The story of nearly everything

Chapter 5

There is one thing I have learnt from age and that is that we are all mortal. We are all breathtakingly mortal and that fact saddens me. Old age is no factor in the cause of death. The thing is, we could die anywhere. We never know the last time we'll see a place; or a person. We have no choice in the way that we go. We cannot change our choices of the past. So now I think, if he had taken a different highway. If he had detention that afternoon. Would he be sitting in his seat in class today. Would the pounding knowledge that the love of my life had been pummelled off the road and now lay in the hospital bed not be on my mind at all. I try and imagine his thoughts. Had he imagined in his darkest, dizziest daydreams that that could be the day he ruptured his lung? Could that be the day he had his spleen removed? Maybe I will never know, but maybe he will awake one day. From his urge to see the blue sky again. For his love of the smell of lavender. Would he wake because he knew I would be there in a plastic hospital chair with tear stained cheeks, ready to jump right back into his arms again.
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In the quiet hours between dawn and dusk I wonder what he would have looked like. With the seatbelt strained against his chest. His neck thrown back, his eyes closed in the midst of a daydream. Would he have thought of me? This is what I wonder. I am tired, broken and highly caffeinated and my thought keep wandering to what ifs. To maybes. So, in the dwindling hours between dawn and dusk I think of his eyes, and that is all I think of before I fall asleep.
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I wake to commotion. I had falling asleep in one of the white, plastic chairs and in the hours I was asleep somebody had faced devastation. There was a group of people crying in the middle of the corridor. Some of them probably hardly knew the recently deceased. They just saw them die and feared for themselves. Feared for their own lack of immortality. For the harsh cruelty of the world and the crushing realisation that death is everywhere. Not that I don't fear for myself too. I fear for myself because he is my light. He is the goodness in me. He is my courage and my strength and my happiness and without him I am nothing. I am a hollow body mourning an escaped soul. Then after that I fear for him. I fear that he will never graduate. That he will never marry or have kids or move to New York like he had always dreamed. And oh, how I hoped that he would. I hoped until the shaking died down and all that was left inside me were whispers and memories and a concrete heart.
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I saw him the next morning. I woke to silence. No crying. No footsteps. Perfect silence except the thump of my sluggish heart in my chest. I went to reception and asked as I had every morning and she finally agreed. She led me to his room and suddenly everything seemed more real. I would see him. And for the first time with him I was scared. I was scared I would see the damage and I would see a shattered boy with the runaway imagination instead of the always smiling, green eyed beauty I remembered. I pushed myself forward. I barely recognised him. The cuts on his face were patched and cleaned and the rest of his injuries were covered with a thin sheet. His face was emotionless. His skin grey and pasty.
And the worst part was, his eyes were closed. Hiding those magnificent green eyes that I had fallen in love with. Those eyes that drew me in and for with mine so beautifully. Try as I might I couldn't convince my self that he was simply stuck in a daydream. That he would wake up and smile and flash me a loving look with those green eyes. To me he was already dead.
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OMG ITS TWO UPDATES IN A DAY!!! This chapter was fun to write. That sounds really evil but honestly it was great. Short again but at least it's an update.
❤️ Maia