

I woke up early that morning the sun was still down and the moonlight was the only light besides the green dot coming from my BiPAP that was beeping to my steady heartbeat. I was breathing hard trying to ease the pain in my head. It was a pain unlike others I had, had before. It was merely like a mountain on a road, I didn’t know if I could climb over it. I opened my mouth to scream, to let anything out, but the pain restricted me doing so. Instead, I gripped my bedside and grinded my teeth together to stop the pain. Nothing worked, I was helpless.

Finally, I managed a scream to be released despite the massive headache that came with it. I took a deep breath as my parents rushed into my room panicked. They tried to help me, but there was nothing they could do to stop the firework going off in my head. The pain increased the longer I was awake, and as I tried close my eyes Mom snapped her fingers to keep me staring into her eyes repeating to me to stay awake. If I was able to bear the pain I would’ve responded how sleepy I was.

I repeated to myself just like I did the last time this had happened, that as soon as the pain gets to bad the body will shut down. And for once in my life I really truly thought it was going to happen. I was going to die, before I even found out what Gus wrote me. I’d never know. Mom brushed back my hair soothing me as Dad talked on the phone as we speed to the hospital. Flashbacks went through my mind of last time. Maybe my life was a TV show, maybe I was going on rewind. I’d wake up in the ICU all alone, Gus would be back and we’d go to Amsterdam again.  

But, life’s not like a TV show. It’s real and people can’t rewind the past you can only pick up your feet and keep walking till you can no longer lift up your feet. And right now, I can’t lift up my feet. Even though Mom was trying so hard to get my to stay awake my eyes still rolled back and I dipped into unconsciousness. A black blanket covered my vision and I slipped in and out of third person point of view. It was like a dream only I could still hear conversations carrying on without me and the cries of mothers losing their children. I wondered if one of those moms was mine.

Nobody ever describes death in detail; they say it’s like sleeping. You fade away as your memories flash through. Nobody ever takes in consideration that maybe when you die you really don’t die you continue living. Not in the memories of others, but in your on mind. Your mind creates a type of play that continues on and on and on never ending. You never die immortality. But, not even that happens.

I never wanted to die, because I didn’t know if my parents could continue without me. How would they cope, I wondered. Now, I was fully confident they’d be fine without me. When I heard Gus’s voice guiding me I knew I was making the right decision. My heartbeat would soon end, so would my life. I just hope my parents continue on just like Gus’s. They’d cope just fine; they’d make it out alive. I was just a bump on the road they could climb over.

I felt my chest rise and lower one last time. I shifted my weight; Gus waved me forward begging me to follow him wherever he was going. The pain became just background noises, as I found myself in memories, replaying them in my mind. I wasn’t just watching them, I was in them. They played before me like I was there. Times before I had cancer, when I was younger. The day I walked into Support Group the first time. No matter how much I hated it to begin with, I’m glad I walked in. If I never did, I would have never met Gus.

I’m not angry at God for giving my cancer, I was going to die at some point cancer or no cancer. Besides if I never had cancer I would have never felt true love. I’m sure if Gus and I had been non-cancer patients and somehow ended up meeting anyways we would have gotten married and moved in together. But, the world works how it wants too and that would have never been able to happen. I pictured my parents crying by my bedside as the doctor explained they’d never see me alive again. My heart broke, but as I started to second guess the pain came back and I didn’t know if I could bear it. For once I felt weak, too weak. I let the pain take me, engulf my body. Till it was so bad it shut down.