Still Here

38

I don't leave my house for days. I turn all my photos around, the ones of Cara and AJ. I see them enough every time I close my eyes.

I see AJ's casket, too, and continuously wish I was the one in it.

I can't sleep, so I decide to call Jasmine. She answers on the first ring.

"Hello?" Her voice is raspy; she's been crying.

I shake my head. Jasmine doesn't need this shit. My shit.

"Sorry. I just . . . needed a distraction, I guess," I say.

Jasmine sniffles. "I miss him, too."

We reminisce for a long time. She even tells me how they met, years before either of them were ever admitted into the hospital. "We didn't even like each other at first," she says, laughing sadly. "But when we got sick, we ended up becoming friends. In that hospital."

I can hear her crying. Hard. And I try to help, but this is the sort of thing that cannot be consoled.