Never Say Goodbye

Chapter 28

 I open my eyes. I am under a white sheet. All I can see is white. I take the sheet off of my face; it covers the bottom half of my body now, right below a pool of blood on my abdomen. I hear a gasp, and someone (Caleb) yells, "She's alive! Oh my God, she's alive!" I hear relief in the voice.

"What happened?" I ask.

"You're alive," he answers. "You were shot, and you died, but now you're alive." Caleb's cheeks glisten, but he is smiling.

I remember now, everything that happened. The woman who shot me, Mr. Dreamur, the feeling of falling and landing in my body. I remember. "Caleb. I–I died, but I'm alive. And, Caleb, you can't go to Heaven. Not specifically you, I mean, but no one can go to Heaven. You, every person, is given a chance to go back to Earth by this guy named Mr. Dreamur. He decides. If he doesn't let you go back to Earth, then you have to go to Nefarious, an evil place, sort of like Hell. But there is no Hell, and there is no Heaven. Just Nefarious," I babble.

Caleb doesn't speak. He is still smiling. "You're alive," he finally says. "You're alive."

"Yeah," I respond, "I am."

I look down at my stomach. I notice something I didn't before. To assess my wound, the doctor had to take my shirt off. My shirt is gone. Just my bra and my shorts remain. Caleb kneels by my hospital bed. "How's your wound?" he whispers.

"Better." I whisper back. He leans in, so we are sharing the same breaths. We are four inches apart.

Even less.

One inch.

Zero inches.

His lips press into mine. His hands wrap around the slight curve in my hips. I scooch over a little bit away from him. I ignore the pain in my abdomen. He climbs in the bed, still kissing me. One hand still pressed gently to my hip, he inches his other up to my hair, and tangles his hand around it. I am not thinking about anything, just him and what we are doing. My heart flutters. But I can't stop.

* * *

At some point, I fell asleep. I wake up the next morning, laying on Caleb's arm, my head resting against his shoulder. A nurse is standing at the foot of the bed, raising her eyebrows. I nudge Caleb lightly. "Caleb," I whisper next to his ear. He doesn't wake. "Caleb," I say a little louder. He jerks awake.

"What?" He settles when his eyes find mine. I point to the nurse. His eyes follow my finger. They grow when they see the nurse standing there. He hurriedly gets out of the hospital bed and stands in the corner.

The nurse looks speechless. She is maybe fifty or sixty, with dark gray hair pulled back in a bun. She walks out of the room, muttering, "Kids."

Caleb and I look at each other. Then we burst out laughing. "Did you see her face?" he laughs.

I nod. I am laughing so hard that I can't speak. When I finally catch my breath, I look at Caleb. My heart flutters, and I want him to be closer. I want a million things. But I probably won't get any of them. I want my mother. I want my father. I want, but I cannot have. I need but I cannot receive. That's how the world works: in unfair ways. That's life.

I push this thought away, and focus on Caleb. We watch each other for what feels like hours, and I can't breathe. The silence is pressing into me, pushing me towards the ground. When I feel like I might scream, a doctor comes through the door.

"Hello," he says in a soothing voice. He seems familiar, but I don't know from where. He is relatively young, maybe thirty.

"Hi, Dr. Dreamur," Caleb says.