The Fault in Our Infinities

Chapter 7: Perfect Faults

Augustus Waters

You don't get tired of looking at Hazel Grace. She is beautiful, awake, and in sleep. As I stare at her now, I try to analyse the emotions inside me, but it's impossible. You can't overthink emotions. They're either there, or they're not.

I curl my fingers in her open hand, but I don't touch her anywhere else. I don't want to wake her. She looks so peaceful, sleeping. A lump forms in my throat. Will she look like this when she is in her coffin, ready to be buried?

If I involve myself with Hazel Grace, how badly will I be burned? She's a roaring blaze, flickering in the darkness, but soon she'll be but a glowing ember, a flame extinguished, the smoke the only evidence that she'd ever been alive. Her only mark. Can I bear that pain again, knowing the agony I've felt for all these years? Can I let her be another Martha?

But she is not. Martha was obsessed with leaving a mark upon this world. Outlasting death. She wanted to be the one person who could be a victorious over mortality. One of many that wished alike. They will learn the hard way that apparently, the world is not a wish-granting factory.

Hazel is different. She walks lightly. She walks lightly upon this earth. She knows the truth. That we are as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either.

Sleeping soundly, her fingers curl around mine. I smile slightly, observing the chipped navy blue polish of her nails. I can hear the rattle of the oxygen machine as it feeds her Life's Sustenance. It's sadistically funny, really, how humans have the ability to build a machine that provides oxygen but they don't have the ability to create lung tissue or even prosthetic organs. Perhaps it's because our race are so stuck with the idea of the impossible that they never even try to consider the alternative. Perhaps it's because we are so busy spending money on flashy cars and massive homes that we do not stop to think of other purposes in life.

People will say it's sad that she will leave a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it's not sad. Not really.

It's triumphant. Heroic.

You can't get enough of being around people like that. People who accept that they are never going to be a flash in the universe, a change of time, a difference. Hazel burns steadily, though her life will soon be inevitably doused. It's worth the pain to be with her. It's worth the aftermath of agony to know that I've spent every last minute by her side.

I don't know how or why Hazel Grace has gotten so deeply under my skin. In literal terms, I've barely known her. Figuratively? I feel like I've known her forever. Or perhaps I'm in too deep that I have forgotten that I haven't.

Either way, I know that, until her last day – or even beyond, I'll always be there to respond to her 'Okay.' I'll be her mark. I'll be her scar. For our little infinity.

Hazel Grace Lancaster

When I wake, I find myself curled into his chest, his arms around my shoulder and waist like a cocoon. His scent washes over me, clean and masculine. He doesn't wear cologne. He doesn't hide behind a veil of artificiality.

My oxygen tubing runs over my left shoulder and his index finger is curled around it, almost protectively. Like he was afraid of it falling out. He sleeps soundly, his chest moving steadily, deeply. His face is pressed into my hair and I'm suddenly grateful I washed it the day before. My head pounds, but I'm too content to care. I fiddle with the cotton of his plain t-shirt, allowing myself to relax in the first shred of peaceful tranquillity I've felt in years.

I don't know what Augustus is to me. And I don't know what I am to him. He hasn't kissed me, or told me he likes me. I'm afraid to tell him how I feel. Coming from a girl with cancer, it's quite a profound declaration. I am in love with him, completely, and utterly. Perhaps it's not real love. Perhaps it's my subconscious latching onto the first person that shows me friendship, acceptance. Perhaps it attaches to that which is full of life, because I am so full of death.