TFIOS Alternate Ending

Hazel Grace

I, Hazel Grace Lancaster, died exactly one year and eight days after Augustus Waters. It was sudden. The cancer in my lungs one day decided it didn't want to loose the fight so it fought back. Hard.
I woke up screaming in the middle of the night. My lungs burned and my vision was flashing. My mom found me writhing on the floor in one of Gus' old shirts tangled with my blankets. My dad called an ambulance but we knew. I knew in my spasms of pain, my mom knew as she held my head and stroked my hair and my dad knew as he held my hand and cried.
I heard the sirens off in the distance and wished that they could be here already, that I could maybe be saved but that wasn't possible. Eventually my body went limp. I couldn't spasm anymore. My lungs fought for air, my breathing sounded like when you finish a drink and you slurp the straw on the bottom and it makes that awful rasping noise.
In and out, in and out, my breath rattled and I turned to my mom, I looked her right in the eye. She had tears running down her face. She knew what I was going to say. She didn't stop me thank god.
"I love you," it came out so cracked and awful sounding that I couldn't believe it was my voice, "dad, mom."
"I know," my mom took a shaky breath, "we know honey."
My dads eyes were red and puffy as he held my hand up to his face and kissed it, "I love you Hazel. We love you. So much."
I only nodded in response because talking hurt like a bitch. I mustered up my last ounce of strength and said, "be the best Patrick you can be," to my mom and just smiled at my dad. He knew what was in that smile. He started crying harder as I let my head fall and stopped trying to breathe. The dark came over my like a blanket and soon it was all I knew.
The funeral was the worst. I watched from my place sitting on my casket, my legs swinging off the side. Well they weren't really my legs. I was dead, my body laying right under me. But I was also sitting on the hard wood of the casket. I guess they were metaphorical legs, they weren't really my legs just something like them.
I listened to my parents speak, they were sobbing and holding each other so tight I thought one of them might pop. I listened to lots of people talk about me like they knew me. But they didn't hurt to listen to. Isaacs speech hurt to listen to.
He stood up on the podium and was silent for a minute. Then, he shook his head and sighed, "Hazel and I used to sit in the literal heart of Jesus and talk listen to some guy talk about his ball cancer. We would sit and listen, and when he or someone else said something ridiculous we would sigh. We just had these little sighs and shrugs that no one else saw. And you know what's ridiculous? This whole thing. Because Hazel's gone and its ridiculous that she is and now there's no one to sigh to and," he couldn't say any more. Or maybe that's all he wrote.
After I watched them bury me, I closed my eyes. I wondered what was going to happen next. I could still feel my metaphorical body acting like a normal body. And that's when I realized I didn't have my nubbins in. I was breathing normally without them. I smiled and opened my eyes and jumped from shock. I was no longer in the cemetery where they buried me. I was back at Oranjee.
Looking down I saw I was wearing the same dress I had been on the night I had gone there with Gus. I heard a movement behind me and spun around to see him. He was standing there in his death suit looking absolutely perfect. He smiled when he saw me notice him and opened his arms and I ran into them, kissing him full on the mouth for a very long time before I buried my face in his chest.
"Took you long enough," he mumbled into my hair as I clutched his shirt and cried, "Shh hey it's okay."
"okay, okay, okay," I repeated it into his shirt like a mantra, over and over, "okay, okay, okay."
"Okay, Hazel Grace?" Augustus smiled at me as I pulled back and looked up at him.
"Okay."